Study Advice Service
Grammar series - 3
WORD CLASSES (Advanced)
Author: Peter Wilson
This leaflet is a sequel to the Study Advice Service leaflet, Grammar series - 1. Word Classes (basic).
If you have studied that, you will realise that there are more subtleties in the use of different word
classes than can be explained in that short guide. There are complexities that will not be explained in
this one either – but you are embarking on the next step.
In particular, verbs have enormous complexities, so much so that there is a separate leaflet about them
(Grammar series — 4. Verbs). Here are one or two observations on other word classes.
First, not all words can easily be broken down into the classes already given. For a start, there is a
small group of expressions like ‘Hello’ and its local colloquial equivalent, ‘Now then’ which are best
treated as mere expressions, without a clear function in the sentence. You should think of these as
formulaic utterances – things ‘uttered’, or said, purely as formulae. (‘Now then’ is clearly formulaic –
looked at in a purely logical way, it makes no sense. It uses two words with opposite meanings.)
There is also the phenomenon pointed out at the end of the first leaflet, using the example of ‘back’,
that words that look the same can nevertheless belong to different word classes, in different contexts.
Another example: the basic meaning of ‘black’ [a similar looking word – but there is an ‘l’ of a difference]
is adjectival. It means a colour, or the absence of colour – the ‘opposite’ of white. But its use can vary.
“I blacked (verb) his eye” means “I gave him a black (adjective) eye”. In “I potted black” in a game of
snooker, the word ‘black’ is a noun, meaning ‘the black ball’. All these different meanings are clearly
very close to each other, but in grammar their uses are different.
In a further example, “I said that that ‘that’ that you had used was an adjective. When I said that, I was
wrong,” the word ‘that’ is used first as a conjunction; second as a demonstrative adjective; fourth as a
relative pronoun; and finally as a demonstrative pronoun. The third usage is unclear, out of context.
(Take the word with the speech marks, and then the unit ‘that’ can be treated as a noun.)
This can be represented diagrammatically as:
I said that (cj) that (adj) ‘that’ (noun) that (rel pn) you had used was an adjective.
When I said that (dem pn), I was wrong.
Unless the grammar matters to you for your own purposes – for example in translating from a foreign
language – don’t worry too much about the accuracy of your identification of subtle distinctions.
Grammar is a matter of sense, which is more or less common sense – with extreme refinements.
More about Form words
When we look further at semantic (form or lexical) words, we notice that the boundaries between them
are not as distinct as they might be. In particular,
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Adjectives and nouns
can be used as each other.
Substantives are words that are used to mean things, whether concrete or abstract. So words like
‘British’, which certainly look like adjectives, and which are given in dictionaries as being primarily
adjectives, can be used after ‘the’ – “the British drink tea” for example – and are obviously behaving like
nouns. It is sometimes convenient to use the word substantive to describe a word like this, without
arguing about whether it is a noun or an adjective.
In the other direction, nouns can be used to describe – as if they were adjectives. We say “History
lessons”, not “historical lessons”, when we want to describe the sort of lessons that we are having; or
use ‘DELL’ (a noun, the name of a company) to describe the product it makes – “a DELL computer”.
This is behaviour typical of an adjective. To avoid argument, it is convenient to use the word epithet
(or its adjectival form epithetical) to label ‘words that are [temporarily] being used to describe nouns’.
Nouns
The leaflet Grammar series 1. Word Classes (basic) said that nouns could be divided into several
kinds, and described the distinctions between common and proper and between abstract and
concrete nouns, as well as defining collective nouns.
Another important division is into count (or countable) and non-count (or uncountable) nouns. This is
a distinction very important to those who are learning English as a foreign language, especially those
whose first language is not European. Very few native speakers have difficulty with it. But it is central
to much of the idiomatic use of our language.
The rules for using count nouns are different from those governing non-count nouns. We use ‘many’,
for example, with count nouns where we use ‘much’ with non-count nouns. “You have had too many
crisps,” says a mother to her child; but “You have had too much lemonade.”
