You should have a detailed understanding of word classes. Note down any information you aren't familiar with.
The term word class refers to the category a word fits into. Words are categorised partially according to their semantic properties, and partially according to their 'behaviour' - what functions they can perform, changes they can undergo, and places they can occupy within sentences.
There are EIGHT word classes into which words can be placed. These are: NOUN, VERB, ADJECTIVE, ADVERB, PRONOUN, PREPOSITION, CONJUNCTION and DETERMINER.
You will find below a BASIC guide to the eight word classes: this will be of use if you have difficulty differentiating between one class and another. To get the higher grades (even at AS), however, you need to know more than this, and need to be especially secure and detailed on verbs.
NOUNS (N)
Nouns are words which are the name of a person, place or thing. Nouns sometimes modify or limit (describe)other nouns. There are four types of noun:
- Proper nouns: Names of people or places - begin with capital letters.
- Common nouns: everyday things such as beer, chair, book.
- Collective nouns: singular words expressing plural concepts, such as team, gaggle, herd.
- Abstract nouns: words for intangible 'things' and concepts, such as love, pride, guilt.
Nouns may change their form if they are made plural. Ways they change include:
- adding '-s': bird - birds
- adding '-es': box - boxes
- adding '-en': ox - oxen
- changing the ending to 'i': nucleus - nuclei
- changing a vowel: goose - geese
- no change at all: sheep - sheep, fish - fish.
To test a word to see if it is a noun, put the word into the following sentence (it works most of the time, but is not infallible):
I waited for ________ to become fashionable.
You could also see if you can put one of 'a', 'an', 'the' or 'some' before the word (if this seems to make sense, it is probably a noun).
VERBS (V)
Verbs express an action or state of being. They are words like 'go', 'eat', 'possess', 'delve', etc.
In their 'unchanged' form (the infinitive), they are preceded by 'to': 'to go', 'to eat', 'to possess', 'to delve' (this will be horribly familiar to anyone who ever studied modern languages...).
Verbs, particularly common ones, change according to tense, person, and number:
- TENSE means that the verb 'to go', changes from 'I go' to 'I went' when the tense changes from present to past.
- PERSON means it also changes from 'you go' to 'she goes' when changed from the second to the third person.
- NUMBER means it changes from 'he goes' to 'they go' when the number changes from singular to plural.
In many languages, verbs change (by vowel change, addition of a prefix/suffix etc.) when the tense changes. This sometimes happens in English, but is also done by using primary auxiliary verbs (AuxV) (parts of the verbs to be or to have), modal auxiliaries (ModAux) (words like 'can', 'will', 'should') and forms of 'do' or 'did' (known as the 'dummy auxiliary but treated as a primary auxiliary), which are placed before the main verb (MV). So the verb 'to sit' changes according to tense to give the forms: sit, am sitting, do sit, sat, was sitting, did sit, have sat, had been sitting, would have sat, should have been sitting, shall sit, shall have sat, etc.
English has specific constructions for expressing present and past tenses, but uses a number of means to express ideas of future time and of condition. It is a good idea to be able to distinguish different tenses:
- Simple Present - I write (she writes)
- Simple Past - I wrote
- Present Progressive - I am writing
- Past Progressive - I was writing
- Present Perfective - I have written
- Past Perfective - I had written
Verbs can also be categorised, according to their meaning, as dynamic or stative: dynamic verbs express 'real' actions - generally one can see these being done, and could draw a picture of them - such as 'to run', 'to scream' etc; stative verbs are those which express actions which are largely hidden and could not easily be drawn, such as 'to think', 'to believe'.
Further distinctions between verbs can be made by considering whether or not a verb is transitive or intransitive - whether it uses an object or not. For example, 'to brush' is transitive since it requires an object (we cannot say 'I brushed' unless a listener already knows what has been brushed), whereas 'to sleep' is intransitive because it cannot use an object (we can say 'I slept', but not 'I slept the bed').
To test a word to see if it is a verb, try making it present tense and past tense. If the word changes and can change tense, it is a verb.
ADJECTIVES (Aj)
Adjectives modify nouns (or pronouns). They can be changed to comparatives by addition of '-er':
hot - hotter
or to superlatives by addition of '-est':
hot - hottest
To test for adjectives, see if the word can be modified by 'very'. Again, this generally works but is not infallible. Remember, adjectives can ONLY modify nouns.
ADVERBS (Av)
Adverbs are an odd class of word used as a dumping-ground for words which don't fit anywhere else. They are used to modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs, and are generally formed by adding 'ly' onto adjectives:
sad+ly = sadly
legal+ly = legally
safe+ly = safely
There are four types of adverb:
- time - e.g. 'soon'. Identifying question = 'when?'
- place - e.g. 'here'. Identifying question = 'where?'
- manner - e.g. 'quickly'. Identifying question = 'how?'
- degree - e.g. 'entirely'.
To test a word to see if it is an adverb, remember that adverbs can also usually be modified by 'very', but they CANNOT modify nouns - they modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs.
PRONOUNS (Pn)
Pronouns are words which stand for nouns, noun phrases, or an aspect of a situation. There are several types of pronoun:
personal - I, her, them
possessive - my, hers, theirs
reflexive - himself, yourself
relative - which, who, that
demonstrative - this, that
The most obvious feature of personal pronouns is that they change according to PERSON. Pronouns are said to be either first person (referring to the speaker/writer, e.g. 'I', 'we', 'mine', 'our', 'us'), second person (referring to someone being directly addressed by the speaker/writer, e.g. 'you', 'yourself', 'yours') or third person (referring to someone or some people/things absent from the conversation, e.g. 'he', 'her', 'its', 'they', 'themselves').
Personal pronouns can also change according to NUMBER (so 'I' becomes 'we' in the plural, and 'she' becomes 'they'), CASE (so 'he' can be used as a subject whereas 'him' is an object and 'his' possessive) and GENDER (most pronouns are non-gender specific, but the third-person singular pronouns 'he' and 'she' - and all their variants in case - are always male and female in reference respectively).
PREPOSITIONS (P)
Prepositions show the relationship between things or people (usually spatial relationships):
She was in a stupor under the table at the far side of the room
Some prepositions are made up of more than one word, e.g. 'in front of'.
'Of' is also a preposition.
CONJUNCTIONS (conj)
Conjunctions join single words, phrases or sentences. There are two types of conjunction:
- co-ordinating - e.g. 'and' 'or' 'but'- a linking word.
- subordinating - e.g. 'so', 'after', 'because' - show some relationship between words or phrases, can show time, place, reason or condition:
It rained so I went home
DETERMINERS (det)
Determiners express the definiteness and number of nouns and noun phrases. They include words such as the, a, some, those, each, that, which. They enable us to tell the difference between, for example, 'the Apple' (New York) and 'an apple' (any random Granny Smith, etc.). 'The' is known as the definite article, and 'a' as the indefinite article.
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