Parts of speech
Words, or lexemes, are categorised according to the role or function they perform in grammar. These classes are called parts of speech. We can distinguish between open and closed classes of words. The open classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The closed classes are the determiners, prepositions, subordinators and coordinators. This page provides an overview of these classes and links to more information.
Contents2. Open classes 4. Criteria for class membership Related pages |
Words and lexemes
In linguistics, we make a distinction between words and lexemes. The term 'word' is a non-technical term that we all use every day. For example, all of us will agree on the number of words in the following sentence:
Frida ran ten kilometres yesterday, but she's only running five today. (11 words)
Looking more closely, we can see that ran and running are different forms of the same verb run. The two words involve different inflections of the same lexeme run. The lexeme is the simple form of the word.
We can do more with the words in this sentence – we can assign a category (part of speech) to each according to its grammatical function, for example, Frida, kilometres and she are classified as types of nouns, ten and five are determiners, but is a coordinator and yesterday, only and today are adverbs. The different categories, such as nouns, determiners, coordinators and adverbs, are explained below.
The process of categorising a sentence into parts of speech or assigning functional labels to the constituents is called parsing.
Open classes
Open classes allow new members through borrowing (for example, the noun cafe) and derivation (for example, the adjective bounteous from the noun bounty). Open classes of words include:
Nouns make up the largest proportion of lexemes in English, and are used to refer to humans (for example, child), animals (for example, kangaroo), objects (for example, computer), and abstract concepts (for example, happiness). Pronouns (for example, you) and proper nouns (for example, Victor) are included in the category of nouns.
Read more about nouns...Verbs refer to a situation or activity which is described in the sentence or clause. These can be a state (for example, I know my times tables), an action (for example, The police chased the arsonist), an event (for example, Milly's sandcastle collapsed) or a sense (for example, Hugh heard the lunch bell).
Read more about verbs...Adjectives are used as modifiers to describe a property of a noun (for example, young, tall, happy, beautiful).
Read more about adjectives...Adverbs can modify a verb (for example, ran quickly), an adjective (for example, very beautiful), another adverb (for example, quite quickly), or a clause (for example, Unfortunately we can't come today).
Read more about adverbs...
Closed classes
Closed classes of words do not allow new members and usually involve grammatical rather than lexical words. Closed classes of words include:
Determiners precede a noun and provide additional information about it. Determiners include articles (for example, the), demonstratives (for example, these), interrogatives (for example, what), numbers (for example, five) and quantifiers (for example, some).
Prepositions relate a noun phrase to other constituents in a sentence in terms of place (for example, on the bench), time (for example, before class), manner (for example, with flair), agency (by the teacher) and recipience or direction (to the child, to the supermarket).
Coordinators join two or more equal constituents. They may be words, phrases, or clauses. English coordinators are and, or and but.
Subordinators join two clauses which do not have equal status. They join subordinate clauses to a main clause (for example, We decided to continue with the bike ride although it was raining.)
Criteria for class membership
How are words assigned to different classes?
Parts of speech are often described informally according to the meaning of the words within them. This is not a reliable strategy since 'doing words' for example can be abstract nouns such as activity as well as verbs such as act. Also, one word can be used in different ways in different contexts (consider the word recording which could be a verb or a noun).
A far more reliable way to distinguish among word classes is to compare the way the words are used and the types of endings they can take. As you will see in exploring the pages on specific parts of speech, we can make some general comments about the word endings (morphology) associated with each word class. For example many nouns take the plural suffix -s. For example hand can be the name of the thing on the end of your arm (as in shake hands) and it can also refer to the activity of transferring goods from one person to another (as in hand it over!).
The functions of different word classes also provide us with a consistent way of distinguishing between them. For example both nouns (for example, theatre) and adjectives (for example, comfortable) can act as modifiers in a noun phrase. Compare theatre seats with comfortable seats. Other criteria can then be used to distinguish nouns from adjectives. For example, only theatre can be made plural (theatres) since adjectives do not take number marking.