Nydia Paola Rodrguez 142098 (#2)

2 Words and Word Classes

2.1 The term 'word'
String of letters demarcated by spaces on both sides, or by a space on one side and a
punctuation mark on the other, even so if leaving such problematic cases aside for now and
taking a word to be a string of letters demarcated by spaces and/or punctuation marks on both
sides, the term 'word' remains ambiguous. Bloomfield said a minimum free form'.
Grammatical word forms, to some extent marked by inflections. As a lexical unit is the union
of a lexical form and a single sense. The fourth understanding of word', namely as a lexeme'.
Lexeme: a family of lexical units". From corpus linguistics, colligation associations of words
forms with particular syntactic structures; collocation associations of words forms with other
word forms and for the study of syntax that is the arrangement of word forms in a linear
sequence.
2.2 Word classes
2.2.1 Open (lexical) and closed (functional) classes
Words can be divided into two basic classes, the first are referred to as open word
classes, the second as closed word classes. Another set of corresponding terms, namely 'lexical
words' and 'function words', highlights a different aspect: words from open word classes are
often treated as being the true carrier of the meaning of a sentence, whereas words from closed
word classes are usually regarded as simply fulfilling a grammatical function. In between these
two categories we may position a third class, namely that of numerals. the class of numbers is
more restricted than other open word classes but still less restricted than the truly closed classes,
to which new words can usually not be added.
2.2.2 Descriptive parameters the example of the class 'noun'
Word classes can be described regarding semantic, distributional and formal features.
Semantic criteria probably are the most frequently used ones in pretheoretically descriptions of
word classes. The example of noun from the book is the kind of definition is often referred to
as 'notional', they are based on rather vague and pretheoretically ideas (notions) about the
characteristics of a word class and, therefore, are not entirely satisfying. In addition, notional
definitions are bound to fail with categories that do not have clear semantics. The only
statement that holds for most prepositions is that they are used to 'link' noun phrases but this,
is a distributional or functional criterion.
Formal criteria concern the morphological features that are typical of word classes. This
includes derivational as well as inflectional features. Inflectional endings are not necessarily
more reliable. Although, only nouns have plural and genitive endings these endings can be
confused with homonymous strings of letters. Overall, formal criteria like derivational and
inflectional endings are lacking in 'precision' as well as 'recall', formal criteria might be useful
to identify the word class in some cases, but in many cases, they are too unreliable.
More reliable is the final criterion, the distribution and function of word forms. Many
of the issues discussed regarding inflectional endings, can be resolved by the environment in
which a given word form occurs.
2.2.3 Main verbs
 Nydia Paola Rodrguez 142098 (#2)

Regarding formal features, regular verbs typically have five distinct forms, whereas
irregular verbs may have either. An important distinction is that between finite and non-finite
verb forms. The term 'finite' comes from Latin 'finitus' which means 'limited'. Finite verb forms
are those that carry tense distinction and number concord. The main feature as regards the
distribution of main verbs is the fact that they are the final element in the verb phrase, which
means, conversely, that they are often preceded by auxiliary verbs.
2.2.4 Adjectives and adverbs
Adjectives are usually described as words that denote qualities Similarly to nouns,
adjectives show several derivational and inflectional morphemes which in many cases betray
their status. In their attributive function adjectives serve to premodify a noun, they do not have
a 'real' meaning of their own, but mainly serve to link the subject of a clause with the
complement that denotes the quality that we want to attribute to the subject.
The final open word class we want to discuss is that of adverbs. This class is
notoriously difficult to define. two main functions of adverbs, namely as a modifier preceding
adjectives or adverbs and as a clause element in the function of an adverbial. Three functional
classes of such adverbs, as 'adjuncts', 'disjuncts' and 'conjuncts, they distinguish between
'circumstantial', 'stance', and 'linking' adverbials, respectively; the first one the adverb provides
information about the circumstances of the action described in the sentence, more specifically,
details about time, manner and place. Adverbs functioning as stance adverbials provide
information on the speaker's or writer's view on the content of the clause, regarding certainty
or doubt about the content, attitude towards the content, and style in which the content is
conveyed. And linking adverbs are used to connect clauses or sentences and even paragraphs
2.2.5 Closed word classes
Primary and modal verbs, in contrast to their lexical counterparts, fulfil a helping
function, which is why they are usually referred to as 'auxiliary' verbs. Modal verbs, help to
express modality. The class of prepositions is not easy to describe are used to convey many
different meanings, such as space, direction, manner, meaning, purpose, time, and so on. The
most general claim is that all of them express a relation between two objects. The second of
these objects is denoted by the noun phrase following the preposition, often referred to as the
'prepositional object' or 'prepositional complement'. Together, the preposition and the
prepositional object form what is called a 'prepositional phrase'.
Pronouns, as the name says, stand for a noun or, to be more precise, a noun phrase.
Therefore, they should be called pro-NPs rather than pro-nouns. Another frequent problem is
that some of the pronouns are easily confused with a group of determiners of the English
language. Determiners occur at the beginning of a noun phrase. The names of the three classes
are due to the position that determiners of one class take relative to determiners of other classes.
A subclass of central determiners, possessive and demonstrative determiners, is homonymous
with most of the pronouns of the same name.
Conjunctions, works with all kinds of phrases and even clauses. Like prepositions,
conjunctions are used to link elements. Subordinators, link elements of unequal status, more
specifically: a subordinate clause is 'inserted' into a clause on a higher level, the 'superordinate
clause'. Subordinators are also used to introduce what is called nominal clauses.