The Words of English: Nur Intan Asmara 1503337

THE WORDS OF
ENGLISH
NUR INTAN ASMARA
1503337
The meaning of lexical categories

Structural criteria
Major categories
The meaning of lexical categories
We distinguish eight categories

for English:
-
VERBS (including AUXILIARIES)

NOUNS (including PRONOUNS)
ADJECTIVES
ADVERBS
PREPOSITIONS
DETERMINERS
CONJUNCTIONS
INTERJECTIONS
,
n
o
s
r
e
p
a
f
o
me
a
n
e
h
t
s
i
n
u
a no
;
g
in
h
t
r
o
e
c
pla
d;
r
o
w
g
n
i
o
d
a verb is a
an
d
r
o
w
g
in
ib
r
c
s
e
adjective is a d
My love of linguistics
N
Although not a person,

place or things
I love linguistics
V
Although not an action
They gulched and guttled. Mephitically alliaceous

ventripotent fopdoodles and gotchy slubberdegullions, she
mussitated. She fibulated, piddling moliminously at the
jejune and unsaporous grots tofore her. Fackins! Pabulous
comessations were an ephialtes for the deipnetic. It was a
niminy gulosity, she wiste it, but they begat swilk an
increment in her recrement, a cupidity that was ineluctableit was the flurch of post-jentacular flampoints and licious
lozens. Thilke trogalions she yissed avidulously. She could
but gorm esuriently at the ashet. She fimbled her falbala
aganacticiously.
1. What type of fopdoodles are they?
2. How did she yiss?
3. What did she fimble?
Structural criteria
Shape ( i.e. their morphology )
Grammatical
behaviour
Position in the sentence ( i.e. their

syntax )
MORPHOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR
(relating to the form of words)
Words of the same class will typically show the same
morphological possibilities, in other words, theyll take
the same sort of affixes
gulched - the ed ending = verb ( ending s/es, -ed, -ing)
gulcher - adding -er = noun
gotchy/ gotchier/ gotchiest - the y ending/ the ier and est =
adjectives
gotchily - the -ly ending = adverb
gotchiness - the ness ending = noun
SYNTACTIC BEHAVIOUR ( relating to

distribution)
Word s of the same class (like food, dinner, pastries, flampoint,
slubberdegullions and flurch) will fill the same basic slots in the
recurrent patterns of a language.
PHRASES
Groups of words which have some sort of grammatical relationship with one
another.
HEAD
These phrases are always named after the word which is the most important in the
string.
Phrasal categories:
-
noun phrases
verb phrases
adjective phrases
adverb phrases
Lexical categories:
- noun phrases
NP
- verb phrases
VP
- adjective phrases
AP
- adverb phrases
MAJOR CATEGORIES
English Lexical Categories fall into two main

groups:
Major classes (lexical)
nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
Minor categories (grammatical)
Prepositions, determiners, and conjunction
NOUN
- Refers to object (both physical objects and abstractions) and people

- Some properties which are associated with nouns are number, gender
and case
- It is very common for language to distinguish noun by number
MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES
The singular is unmarked (i.e. coincides with the noun stem)
The plural is expressed by a suffix (e)s. (book-books)

There are some irregularities in number marking :
- some nouns change their stem vowel (man-men)
- add the suffix en ( ox- oxen)
- one even does both (brother- brethren)
- identical singular and plural forms (sheep, fish)
The most frequent noun-forming suffixes are: the
ness, -ity, -er, -ee, ation, -ment
Sub-classes of nouns
Common nouns:
- The most typical noun ( word, school, fascination, etc)
- Can be subdivided into Count and non count noun
Proper nouns:
- Name of things like person, place and
organizations (use capital letter)
Collective nouns:
- Both a plural ang singular form
Pronoun
Several different sub-classes of pronoun:
- Personal pronouns (I, you, them, him, etc. )
- Indefinite pronoun (some-, any-, every- and no-with thing,
-one and body)
- Reflexive pronoun (-self or selves)
- Reciprocal pronoun (each other and one another)
- Possessive pronoun (my-mine, your-yours, his-his, etc.)
- Demonstrative pronouns (this-these, that-those)
- Interrogative pronouns (who-subject case, whom-object
Verbs
Lexical/ main verbs

Auxiliary verbs
Adjective
- Semantic
Feature
- Morphological Feature
- Syntactic Behaviour
Semantic Features
Quality
Nice
Wise
Smart
States
Bigger
Thinner
Smarter
Adjective
Morphological Features
a. Naturally Gradable Adjectives
Normal
Form
Modification
Form
Suppletive
Form
Free- standing
Form
Funny
Old
Bad
Beautiful
Comparative
Funnier
Elder/ Older
Worse
More
beautiful
Superlative
Funniest
Eldest/ Oldest
Worst
Most
beautiful
Absolute
Syllable
One or two syllable
Two or Threesyllable
b. Unnaturally gradable Adjectives do not take

degree of modification
Married, pregnant, dead..
*most pregnant?
*more dead? deader?
c. Some of the adjectives have derivational endings

Noun Adjective
-ful
Hopeful , beautiful
-less
Homeless
-y
Hairy
-al
Manual
Verb Adjective
-able
Doable
-ible
Legible
Syntactic Behaviour
Position :
Attributively
The beautiful girl

1st
2nd
Predicatively
The girl is beautiful

1st
2nd
Exception: Asleep, Awake, Main, Utter

#The asleep baby
Asleep
Awake
Not Attributive
The baby is asleep

# The awake baby
The baby is awake
#The point is main
Main
Not Predicative
Utter
The main point

#The chaos was utter
The utter chaos
Modifiers of Adjective
Intensifier (very, so, too) modify:

Gradable adjective
Too good
Non-gradable adjective
Very pregnant
Converted other category into adjective
So yesterday
Dependent that follow adjective complete the

meaning of the adjective
So bad that it sucks you in..
Adjective can follow the noun within the noun

Ever done something stupid in the name of love?
Few adjectives always follow the noun

money due
the information available
Adverb
- Semantic
Feature
- Morphological Feature
- Syntactic Behaviour
Semantic Feature
Adverbs express information like:
time, manner, place, frequency etc.
Morphological Features
Gradable
Inflectional (-er, -est)
free standing form
Derivational
Adjective Adverb
soon, sooner, soonest
more quickly..
-ly
Slowly, freshly
Syntactic Behaviour
Adding information to the verb
Everyone teases him cruelly and mercilessly
HOW
They immediately hit him

TIME
Express attitude
Unfortunately, we could not come
Emphatic
Thats entirely the point
Modify the meaning of adjective
Notoriously family value-obsessed
Intensify the interpretation

Modify adverb
Exception:
Adverb with connective role cannot take
modifiers at all
Mat Stone, however, thinks
General Tests of determining category

membership
Substitution Test
Co-ordination Test
Morphological Character
The resulting escapade was silly

the resulting escapade was rubbish
Can they take comparative and superlative
endings? (sillier: yes, rubbisher: no)
Can they take intensifiying expression?
( Very silly: yes, very rubbish: no)
Can they co-ordinated with another adjective?

The resulting escapade was silly and puerile
*the resulting escapade was rubbish and puerile
The Minor Categories

Less meaning
Not easily receptive to new member
Semantic Feature
Shows relationship between things and event.
Put the apple on the table
to : indicates abstract distance
Their warped sense of humor to the attention
of : relation between two noun, possession
They mimicked Terrys style of animation
by : has abstract role
The Stans gay dog is played by no less a luminary than ER
Morphological Feature
Simple
( to, of, with, by )
Complex
(in front of, on top of.)
Do not allow inflectional & derivational
Syntactic Behaviour
Preposition + Noun Phrase = Prepositional Phrase
Conjunctions
Co-ordinators, link :
noun + noun, phrase + phrase, clause + clause
(but, and, or, eitheror, not onlybut also)
Subordinator, link:
a clause to another element
(after, as, because, if, that, until and while)
Determiners
a, an, the
Function within noun phrase
Phrasal Categories and Their Structure
Specifier
Modifier
Complement

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THE WORDS OF

The meaning of lexical categories

The meaning of lexical categories

We distinguish eight categories

VERBS (including AUXILIARIES)

Although not a person,

Although not an action

They gulched and guttled. Mephitically alliaceous

Shape ( i.e. their morphology )

Position in the sentence ( i.e. their

SYNTACTIC BEHAVIOUR ( relating to

English Lexical Categories fall into two main

- Refers to object (both physical objects and abstractions) and people

The singular is unmarked (i.e. coincides with the noun stem)

The plural is expressed by a suffix (e)s. (book-books)

Lexical/ main verbs

One or two syllable

b. Unnaturally gradable Adjectives do not take

c. Some of the adjectives have derivational endings

The beautiful girl

The girl is beautiful

Exception: Asleep, Awake, Main, Utter

The baby is asleep

The main point

Intensifier (very, so, too) modify:

Dependent that follow adjective complete the

Adjective can follow the noun within the noun

Few adjectives always follow the noun

soon, sooner, soonest

They immediately hit him

Intensify the interpretation

General Tests of determining category

The resulting escapade was silly

Can they co-ordinated with another adjective?

The Minor Categories

Phrasal Categories and Their Structure

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