Lexicology

word classes

nouns and pronouns, verbs (auxiliaries, modals, participles) adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, determiners, interjections

nouns

The name of a person, place, thing or idea

verbs

Shows an action or state of being. A verb shows what someone or something is doing

Modal and auxiliary verbs

verbs that help other verbs to show meaning

modal verbs

a type of auxiliary verbs that express modality. Modal verbs indicate possibility, probability, ability, permission, obligation, necessity, are not subject to inflections

auxiliary verbs

indicate information such as tense, mood, voice and other grammatical aspects of action, subject to inflections,

adjectives

describes, modifies or gives more detail about a noun or pronoun

adverbs

describes, modifies a verb, an adjectives or another adverb. It tells how, where, when, how often or to what extent

determiners

are words which come at the beginning of the noun phrase. They tell us if the noun phrase is specific or general

preposition

shows the relationship of a noun or pronoun to another word. They can indicate time, place or relationship

pronouns

a pronoun is used in place of a noun or noun phrase to avoid repetition.

interjection

an interjection is a word or phrase that expresses a strong feeling or emotion. It is a short exclamation.

conjunctions

joins two words, ideas, phrases, or clauses together in a sentence and shows how they are connected

coordinating conjunctions

coordinating conjunctions connect words, phrases and clauses. Follow these conjunctions definitions and example sentences

subordinating conjunctions

provides a necessary transition between the two ideas in the sentence reducing the importance of one clause so that a reader understands which of the two ideas is more important

Function Words

words that exist to explain or create grammatical or structural relationships into which the content words may fit (closed class)

Content Words

nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are content parts of speech, open class

collocations

words with phrases so closely associated with one another that when we hear one we almost automatically provide the other

neologism

a newly coined word expression or usage the use of a new word or the use of an existing word but given a new meaning

borrowing

is the process by which a word from one language is adapted for use in another

commonisations

involves the development of common, everyday words from words that began life as proper nouns (people, places, brands) also referred to as eponyms

Archaism

words that are no longer used in everyday life. They may be preserved in special contexts but are no longer common

nominalisation

when you turn a verb adjective or another noun into an abstract noun usually via suffixation eg lead to leadership equal to equality or race to racism

articles

denote definiteness or whether you are talking about a specific item or a non-specific item. a/an are indefinite articles and ‘the’ is a definite article.

demonstrative determiners

indicate or demonstrate which specific item you are talking about usually by a measure of proximity eg this, these, that, those (be careful as can also be used as pronouns) must be before a noun to be a determiner

quantifier (determiners)

determiners which indicate a number or amount include exact numbers like one, six etc and words like some, many, any etc can be used to change level of precision.

obsolescence

the process by which a language ceases to be actively used and is abandoned by its native speakers in favour of another language/other languages.