Word Classes

Question 1

What are Word classes also known as

Answer 1

parts of speech and syntactic categories

Question 2

Lexical Categories

Answer 2

Verbs, Nouns, Adjectives, Adverbs, Adpositions (on, to)

Question 3

Functional Categories

Answer 3

Auxiliaries (will), Pronouns, Determiners, Conjunctions (and), Complementizers (whether) Negation (no,not), Adpositions

Question 4

What is the difference between Lexical and Functional word classes?

Answer 4

1.Lexical: semantic content
2.Functional: grammatical information

Question 5

How to identify a noun morphologically (2)

Answer 5

1.Number: pluralization (adding an “s” or inflecting for plural)
2.Possession: ‘s

Question 6

How to identify a noun semantically? (3)

Answer 6

1.Determiners: a, an, the, this, every
2.Can be modified by adjectives
3.Negation: no, none

Question 7

How to Identify a verb Morphologically? (3)

Answer 7

1.Tense: past vs non-past
2.Aspect: action is ongoing or completed
3.Agreement: person, number, gender

Question 8

How to identify a verb syntactically? (3)

Answer 8

1. Auxiliaries: will, have, be, would, could, should, can, might, may, shall must
2. Infinitive marker: to
   Can be modified by adverbs

Question 9

How do you Morphologically identify adjectives? (4)

Answer 9

1. modify nouns
   can be inflected for comparison: -er -est
2. *but for words longer than 3 syllables you have to use the comparison more or most
3. Degree words/intensifiers: very, so, rather, too, less, more, mostly, somewhat
4. Are in the predicative or attributive position

Question 10

How to morphologically identify Adverbs

Answer 10

1. Inflection: -er
2. Can be modified by degree words: very