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Words are divided into different kinds of classes, called parts of speech, in general there are eight parts of speech: Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction, Interjection.
Word classes are formed on the basis of some criterias: notional meaning, morphological forms, and grammatical relation with other words and other larger constituents.
Word classes fall into two categories: Open Classes and Closed Classes.
Open classes readily admit new members and therefore are far and larger classes. There are four open classes: Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb.
The closed classes never allow new members. There are seven closed classes: Article, Auxiliaries, Conjunctions, Prepositions, Determiners, Pronoun, Numeral, Interjection.
Exercises
A. Answer the following questions from your own understanding.
b. What do you mean by ‘word-classes’?
c. What are the differences between open and closed classes?
d. Write the difference between a noun and a nominal phrase.
e. What are the positions of a noun in a sentence?
f. What is an abstract noun?
g. What is a collective noun?
h. See if you can locate all the pronouns in this paragraph:
No matter what your teachers may have taught you about pronouns, they don’t always have it right. If your teachers ever warned you about the evils of gambling, however, they were right about that. You don’t want someone breaking your kneecaps with his crowbar; it will hurt, the police might arrest you, and you may never forgive yourself.
i. Write two usages of participles? Write the types of participles.
j. What do you mean by finite and nonfinite verbs?
k. Define conjuncts, disjuncts and adjuncts.
l. Define post-positions.
m. Write the types of conjunctions.
n. Define interjection.
o. What is a fraction?
p. Identify Cardinal and Ordinal numerals: one, sixteen, five, tenth, forty five, second.
q. Write some multi word prepositions.
r. What are the positions of an adjective in a sentence?
s. Separate all the parts of speech from the given sentence: Huh! Today I wouldn’t like to have coffee and the dark biscuits.
