Week 2 Flashcards
What are word classes used for?
Dictates where words can be placed in sentences
Each have different roles and rules
However, some nouns are nouns (relevant for al) but some aren’t. e.g. in the sentence ‘the assassination of a president is a punishable offence’, the doing word is not assassination, it is, is
Learning evidence to classify speech
Why are word classes important for SP to understand?
- Important when working with people who may violate the rules when working with word classes
- Speech pathologists need to understand the role of word classes in sentence structure to help individuals who can not
What are Content words and what do they do?
Noun (n), verb (v), adjective (adj), adverb (adv)
Carry the meaning of language
What are function words and what do they do?
Pronoun (pn), preposition (prep), determiner (det), conjunctions: subordinating conjunction (sc), coordinating conjunction (cc)
Play a role in grammar
What evidence do we need for word classification?
Words can be classified by taking cues from the context as well as searching for evidence
We need a process to identify the class of a word as words changes classes and words come and go from languages all the time
What is the process for word classification?
Context cues: using the context in which the word is used for form a hypothesis
- Words come in and out of language
- Words change depending on context e.g. drink can be used as a verb and a noun
- Take cues from a context and use it in a sentence
Testing evidence: We test our hypotheses using evidence or heuristics (e.g. rule of thumb)
Test hypothesis: we learn from our surroundings
What is the testing criteria for word classes?
Distributional evidence: Common linguistic patterns for the word we are trying to classify.
- This information helps us identify common sequences that occur in English. e.g. a word that occurs at the end of a sentence and is preceded by the or a will be a noun
- We can think of distributional evidence as a type of pattern identification
- It provides us with heuristics for word classes
- Based on context or distribution of a word In a sentence
- Type of pattern, rules of thumb of words in that word class
Heuristics: Refers to rules of thumb
- To identity word classes, we start by forming a hypothesis and then use heuristics or distributional evidence to test
Tests for word classes:
- To identify word classes we start by forming a hypothesis, and then use heuristics or distributional evidence to test whether our hypothesis is confirmed
What is a determiner? When and why are they used?
(aay, its my OT, tttt)
- Used to modify nouns
- Typically proceed a common noun
Common words in this class:
- The words: the, a, an, your, its, our and there are always determiners and my is also nearly always a determiner
- Other common determiners include: this, these, that, those (also called demonstratives), your, his, her, its, our (also called possessive pronouns)
Test sentence:
- e.g. I want ‘this’ book, ‘an’ agent brought ‘this’ house
- Some can belong to other words classes such as ‘his’ or ‘her’ as they can be pronouns and so can this, these, that
With the sentence ‘I want this book’, we hypothesize on what we think it could be (determiner), then we test it by using heuristics or distributional evidence (that it precedes a common noun) and then test it against ‘I like this book’
What are prepositions and what are they used for?
(ffoott aaiu)
Distributional evidence:
- Used to modify nouns
- Typically proceed a det+noun phrases e.g. the noun, a man
- Often indicate relationships between other words in a sentence, with the majority used to express spatial or temporal relations
Common words in this class:
- Along, for, from, in, on, over, through, to and under
Test sentence:
- I saw him…..that ad
e.g. we drove ‘from’ downtown Adelaide ‘to’ the Adelaide Hills ‘in’ a van
What are Nouns? What are they used for?
- Plural/s: In English, nouns are classified by the fact that when they refer to anything they can be counted (e.g. 1 boy, 2 boys) or a concrete, abstract thing/object
- Suffix-ist: The presence of the suffix- ist often signifies a noun (e.g. the speech pathologist saw a client)
- The suffix-‘s (apostrophe - s): Within a meaning of ‘belonging to’ (e.g. the clinic was the speech pathologists favorite workplace’)
- The and a almost always signify a noun (e.g. the clinic)
- The presence of preceding prepositions, as well as adjectives (e.g. a cold drink)
- If the very last word in a sentence is immediately preceded by a determiner (e.g. the archaeologists found a well)
- The names of people and places are nouns (in fact, proper nouns) (e.g. frank is from France)
Test sentence:
Ill tell you about my……
What are Pronouns? What are they used for?
Distributional evidence:
- Used to substitute a determiner + noun (e.g. the cat, the lady)
- Refers to the same entity as a noun that has been mentioned earlier
Common words in this class:
- Personal pronouns: a way of referring to people other than by name e.g. I, me, you, he, she, it, him, her, we, us, they, them
- Reflexive pronouns: Refer to the same entity mentioned earlier e.g. myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves - Possessive pronouns: When a pronoun substitutes for a possessive noun e.g. mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs - Interrogative pronouns: Occurs in a question forms e.g. who was that?, who, whom, whose, which, what - Relative pronouns: Not necessarily used in question form e.g. who, whom, whose, which, that - Demonstrative pronouns: point out specific people or things e.g. this, that, these, those - Indefinite pronouns: refer to an unspecified object e.g. non one, someone, anyone, everyone, nobody, somebody, anything
Possessives: refer to words that can be both determiners and pronouns e.g. his, her, your, its, our, their, my
What is an Adjective? What are they used for?
