TYPES OF WORDS IN ENGLISH
Content (lexical) words are words which carry the lexical/meaningful information for communicating
a message. They include: nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Content words are open-class as it is
very easy to invent new ones.
Function (grammatical) words are words which carry grammatical information, i.e. generally
showing some relationship between content words. They include: pronouns, prepositions, determiners,
auxiliary verbs (including modal verbs), and conjunctions. Function words can also be labeled as
closed-class words because their number is finite.
I In the following sentences, underline content words:
1. In their efforts to reduce crime, the government expanded the police force.
2. She suddenly remembered that her keys were in her other bag.
3. Maria was speaking in her capacity as a novelist, rather than as a television presenter.
4. The President is clearly in a dilemma about how to tackle the crisis.
5. Newcastle seemed to be heading for disaster until a late goal saved the day.
II In the following sentences, underline function words:
1. Some alternations to our original plans might be necessary.
2. The meeting has been cancelled due to circumstances beyond our control.
3. Could you give me a rough approximation of how many people will be coming?
4. I must chase my flatmate up about those bills and see if I can pay them.
5. The school had a swimming pool of a kind, but it was too small for most classes to use.
Transparent vs. opaque
As Bauer (1983: 19) puts it, a lexeme is said to be transparent if it is clearly analysable into its
constituent morphs. Conversely, a word which is not analysable into its constituent morphs is said to be
opaque. Compare shortage and hostage; airmail and blackmail.
According to morphological structure, words in English can be divided into simple, complex and
compound.
Simple word – a word consisting of a single morpheme to which an inflectional affix can be added; a
word that cannot be analyzed into smaller meaningful parts: e.g. play, appear, kitchen, them, but, the,
etc.
Complex (derived) word – a word consisting of the base and at least one derivational affix; e.g.
happiness, worker, immediately, talented, disapprove, etc.
Compound word – a word made up of two or more free morphemes, e.g. honeymoon, father-in-law,
lighthouse, etc; words like dishwasher, goalkeeper – may be classified as compound-complex.
III Decide whether the following words are simple, complex or compound:
home-made ____________
mountaineering ____________
impossible ____________
courage ____________
police ____________
bakery ____________
acknowledgement ____________
highway ____________
husband ____________
thoughtless ____________
seasick ____________
nationalize ____________
hindrance ____________
picture ____________
sportswear ____________
availability ____________
overexcited ____________
handwriting ____________
terrible ____________
information ____________
nevertheless ____________
anywhere ____________
INFLECTIONAL AND DERIVATIONAL PARADIGMS
Paradigm is a set of language forms sharing a particular element or corresponding to a particular
lexeme. For example, be, am, is, are, was, were, been constitute a paradigm, also good, better, best, or
eye (n.), eye (v.), eyebrow, black-eyed, eyelash, eye-tooth, etc.
Inflectional paradigm refers to the set of all the inflected forms that a lexeme assumes (Aronoff,
2011: 44).
The stem of a word together with all the inflectional suffixes constitutes the inflectional paradigm of a
word.
For example:
cat
cats
work works
cat’s
worked
cats’
working
N.B. Inflection is a morphological change by means of which a word adapts to a grammatical function
without changing its lexical meaning.
Inflectional suffixes in English:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Noun – genitive {s1}
Noun – plural {s2}
Verb – 3rd person sg. {s3}
Verb – past tense {d1}
Verb – past participle {d2}
Verb – present participle {ing}
Adjective – comparative {er}
Adjective – superlative {est}
Derivational paradigm refers to a set of words which share the same root morpheme, e.g. kind,
unkind, unkindly, kindness, unkindness or like, likely, unlikely, likelihood, unlikelihood.
Words which share the same derivational affix (prefix or suffix) also constitute a derivational
paradigm,
e.g.
anti-abortion,
anti-aggression,
anti-colonial,
anti-nuclear,
antiracist.
Derivational suffixes are sometimes called lexical morphemes, whereas inflectional suffixes are
referred to as grammatical morphemes.
I Write the paradigmatic forms of these nouns. For some slots you may have two forms or none.
Stem
carpenter
child
man
brother
Japanese
son-in-law
box
toy maker
chaos
Plural
Possessive
Plural + Possessive
II Consider the following sets of words and decide whether we are dealing with the inflectional or
derivational paradigm:
1. house, housing, housekeeping, housebreaker, housewife .................................…..
2. move, moves, moving, moved .......................................................
3. strawberry, raspberry, huckleberry ...................................................
4. sleep, sleepy, sleepily, sleepiness, sleepless, sleeping bag ........................................................
5. pretty, prettier, prettiest ....................................................
III Sentences (1-5) contain underlined words that do not exist. Fill in the blanks adding
appropriate affixes to the root of the underlined word. State whether the affixes you have added
are derivational or inflectional.
1. This woman trogs engines.
This woman is a ______________.
She is _______________ the engine now. It will soon be ___________________.
2. This is a noccis chair.
It has the quality of ___________________.
I’d like to ______________________ all my chairs.
3. The universe is thought to be spandical.
Many scientists study _________________.
Planets in the universe move _________________.
Adapted from: http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh