LEXICOLOGY

WORD CLASS

Nouns

gives the name of a person, place, thing, quality or action

Pronouns

substitute for nouns within a sentence, can be personal, demonstrative, indefinite, possessive, relative, reciprocal, absolute possessive and reflexive

Verbs

an action, state or occurrence

Auxiliary verbs

that modify and change some aspect of the main verb. Used to create the range of tenses found in English, negatives and to form questions

‘to be’, ‘to have’, ‘to do’

Modal verbs

carry information about ability, permission, likelihood and obligation.

can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must

Adjectives

Modify nouns

Adverbs

Modify verbs, adjectives, adverbs

Prepositions

function words that show the relationship between nouns (or pronouns) and other words in a sentence)

Coordinating conjunctions

links words, phrases and clauses together. FANBOYS

For, and, nor, but, or, yet, so

Subordinate conjunctions

only join clauses together

3 types:

• Causational: ’because,’ ‘since’

• Conditional: ‘if..then’,’unless’

• Comparative: ‘while,’ ‘whereas’

Determiners

introduce noun phrases and functions as modifiers:

• Indefinite articles (a, an)

• definite articles (the)

• possessive (my, your, our, their, his, her)

• demonstrative (this, that)

• indefinite determiners (each, all, some)

• cardinal (one, two)

• ordinals (first, second)

Interjections

Expresses strong emotions. Followed by an exclamation point or a comma depending on the strength of emotion.

e.g Wow!, Yuck!, Yes, Holy cow!

Function words

perform some kind of grammatical role, carrying little meaning.

Auxiliary verbs, modal verbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, determiners and interjections

content words

Carry most of the content of a sentence

Nouns, verbs (not auxiliaries), adjectives, adverbs

WORD FORMATION PROCESSESS

Neologism

New words for a new purpose (content words not function words)

Borrowings

Borrowing words from other languages and incorporating them into its lexicon

Algebra, alcohol (arabic)

Commonisation

Development of common, everyday words from proper nouns

Thermos, google, band aid

Nominalisation

When words (usually verbs or adjectives) are changes into nouns

Happiness from happy