Thursday, August 11, 2016

Word Classes and so on

Some notes I wrote, perhaps around early 2000s...

Nouns: Words that name things, people, places, feelings, etc.
             E.g. ruler, woman, beach, pain, etc.

Verbs: Words that express action, being, having, movement, change.
           E.g. run, am, has, flow, melt, etc.

Adjectives: Words that tell us more about a noun.
                   E.g. plastic ruler, old woman, sandy beach, less pain, etc.

Adverbs: Words (or phrases) that tell us when, how often, how, why, where, etc.
                E.g. tomorrow, every day, carefully, because, nowhere, etc.
               
               They may tell us more about a verb, an adjective, another adverb or a whole sentence. 
               E.g. drive carefully, very careful, extremely carefully, tomorrow we shall arrive, etc

Determiners: Words that come before a noun, and tell us how many, which, how much, etc.
                      E.g. Two flies, this fly, etc

Pronouns: Words used instead of nouns, often to avoid repetition.
                 E.g. he, she, etc

Prepositions: Words or phrases that link two parts of a sentence, usually a verb and a noun phrase.
                     E.g. kick off the match (phrasal verb), climb up the hill, sit under the roof, etc

Conjunctions: Words or phrases that link two clauses or other parts of a sentence.
                        E.g. She is tall and skinny.

Subject: Word or phrase (often a noun or noun phrase) that usually comes before a verb (active voice)
                It tells us what or who the sentence is about.

Predicate: Everything that comes after the subject (active voice)
                It is the verb plus its objects, complements and adverbials
                that tell us what the subject does or is or have.