THE WORDS OF

ENGLISH
NUR INTAN ASMARA
1503337

 The meaning of lexical categories

Structural criteria
Major categories

The meaning of lexical categories

We distinguish eight categories

for English:
-

VERBS (including AUXILIARIES)

NOUNS (including PRONOUNS)
ADJECTIVES
ADVERBS
PREPOSITIONS
DETERMINERS
CONJUNCTIONS
INTERJECTIONS

,
n
o
s
r
e
p
a
f
o
me
a
n
e
h
t
s
i
n
u
a no
;
g
in
h
t
r
o
e
c
pla
d;
r
o
w
g
n
i
o
d
a verb is a

an

d
r
o
w
g
in
ib
r
c
s
e
adjective is a d

My love of linguistics
N

Although not a person,

place or things

I love linguistics
V

Although not an action

They gulched and guttled. Mephitically alliaceous

ventripotent fopdoodles and gotchy slubberdegullions, she
mussitated. She fibulated, piddling moliminously at the
jejune and unsaporous grots tofore her. Fackins! Pabulous
comessations were an ephialtes for the deipnetic. It was a
niminy gulosity, she wiste it, but they begat swilk an
increment in her recrement, a cupidity that was ineluctableit was the flurch of post-jentacular flampoints and licious
lozens. Thilke trogalions she yissed avidulously. She could
but gorm esuriently at the ashet. She fimbled her falbala
aganacticiously.
1. What type of fopdoodles are they?
2. How did she yiss?
3. What did she fimble?

Structural criteria

Shape ( i.e. their morphology )

Grammatical
behaviour

Position in the sentence ( i.e. their

syntax )

MORPHOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR
(relating to the form of words)
Words of the same class will typically show the same
morphological possibilities, in other words, theyll take
the same sort of affixes
gulched - the ed ending = verb ( ending s/es, -ed, -ing)
gulcher - adding -er = noun
gotchy/ gotchier/ gotchiest - the y ending/ the ier and est =
adjectives
gotchily - the -ly ending = adverb
gotchiness - the ness ending = noun

SYNTACTIC BEHAVIOUR ( relating to

distribution)
Word s of the same class (like food, dinner, pastries, flampoint,
slubberdegullions and flurch) will fill the same basic slots in the
recurrent patterns of a language.

PHRASES
Groups of words which have some sort of grammatical relationship with one
another.
HEAD
These phrases are always named after the word which is the most important in the
string.

Phrasal categories:
-

noun phrases
verb phrases
adjective phrases
adverb phrases
Lexical categories:
- noun phrases
NP
- verb phrases
VP
- adjective phrases
AP
- adverb phrases

MAJOR CATEGORIES

English Lexical Categories fall into two main

groups:
Major classes (lexical)
nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
Minor categories (grammatical)
Prepositions, determiners, and conjunction

NOUN

- Refers to object (both physical objects and abstractions) and people

- Some properties which are associated with nouns are number, gender
and case
- It is very common for language to distinguish noun by number

MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES

The singular is unmarked (i.e. coincides with the noun stem)

The plural is expressed by a suffix (e)s. (book-books)

There are some irregularities in number marking :
- some nouns change their stem vowel (man-men)
- add the suffix en ( ox- oxen)
- one even does both (brother- brethren)
- identical singular and plural forms (sheep, fish)
The most frequent noun-forming suffixes are: the
ness, -ity, -er, -ee, ation, -ment

Sub-classes of nouns
Common nouns:
- The most typical noun ( word, school, fascination, etc)
- Can be subdivided into Count and non count noun

Proper nouns:
- Name of things like person, place and
organizations (use capital letter)

Collective nouns:
- Both a plural ang singular form

Pronoun
Several different sub-classes of pronoun:
- Personal pronouns (I, you, them, him, etc. )
- Indefinite pronoun (some-, any-, every- and no-with thing,
-one and body)
- Reflexive pronoun (-self or selves)
- Reciprocal pronoun (each other and one another)
- Possessive pronoun (my-mine, your-yours, his-his, etc.)
- Demonstrative pronouns (this-these, that-those)
- Interrogative pronouns (who-subject case, whom-object