Distributional evidence:
- Used to describe or modify nouns
- The suffix er (but only when it signals the meaning more e.g. louder noise)
- Adjectives can occur between a determiner and a noun (e.g. the cold drink)
- An adjective can be modified by adverbs
- A nouns can be modified by a sequence of adjectives (e.g. she was wearing a pretty, pink, polka dress)
Test sentence:
- That robot is very………
The dancer is tall, the tall dancer won the prize (tall)
What is a Verb? What are they used for?
- All sentences contain verbs
- Action or doing words
- Can be problematic: walk can be a verb or a noun depending on the other words in a sentence.
- Need to unlearn that verbs are doing words as they change depending on the sentence structure/ other words used
Two types: Full and Auxiliary
What are full verbs? What are they used for?
Distributional evidence:
- Common suffixes: ify, ise, ize,s. e.g. He fears (v) spiders, he has many fears (n) - preceded by pronouns or by groups of words that can be replaced by pronouns (which we call noun phrases) e.g. they start (v) on Monday - Verbs are not directly preceded by determiners e.g. the start of term is Monday - marked to indicate past tense, often though not always with -ed suffix (e.g. walked, jumped, mixed)
Example:
Seems, celebrate, criticize, explained, became, change
What are auxiliary verbs? What are they used for?
- They have arrived
Distributional evidence:- Can be considered helping verbs, expresses tense, mood or voice
- If you can identify another word in the phrase that is acting as a full verb, additional verb will be by an auxiliary
- If, on the other hand, there is no other candidate for a full verb, then the verb is most likely a full verb. e.g. they have arrived, she is crying, she is sad
Common words in this class:
Primary Auxiliary: Be (am, is, are, was, were, been, being) Have (have, has, had, having)
Dummy Auxiliary: Do (do, does, did, doing)
Modal Auxiliary: express permission/prediction (can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must)
What is a Copula Verb? What are they used for?
Distributional evidence:
- Refers to the verb to be (am, are, is, was, were, been, being)
- When a form of the verb to be being used as a full verb it is referred to as a copula
- There are also several other copular verbs including appear, seem and become
- Contractible copula refers to the copula verb (is, am, are) used in contracted form such as I’m sorry, they’re here
- e.g. I am happy (am), I am sitting (am)
- Can be full or auxiliary
Example:
- Fan, working, have been, share, share, is an, should have
What is an Adverb? What are they used for?
- Adverbs modify verbs and adjectives and adverbs
Distributional evidence:- Describe (or modify) verbs, adjectives or other adverbs
- Suffixation- ly usually indicates an adverb (e.g. slowly , beautifully) when it is added to an adjective ( slow , beautiful ).
- Adverbs can be intensifiers (or adverbs of degree)- words such as very, extremely, rather, quiet.
- Adverbs can modify verbs in multiple ways, such as by time, place, manner.
- She left early (adverb of time)
- She lives here (adverb of place)
- She sings beautifully (adverb of manner).
Common words in this class:
- more, most, less, least, not, never, very, quite, now, then, often, sometimes,always, here, there, fast, slow, loud
- e.g. Jake eats loudly, tan ran fast, she chose the less hard task
Examples:
Immediately, quickly, gently, exactly
What is a conjunction? What are they used for?
- Conjunctions are used to join linguistic elements of a sentence together.
- There are two kinds of conjunctions: coordinating and subordinating .
Coordinating Conjunctions (cc): - Used to join two linguistic units of the same kind
- The most common coordinating conjunctions are, and, but, or.
- Correlating conjunctions are cc’s that come in pairs, e.g. either/or , neither/nor , not only/but (also), not just/but (also)
Subordinating Conjunctions (sc): - Used to signal that one grammatical structure (phrases) is subordinate to the other.
- The most common coordinating conjunctions are because, so
- I love chocolates and cherries (two nouns)
- He proceeded slowly and steadily. (two adverbs)
- It was cloudy but hot. (two adjectives)
- He was neither poor nor honest (correlating)
The dog was bathed because it had rolled in the dirt
- There are two kinds of conjunctions: coordinating and subordinating .
How is sometimes an adverb?
An adverb monitors a verb so in the sentence ‘I go there sometimes’ it modifies the verb ‘go’
Why is it useful to classify words?
- Identify if they have any issues with specific types of words and analyze speech to see what is wrong
How do we classify words: Develop hypothesis and test it using evidence, use context clues (distribution, tests) (umbrella term for heuristics, rule of thumb to figure out what class it is in), where it is in a sentence and what it is surrounded by, suffixation (suffixes of words, and if there is one that usually comes with a word class e.g. quickly)
What is the differences between subordinating and coordinating conjunctions?
CC: Join two or more independent clauses of equal importance e.g. and, but, or, nor, for
SC: Connect an independent clause to a dependent clause e.g. although, because, if, since, unless