Basically, count nouns are those which can be counted, like ‘book’. They can be counted usually
because their meaning is that of a single identifiable object – ‘a flower’, ‘a child’, ‘a table’ etc. Typically,
they can have plurals.
Among concrete nouns, the non-count nouns are those which name substances (in general) rather
than (individual) things – ‘milk’, ‘concrete’ and ‘cloth’ for example. These are names of things which we
don’t usually sub-divide into different things. We don’t say “a milk” in ordinary language. There are
also non-count nouns in the abstract class, the names of feelings, emotions, ideas and so on: ‘beauty’,
‘hate’, and ‘research’, for example.
Many nouns in English can be used both as count and as non-count nouns. When we invite someone
to ‘Have a chocolate’, we mean a single thing. When we say ‘I like chocolate’, we are thinking of the
general substance. Chocolates (the things) are made of chocolate (the substance). In an example
using an abstract noun, Theology is the study of religion (non-count, ~ the general idea of belief in
gods, spiritual systems etc); but there are many different religions (count noun, ~ specific beliefs in
particular ideas) in the world, which can all be studied in Theology.
This last example shows that non-count nouns do not normally have a plural.
Another important difference in usage is that we do not usually use the article ‘a’ with a non-count noun.
If we are talking of a single item – one sweet in a box of sweets – we can say ‘a chocolate’. If we are
learning to cook, we might make biscuits with chocolate – but not with a chocolate.
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People who are learning English as a foreign language will have learnt about these distinctions, and I
believe will have found them very important in using the language. People whose native language is
English rarely need to understand the idea in the same way. So I will say no more about it.
Adjectives and Adverbs
About adjectives and adverbs, it is useful to realise that they can be inflected – that is, their form can
be changed, according to regular patterns. (The English language is very little inflected compared to
most European languages – though more inflected than some non-European ones.)
With English adjectives and adverbs, inflection expresses comparison. In the grammatical sense, this
is the phenomenon where one can say that one thing is big (the base or positive form), another is
bigger (the comparative form) and the third is the biggest (the superlative form). The same is true of
adverbs – one person can work hard (positive), the next harder (comparative), and the third hardest
(superlative).
There are two ways of forming the comparative and the superlative, for both adjectives and adverbs.
Words with one or two syllables form their comparatives by adding -er and superlatives by adding -est.
Words with four or more syllables (and most words with three syllables) use the words more and most
in two-word phrases with the positive form. This form, of course, can be used with any adjective or
adverb. The choice between which form to use is chiefly a matter of the native feel for the rhythms of
the language.
(As always with grammar, the picture is more complicated than this. Some readers will already have
realised that there is a refinement in adverbs. Very often where the positive ends in -ly, this syllable is
lost in the comparative and superlative forms – we say louder and loudest, not loudlier and loudliest,
from loudly.)
Note: in formal English, when comparing two things, we should always use the comparative form. “She
is the tallest of the two” is regarded as an error; in academic English at least, say “She is the taller of
the two.”
More about Function Words.
It can surprise native speakers to realise that people who learn English as a foreign language find that
the word ‘the’ is one of the hardest in our language. It is a matter of idiom – of having a ‘feel’ for one’s
mother tongue, learnt from babyhood. If one learns the language from the point of view of a foreigner,
working through more or less artificial exercises, the ‘feel’ of the little words is very hard to acquire.
This is partly because of a complication which was avoided in the first leaflet on word classes.
Determiners
Articles belong to a larger group known as determiners. As the name suggests, determiners
determine, or tell us, what the speaker is talking about. One of their many complexities is that they
occur under multiple restriction rules – rules known to all native speakers, but hard to describe, and
very difficult to learn for a foreign speaker. For example, one can say a girl, with a plural some girls,
and a rarer form some girl. (A teacher might say ‘some girl has left a handbag in the class room.’)
One cannot say a some girl.
