Week 5 - word classes Flashcards
What are the 3 criteria for determining word class of a word?
- meaning (semantic feature)
- ‘shape’ of word (morphological feature)
- position of word (syntactic criteria)
What are countable and mass nouns?
Countable nouns can be marked by -s to be plural (usually need a determiner in s form, mass nouns stay the same in plural form e.g. sheep
Are nouns a closed or open word class?
Open
What are ‘possessive pronouns’?
Not pronouns but determiners
What are auxiliary verbs?
Helping verbs which serve a grammatical function (tense marking, negatives) e.g. BE, HAVE, GO
What are Modal Verbs?
e.g. may, might, must, can, could, should, shall
What are adjectives?
describing words which modify a noun
What is predicative adjective?
modifies by coming AFTER the noun
What is attributive adjective?
modified by coming BEFORE noun
What is a comparative/ superlative adjective?
e.g. happier, happiest
What is an Adverb?
modify words other than nouns (verbs)
- degree, time, manner, place, frequency
What is Morphology?
The shape of the word - what it commonly looks like e.g. adverbs and ‘ly’ ending
What type of word class are determiners?
Closed
Examples of determiners
some, any, few, one, my, your, this, these etc.
What are the three articles (under determiners)
The, A, An
