Lexicology

Word classes

Word classes are a categorisation based on how a word behaves grammatically. The word classes

studied in English Language are described on the following pages.

Nouns

Nouns are words that name places, people, things, qualities, ideas or concepts.

Pronouns

Pronouns replace nouns and noun phrases (a group of words consisting of a noun and words that

modify the noun) within a sentence. Pronouns aren’t nouns themselves; they always refer to some

other element, either stated or not, in a sentence.

Verbs

Verbs express actions, states or occurrences. Verbs can take on inflectional morphemes such as the

suffixes ‘-ed’ and ‘-ing’ to indicate past and present tense. Future tense is not marked by inflecting a

verb in English; instead, the modal auxiliary verb ‘will’ is often used to provide information about

future tense.

Auxiliary verbs

An auxiliary verb is a ‘helping’ verb – one that supports the main verb of a sentence. There are two

types of auxiliary verbs in English: primary auxiliary and modal auxiliary.

Primary auxiliary verbs

Primary auxiliary verbs are usually used to construct tenses that could not otherwise be

conveyed by inflectional morphemes on the main verb alone. There are three primary auxiliary verbs

in English: ‘be’, ‘have’ and ‘do’. Primary auxiliary verbs can also act as main verbs, but when they’re

coupled with a main verb they act as auxiliary verbs to help the main verb show expression of time,

continuity, and the completion of an action (e.g. she was writing, she is writing, she has written).

Modal auxiliary verbs

express the possibility, ability, intent, obligation or necessity of an

action occurring. They modify verbs to change their mode – the state in which they exist. There is a

fixed number of modals in English: can, could, will, would, shall, should, may, might, must, ought.

These can also take the negative form, such as ‘will not’ or ‘won’t’.

Adjectives

Adjectives are words that describe or modify nouns and pronouns, providing more information

about them. They can indicate qualities, size, age, colour, shape or other characteristics of a noun.

Adverbs

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs or entire sentences. They provide information

about elements such as time, place, manner, frequency, degree, and cause and effect.

Prepositions

Prepositions are words used before nouns, pronouns or phrases to indicate elements such as

direction, time, place, location and spatial relationships.

Coordinators

link words, phrases or clauses of equal rank. The most common coordinators are ‘and’,

‘but’, ‘or’, ‘so’ and ‘yet’.

Subordinators

introduce subordinate (dependent) clauses and link them to main clauses.

Examples include ‘because’, ‘although’, ’if’, ‘while’ and ‘since’.

Determiners

Determiners are words that are placed in front of nouns to help clarify the noun, specify quantity or

indicate possession. They include articles (‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’), demonstratives (‘this’, ‘that’), possessive

pronouns (‘my’, ‘your’) and quantifiers (‘some’, ‘many’).

Interjections

Interjections are words or phrases that express emotions and sometimes requests. They tend to be

expressive and indicate strong emotions such as sadness, surprise and joy – for example, ‘Wow!

That’s amazing!’ They can be integrated into a sentence, though are often used in a standalone manner,

separate from other words.