Chapter 2
Section 1: Word Classes
Words are the center of language.
Learning grammar encompasses classification of words
into groups or categories.
Let’s look at Discovery Activity 1 to see how much you
know about the different word classes (or parts of
speech), even if you are not always sure of the labels.
Discovery Activity 1: Introduction to Parts of Speech
Look at the following words.
system in big communicate between confidentiality relevant obey
under shatter blizzard warn weary beside rebellion happy
1. On a separate sheet of paper, make 4 columns. Label these columns Group A,
Group B, Group C and Group D as you see below.
2. Without using a dictionary or any other reference tool, try to place the
different words that you think belong together in the different columns. The
first four words have already been done for you as a sample.
3. After you have categorized as many words together as you can, explain why you
grouped them as you did.
Group A
system
Group B
in
Group C
big
Group D
communicate
Group A
system
confidentiality
rebellion
blizzard
Group B
in
between
under
beside
Group C
big
relevant
weary
happy
Group D
communicate
obey
shatter
warn
Each of these four groups represents a word class. Even without knowing the
labels for each group, you should have been able to place the words in the list
together with other words performing the same function.
Group A consists of nouns;
Group B consists of prepositions;
Group C of adjectives; and
Group D of verbs.
4. Now take your paper and make two new columns, Group A and Group B.
5. Using the new list of words below, try to place the different words that you think
belong together in the different columns. There are just two groups this time. As you
group this new list of words, consider whether any of the words can belong to more
than one group. Try to explain why or why not.
harm remind cancer cup scream date struggle queen poison
announce style write
Group A
Group B
Your grouping of the words in the second list should look like this:
Group A
harm
cancer
cup
scream
date
struggle
queen
poison
style
Group B
harm
remind
cup
scream
date
struggle
poison
announce
style
write
Here Groups A and B again represent different word classes. Group A represents
words that are verbs and Group B words that are nouns. Some of the words fit into
both groups; for example harm can be either a verb or a noun. You can harm (verb)
someone or you can suffer harm (noun).
Notice:
The group or class to which a word belongs is not always obvious
without context, context and sentence position are key to
clarifying the function of a word or phrase in English because
word order is highly fixed.
Words need to be placed in a certain order. This helps us to
understand their function and meaning.
Form in English does not necessarily equal function; and, word
order is fixed, meaning that words in English have to occur in a
particular sequence.
Context and Function
How are the sentence position of a word and its function related?
The following sentences illustrate again the importance of
context in assigning function and/or class. In both sentences
you can see that the same word appearing in different contexts
has a different function:
(1) She made a wish on a star.
(2) They wish to learn more about effective research practices.
Context lets native and near-native speakers “know” the
function of a word without necessarily knowing how they know
it or without knowing the labels for what they know. ESL/EFL
learners, on the other hand, don’t have this type of knowledge
because they are learners of English.
Context is critical in determining meaning.
Words without context can be difficult to
understand.
Therefore grammar taught without context may
have little meaning for ESL/EFL learners.
The next Two Discovery Activities highlight the
importance of context in understanding meaning and
function.
Discovery Activity 2: News Headlines
Look at the newspaper headlines. Underline the words you find
ambiguous, i.e. have more than one meaning. Explain what
these different meanings are. 1
1. Kidnapped Child Found by Tree
2. British Left Waffles on Gibraltar
3. EMT Helps Raccoon Bite Victim
4.Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Discovery Activity 3: Context
Look at the following pairs of sentences.
 Think about how context alters the function and meaning of
the words in each pair.
 Consider how in English form is not equal to function. Use the
questions below to help you.
I. a) I practice my talk every morning.
b) I talk every morning before the practice.
I. a) I practice my talk every morning.
b) I talk every morning before the practice.
The purpose of this activity is to highlight the importance of
context in understanding the meanings and functions of
individual words.
Words that look the same may have different meanings and
functions depending upon where they occur in a sentence.
In Sentence (a), practice is an action word (verb) referring to
what I (the subject) is doing. Talk refers to a “thing” (noun). In
Sentence (b), the opposite is true. Talk is an action word (verb)
referring to what I (the subject) is doing. Practice refers to a
“thing” (noun).
Parts of Speech or Lexical Categories
English words fall into two main categories: form class words,
which include the major word classes, and structure class
words, which include the minor word classes.
Word Classes
Form Classes
 The major category

Content or form words




Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Structure Classes
 The minor category

