Linguistics revision notes Flashcards
What are word classes? Give examples of some? Distinguish the differences between open and closed word classes?
So words can be grouped into categories based on shared properties. So properties that they have in common, which characteristics they have that are the same. And we call these different categories ‘word classes’. But you might also see them called ‘grammatical categories’ or ‘parts of speech’. E.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, determiners. We actually group words into these categories/ classes, partly based on their meaning and the function that they have - so what meaning are they giving out, or putting into the utterance. There’s outliers/fuzzy boundaries between word classes. So these are not absolute categories. E.g. What about the word ‘discussion’? That is a noun, we can talk about “a discussion” - it’s a thing. But when we think about the meaning of it, doesn’t that also refer to a process? - it’s the process of discussing something. But we also need to think about grammatical properties, their morphosyntactic- grammar includes both morphology and syntax - so, how we put the words together and the little endings, affixes, endings and possibly affixes at the beginning of the word that we put on them. So we can also consider these properties to determine what world-class a word should go into and we can look at what we call their distribution - So where they can be used in sentences and in relation to other words, what words can they come after, what words can they come before? Also which affixes they can take. So, for example, can they take the plural morpheme at the end, the ‘-s’ added on - Well, in English, it’s the ‘-s’. Can they take that or not? Because nouns can take that; others word classes can’t. To determine the word class= need to look at word in a context/what it’s doing in the sentence and where it occurs in language. Open class words- e.g nouns, verbs as well, adjectives and adverbs (there are many, members, constantly adding new items to those categories, easier for a new word to enter or same word but different meaning). Closed class e.g articles (technically subclass of a closed class, subgroup of determiners in English, there are only three articles a/an/the, tend to have a smaller, fixed number of members and they remain unchanged for a long time, they don’t take on new words very quickly at all) close word classes include pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, and prepositions. ‘Brexit’ - a relatively new word, and it’s a noun means ‘Britain’s exit’ -it’s a kind of contraction of those two words. Language is dynamic, It never stays the same. we are changing it all the time.
What are nouns? Explain meaning and grammatical properties. Explain subtypes. Which on easier for children and people with aphasia and why? What are the checks for nouns and their exceptions.
Nouns are very often known as naming words because they name things. In terms of their meaning= refer to a person, place or thing e.g. ‘Manchester’, ‘cushion’, ‘Bruiser’. should also look at their grammatical properties e.g. like distribution where they can be used in sentences and in relation to other words, where they distribute in language. E.g. affixation - so which affixes can take, can they take the plural ending/suffix.
nouns can be put into various different subtypes: concrete versus abstract nouns, proper nouns versus common nouns, count versus non-count or mass nouns.
A concrete noun is basically something that you can experience through one or more of your senses - so you can see it maybe, you can hear it, you can experience it by touching it, through smell, or maybe you can taste it. These are things that are present in our physical environment, or they may not be present when you’re talking about them “cup” I can lift it up, I can feel it, I can see it. But if they are present, you can experience them through one of your senses / experience them from our environment which makes it easier to map the word to what we’re seeing/experiencing hence easier for kids and people with lang disorder e.g. aphasia to learn Whereas an abstract noun cannot be experienced in this way e.g. ‘love’, ‘bravery’, ‘knowledge’, ‘friendship’.
Proper nouns in writing have capital letters, so they’re quite easy to identify usually. And they relate to names of places, people, or brands.It’s an actual particular name for these things e.g.’Manchester’ is a specific place. ‘Sweden’, again, a specific country. ‘Andy Burnham’, the Mayor of Manchester, is a specific person. ‘Cadbury’s’ - a specific brand. So it’s the actual names, proper names of things, and you might see it called ‘proper names’, as well as ‘proper nouns’. Whereas common nouns are basically all the others e.g. ‘book’, ‘pen’. That’s just the common name, common term for them.
Count nouns are often called countable nouns and means that the thing is countable. Whatever they are referring to, it is a countable thing. It can be singular or It can be plural. So it can be modified by numbers e.g. we can say a number to change how many we’re talking about. E.g’one dog’, ‘many dogs’, ‘three dogs’. They are countable things, separate entities. Whereas non-count nouns are not countable. So they’re called uncountable nouns/ mass nouns, because the thing often occurs in a kind of mass. Can’t separate into clearly divisible entities e.g. ‘rubbish’ - So a load of rubbish is not countable. It’s one sort of mass of things. ‘Water’. BUT “Can I have two waters, please?” So in that sense, that would be countable. It’s a grey area, this one. But really what you’re saying there is “two glasses of water”. If we’re talking about water that’s not really contained in glasses or cups and anything, that’s not really countable. So it’s a big mass of something.
Now let’s think about other properties. Is it a noun? We can decide this by carrying out particular checks. So one that we can do - and these are very, you know - everything, I think, with linguistics and language, we can talk about general- generalisations and general patterns, but there’s always some exceptions. So be aware of that.
Firstly, can we add ‘the’ or ‘some’ before it? And, by that I mean, can we do that without adding anything after the noun and it still makes sense? So we can say “the water”, but we can’t say “the friendly” and not add anything after that. We could say “the friendly man” or whatever, but that’s adding something again. So ‘friendly’ is not a noun. It’s actually an adjective.
second check: can we add this plural morpheme at the end, a ‘-s’ in English? So for example, ‘shoes’, we can do that with. ‘Shoe’ - we know that’s a noun. We turn it into- it can take the plural morpheme. But ‘quickly’, we can’t really do that. We can’t say ‘quicklys’/’quicklies’. Yeah, doesn’t work. So ‘quickly’ is not a noun.
Third check: can we add ‘apostrophes or the s plus the apostrophe after it, at the end of the word to signify possession of something. So if I’m saying, I don’t know, “Charlie’s book”, “Charlie’s” - it belongs to “Charlie” and we’d need an apostrophe before the ‘s’. Or if I’m saying “the students’ books”, and we’re talking about more than one student, it would need the ‘s’ plus the apostrophe - after the ‘s’ if it’s more than one person that it belongs to. So can we do that? We can say “John’s book”. So we know that ‘John’ is a noun, but we can’t say “interesting’s book”. So we know that ‘interesting’ is very likely not a noun. Now these are the three main checks we can do to check if it’s a noun, but as I said, there’s always, almost always an exception or, well, several exceptions I think in this case.
So firstly, the rule about “Can we add the or some before it?” - that doesn’t work for proper nouns. So remember that means names of things. Specific names. So we can’t say “the Sweden”. there’s an exception with some countries, because they do- “the United Kingdom”. Just another exception to mention: “Can we add the plural ‘s’ at the end?” - This doesn’t typically happen for mass nouns, because they’re not countable, so we don’t distinguish whether they’re plural or not. So we wouldn’t say “airs” or “rubbishes” typically.
