WORD CLASSES

I. WORD- CLASSIFICATION BASED

ON TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR
II. WORD CLASSIFICATION BASED
ON STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS
 I. WORD-CLASSIFICATION
BASED ON TRADITIONAL
GRAMMAR
Based on traditional grammar, words are classified
into ten parts of speech (Soekemi; 1995:44).
1) Nouns: tree, boy, duck, etc.
2) Verbs: write, think, will, etc.
3) Adjectives: black, tall, dull, etc.
4) Adverbs: hard, slowly, very, etc.
5) Pronouns: he, they, you, etc.
6) Numbers: one, two, three, etc.
7) Prepositions: from, for, inside, etc.
8) Conjunctions: and, because, since, etc.
9) Articles: a/an, the
10) Interjections: oh, alas, bravo, etc,
 WORD-CLASSIFICATION
BASED ON STRUCTURAL
LINGUISTICS
WORDS

I. II.
CONTENT FUNCTION
WORDS WORDS
 CONTENT WORDS
 Content words are the words which
carry lexical meaning in
themselves, such as: house, read,
dangerous, fast, etc.
 There are four types of content
words:
1) Nouns: Grass, child, book, etc.
2) Verbs: read, go, drink, bring, etc.
3) Adjectives: high, slow, bright, etc.
4) Adverbs: quickly, skillfully, hard,
etc.
 FUNCTION WORDS
 Function words are the words which have little
or no lexical meaning but serve chiefly to
indicate grammatical relationship.
 There are nine types of function words
(Soekemi; 1995:45):
1) Noun determiners are the words that regularly
occur before nouns: a/an, the, my, this, many,
etc.
2) Auxiliaries or helping verbs: be, do, have, must,
will, etc.
3) Qualifiers are words that qualify adjectives and
adverbs limiting or intensifying their meaning:
very, quite, somewhat, most, etc.
 Function word
4) Prepositions which can be classified into:
a. simple: in, at, with, after, before, etc.
b. compound: due to, together with, back of, etc.
c. Phrasal: by means of, in front of, on account
of, etc.
5) Co-ordinators are words which can join two
grammatically parallel structures: and, but, or
 FUNCTION WORDS
6) Interrogators which can be divided into:
a. Simple interrogators: when, why, how, why
b. Interrogative pronoun: who, which, that, what,
whatsoever.
7) Includers: who, because, although, etc.
8) Sentence linkers are words used to link one
sentence to another: consequently, however, in
fact, at least, on the other hand
 FUNCTION WORDS
9) Miscellaneous types which can
be divided into:
a) Attention claimers: hey, oh
b) Attention signals: yes, yea, uh-
huh.
c) Responses: yes, no, maybe, ok
d) Infinitive markers: to
e) Negator: not
f) Hesitators: well, uh-h, um-m
 Exercises
1) There are four parts of content words.
What are they? Give five examples of
each!
2) There are nine types of function words.
What are they? Give three examples of
each!
3) What is the function of the noun
determiners?
4) What is the function of sentence linkers
5) What is the function of negators?
THANK YOU