Verbs

Lexical/ main verbs

Auxiliary verbs

Adjective
- Semantic

Feature
- Morphological Feature
- Syntactic Behaviour

Semantic Features
Quality

Nice
Wise
Smart

States

Bigger
Thinner
Smarter

Adjective

Morphological Features
a. Naturally Gradable Adjectives
Normal
Form

Modification
Form

Suppletive
Form

Free- standing
Form

Funny

Old

Bad

Beautiful

Comparative

Funnier

Elder/ Older

Worse

More
beautiful

Superlative

Funniest

Eldest/ Oldest

Worst

Most
beautiful

Absolute

Syllable

One or two syllable

Two or Threesyllable

b. Unnaturally gradable Adjectives do not take

degree of modification
Married, pregnant, dead..
*most pregnant?
*more dead? deader?

c. Some of the adjectives have derivational endings

Noun Adjective
-ful

Hopeful , beautiful

-less

Homeless

-y

Hairy

-al

Manual

Verb Adjective
-able

Doable

-ible

Legible

Syntactic Behaviour
Position :
Attributively

The beautiful girl

1st
2nd
Predicatively

The girl is beautiful

1st

2nd

Exception: Asleep, Awake, Main, Utter

#The asleep baby

Asleep
Awake

Not Attributive

The baby is asleep

# The awake baby
The baby is awake
#The point is main

Main
Not Predicative

Utter

The main point

#The chaos was utter
The utter chaos

Modifiers of Adjective

Intensifier (very, so, too) modify:

Gradable adjective
Too good
Non-gradable adjective
Very pregnant
Converted other category into adjective
So yesterday

 Dependent that follow adjective complete the

meaning of the adjective
So bad that it sucks you in..

Adjective can follow the noun within the noun

Ever done something stupid in the name of love?

Few adjectives always follow the noun

money due
the information available

Adverb
- Semantic

Feature
- Morphological Feature
- Syntactic Behaviour

Semantic Feature
Adverbs express information like:
time, manner, place, frequency etc.

Morphological Features
Gradable
Inflectional (-er, -est)
free standing form
Derivational
Adjective Adverb

soon, sooner, soonest

more quickly..

-ly
Slowly, freshly

Syntactic Behaviour
Adding information to the verb
Everyone teases him cruelly and mercilessly
HOW

They immediately hit him

TIME

 Express attitude
Unfortunately, we could not come
Emphatic
Thats entirely the point
Modify the meaning of adjective
Notoriously family value-obsessed

 Intensify the interpretation

Modify adverb
Exception:
Adverb with connective role cannot take
modifiers at all
Mat Stone, however, thinks

General Tests of determining category

membership
Substitution Test
Co-ordination Test
Morphological Character

The resulting escapade was silly

the resulting escapade was rubbish
Can they take comparative and superlative
endings? (sillier: yes, rubbisher: no)
Can they take intensifiying expression?
( Very silly: yes, very rubbish: no)

Can they co-ordinated with another adjective?

The resulting escapade was silly and puerile
*the resulting escapade was rubbish and puerile

The Minor Categories

Less meaning
Not easily receptive to new member

Semantic Feature
Shows relationship between things and event.
Put the apple on the table
to : indicates abstract distance
Their warped sense of humor to the attention
of : relation between two noun, possession
They mimicked Terrys style of animation
by : has abstract role
The Stans gay dog is played by no less a luminary than ER

Morphological Feature
Simple
( to, of, with, by )
Complex
(in front of, on top of.)
Do not allow inflectional & derivational

Syntactic Behaviour
Preposition + Noun Phrase = Prepositional Phrase

Conjunctions
Co-ordinators, link :
noun + noun, phrase + phrase, clause + clause
(but, and, or, eitheror, not onlybut also)
Subordinator, link:
a clause to another element
(after, as, because, if, that, until and while)

Determiners
a, an, the
Function within noun phrase

Phrasal Categories and Their Structure

Specifier

Modifier

Complement