Grammatical units
and word classes
1 Structure and distribution of a piece of discourse/text
discourse/text
… And if mum washes up all this stuff, Tom should dry it. But …
sentence
And if mum washes up all this stuff, Tom should dry it.
clause
And if mum washes up all this stuff, Tom should dry it.
phrase
And if mum washes up all this stuff, Tom should dry it.
word/lexeme
And if mum washes up all this stuff, Tom should dry it.
morpheme
And if mum washes up all this stuff, Tom should dry it.
grapheme
And if mum washes up all this stuff, Tom should dry it.
phoneme
And if mum washes up all this stuff, Tom should dry it.
2 Every word/lexeme has five characteristics:
2.1 Discourse function/syntactic role/grammatical function
2.2 Inflection
2.3 Derivation
2.4 Meaning
2.5 A fairly consistent phonological shape (Trask 1999:304)
3 What is a lexeme? It is a word, in the sense applicable to words listed in a dictionary—it is a
set of grammatical words sharing the same basic lexical meaning, the same basic form and the
same word class.
word
base form
grammatical word (in the discourse)
lexical item (in a dictionary)  lexeme
inflected form
From a morphological point of view the form of a word can be
either simple
stem
type
sympathy
or complex.
stem+affixes (prefixes, suffixes, infixes)
typical
atypical
sympathetic
unsympathetic
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4 Types of equivalence between words
4.1 Homonyms (the same pronunciation and spelling but morphologically
unrelated)
saw¹
saw²
saw³
4.2 Homophones (the same pronunciation but different spelling and
morphologically unrelated)
right
rite
write
4.3 Homographs (the same spelling but different pronunciation and
morphologically unrelated)
row¹
row²
4.4 Homomorphs (the same morphological form but different syntactic
function)
right (noun)
right (adjective)
plays (verb)
plays (noun)
5 Taxonomy of word classes
5.1 OPEN CLASSES
5.1.1 nouns
5.1.2 adjectives
5.1.3 full verbs
5.1.4 adverbs
5.2 CLOSED CLASSES
5.2.1 prepositions
5.2.2 pronouns
5.2.3 determiners
5.2.4 conjunctions
5.2.5 modal verbs
5.2.6 primary verbs
5.3 NUMERALS
5.4 INTERJECTIONS
(Quirk et al. 1991:67—73)
Sources
Quirk et al. 1991
Quirk, R. , et al. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. 9th impression. London ; New York: Longman,
1991, ©1985. 1779 p. : ill. ; 25.2 cm
ISBN 0-582-51734-6
Trask 1999
Trask, R. L. A dictionary of grammatical terms and linguistics. Reprinted. London ; New York : Routledge, 1999,
©1993. xv, 335 p. : ill. ; 21.7 cm ISBN 0-435-08628-0
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