Structure Words






Prepositions
Pronouns
Determiners
Conjunctions
Qualifiers
Subsets
Open Word Classes
The major word or form classes are called open classes
because new words enter the language constantly.
Examples include; emoticons, spam, microwave, etc.
Closed Word Classes
The second category, which consists of the minor or structure
word class words, are referred to as closed word classes.
They consist of small numbers of words that change very little
over long periods of time and have been in the English
language for centuries.
They are fixed and invariant which means they do not have other
forms.
They occur only in a narrow range of possible positions within a
sentence and they must always accompany content words.
They must always precede a noun. They cannot follow a noun.
The job of these words is to establish logical relationships
between the different parts of sentences.
Despite the fixed number of structure words, they cause the
most learner difficulties.
Structure words are among the most common and frequently
used English words.
They include: prepositions, determiners, coordinator, and
pronouns.
Section 2: Morphology
The smallest unit of meaning is called a morpheme. A morpheme
can be a single word or other independently meaningful units
Consider the word “book.” There is no smaller form of this
word; It is a single morpheme.
In comparison look at the words;
bookworm, bookish, and books.
Theses can be broken into
book + worm
book + ish
book + s
Discovery Activity 6: Decoding Morphemes
Look at the following words.
1. Break the words down into the smallest possible meaningful
units.
blizzard
frighten
teacher
often
truthful
2. When you have finished, think about whether or not it was
easy to find the smallest possible meaningful units. What
reasons can you give for your answer?
Bound and Free Morphemes
There are two kinds of morphemes, bound and free.
Free morphemes are meaningful units that can stand alone.
Examples include; blizzard, never, amaze, or grace
Bound morphemes cannot occur alone and function only as
parts of words.
Examples include; Endings (suffixes) such as –ful, -ment, or
–er, or markers (inflections) such as –s.
Both prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes called
affixes.
Several morphemes , both bound and free, can occur in the
same word as in: undeniable un + deny + able
Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes
Bound morphemes can be divided into two groups:
derivational morphemes and inflectional morphemes.
Derivational morphemes are lexical morphemes. They
somehow either change the class a word belongs to or change
the semantic meaning of a word.
Derivational morphemes include prefixes and suffixes.
A derivational suffix often, changes the part of speech of a
word.
Noun → Adjective
Verb → Noun
child
childish
realize
realization
face
faceless
establish
establishment
trend
trendy
conform
conformity
Sometimes a derivational suffix will only change the meaning
of a word, but not the class:
Adjective → Adjective
economic
economical
politic
political
Noun → Noun
fellow
fellowship
progress
progression
Derivational prefixes only change the meaning of a word,
never the class:
Adjective → Adjective
forgettable
unforgettable
essential
nonessential
Verb → Verb
appear
disappear
finish
refinish
The most important point in teaching derivational
morphology is to help learners to recognize the more
common affixes and their functions. Learning the
meanings of derivational morphemes can be a
powerful tool for developing one’s vocabulary.
Inflectional morphemes, in contrast to derivational
morphemes, are a small closed set of eight grammatical
morphemes. These eight add little or no content, but serve a
grammatical function such as marking plural or tense.
Inflectional morphemes change the form of a word without
changing either the word category it belongs to or its meaning:
cat → cats
walk → walked
The addition of “s” to the noun cats indicates that more than
one cat is being referred to. The “ed” at the end of “walk”
indicates a past action.
Grammatical
Function
Attaches to
Example
-s
plural
noun
desks, chairs,
boxes
-’s
possessive
noun
the boy’s hat
the cat’s tail
-s
third person
singular
verb present tense
she drives
he talks
it walks
-ed
regular past tense
verb
he talked
-ed
regular past
participle
verb
she has walked
-ing
present participle
verb
she is driving
-er
comparative
adjective/adverb
taller, faster
-est
superlative
adjective/adverb
tallest, fastest
Morpheme
 Inflectional morphemes are always the last morpheme of a word. They
are always suffixes.
 Only one inflectional morpheme can be added to a word.
 The only exception to this is noun plural –s plus possessive. In written
English, this is reflected by moving the apostrophe to after the –s:
(9) The boy’s book = a book belonging to one boy.
(10) The boys’ book = a book belonging to more than one boy.
Inflectional morphemes are essential for the correct production and
understanding of grammatical or structural elements of utterances. The
crucial difference between following pair of sentences, for instances, is
reflected only by the additional of one inflectional morpheme.
I walk to school.
vs
I walked to school.
Do ELLs have trouble with these 8 inflectional endings?
Learner difficulties
Although English has relatively few inflectional morphemes,
some of the most frequent learner errors are in the correct use
of these inflections.
ELLs, for example, will frequently omit the third person
singular ‘s or the omit the past tense –ed and produce
sentences such as:
*she like cats.
*we walk home yesterday.
Redundancy in Language
The term redundancy refers to any feature that provides the
same grammatical information that another one already
provides.
In other words, when more than one grammatical clue or marker
is required to reveal grammatical information, it is called
redundancy.
Redundancy
Examine the following two sentences.
1. Which of the two sentences is incorrect or
ungrammatical in Standard American English?
2. Underline those elements in the sentence you
choose that make it ungrammatical.
(a) Yesterday, two teachers expressed their feelings
about John’s grade.
(b) Yesterday, two teacher express their feeling about
John’s grade.
The second of the two sentences (marked with an *)
is an ungrammatical Standard American English
sentence.
(a) Yesterday, two teachers expressed their feelings
about John’s grade.
(b) *Yesterday, two teacher express their feeling
about John’s grade.
(b) Yesterday, two teacher express their feeling about John’s
grade.
* the nouns teacher and feeling have not
received the plural inflection –s
* express- the lack of the past tense inflection –ed causes the
sentence to be grammatically incorrect. It does not meet
the redundancy requirements of the English language.
Why do I have to understand inflectional endings and what do
they have to do with redundancy in terms of teaching ELLs?
Learner difficulties
For ELLs, the inflectional endings require at least some explicit
language instruction.
ELLs need explicit instruction regarding these forms because
they may not “hear” the inflectional endings.
The sound of them is reduced.