That is one reason why the sub-class of determiners that includes the articles is called central
determiners. They are of central importance. They include such words as this, that, some, any,
either, no and every. Alert readers will realise that such words can also, in other contexts, be
classified in other word classes.
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There are also words with similar functions which can be used before (sometimes without) central
determiners called pre-determiners. (A second reason for central determiners being called ‘central’ is
that they come in the middle of the determining words before a noun.) Pre-determiners include
multipliers like ‘double’, fractions like ‘one third’ or ‘a third’, and words like ‘all’, ‘both’ and ‘half’.
There are also post-determiners such as numerals and quantifiers like ‘few’, ‘many’, ‘several’ and
‘little’.
In the use of the determiners, and particularly the articles and quantifiers, the division of nouns into
count and non-count is crucial. It may help you understand this if you notice the fact that English is
very flexible in how it refers to things.
We can refer to things generically or specifically. The generic use can be illustrated by “A whale is a
mammal”, “Whales are mammals” and “The whale is a mammal”. These three all mean virtually the
same. The specific meaning can be illustrated by “A whale was seen in the Humber this morning”,
“The whales were swimming west” and “The whale swam out of sight”.
One difficulty (for foreign speakers) in using determiners correctly lies in the fact that the same two
determiners – the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’– are used in the examples of both generic and specific meaning.
So is the variation between singular and plural. It is features like this that make the use of articles as
much a matter of idiom as of grammar.
For further guidance, consult a larger grammar book, but be warned. The Comprehensive Grammar of
the English Language, for example, has a principal section on determiners of 11 large pages, with
another 30 or so pages which are mostly relevant. There are whole theses to be written here!
The hardest class of the function words for native speakers to analyse in terms of meaning may be the
preposition; in terms of form and grammar, it is probably the pronoun.
Prepositions
are difficult because in different languages, they mean different things. Our English word to can be
translated into French by ‘à’, or ‘en’; but à in its turn can be translated by ‘to’, ‘at’ or ‘in’, etc. The
meanings in the two languages do not overlap exactly. This is always a problem in speaking a foreign
language. A dictionary is some help; but the learner needs above all to get used to the ways the native
speakers use prepositions in their speech.
Semantic words are often easy to translate. The name for a unit of time lasting for seven days may be
une semaine in French, eine Woche in German, or una settimana in Italian; but each word is a direct
substitute in its own language for ‘a week’ in English. The same is often not true for prepositions.
‘From’ and ‘by’ feel quite distinct in English to native speakers; but both can be rendered in Italian by
da.
A group of words that can give trouble are the adverbial particles. These often look like prepositions
or adverbs. They come in verbs like ‘stand up’ (as an order); and in another, less formal meaning to do
with social life: “She had a date, but he stood her up”.
The distinction is not usually important, except to advanced students. But the term ‘adverbial particle’
helps to explain some of the phrasal verbs in English. See Grammar series - 4. Verbs for more
information.
Pronouns
are difficult because the class ‘pronoun’ contains many sub-classes. Grammar series - 1. Word
Classes (basic) briefly defined the personal, relative, interrogative, demonstrative and reflexive.
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Quirk’s Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language also lists the possessive (included in our
leaflet in the personal pronouns), the reciprocal, and the indefinite and negative series.
It was pointed out that both relative and interrogative pronouns can be called wh-words, and they are
indeed identical in form. The interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions, and the relative forms
are used in statements.
Many pronouns have closely related adjectives. Here is a rule of thumb to tell the difference when you
are in doubt:
If you can use the word by itself and it makes sense, it is probably a pronoun; if it has to
have a noun with it, it is probably an adjective.
Numerals
are often classed with pronouns. In English, there are two series. Cardinal numerals like ‘one’, ‘two’
and ‘three’ are used to give the number of something. Ordinal numerals, ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third’ etc,
are used to give the order, or position, in which something comes. Fractions, like ‘three sixteenths’ or
‘five twelfths’, are related to numbers. The number above the line (the ‘enumerator’) is a cardinal
number. The one below the line (the ‘denominator’) is an ordinal.
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© 01/2008
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