MORPHOLOGY MINOR WORD CLASSES

November 29, 2011

Minor word classes have several properties in common: 1. they tend not to alter the basic content of a sentence. For this reason, they have sometimes been called function or grammatical words. 2. major parts of speech are called content words. Content words bear the main semantic burden in communication. They are the words that you would use to send a text message: Broke. Send money. Minor words signal modificational, relational, and interactional aspects of meaning; contextual information; or redundant grammatical information. Compare: a) I am broke, will you please send some money with b) Broke. Send money. Because they are important for integrating content words into the structural organization of sentences, minor class words are sometimes referred to as structure words. Except for pronouns, the formal properties of these items do not (in English) include inflectional or derivational marking. Pronouns - They are major subclass of nouns; - They can have the forms of subject case and the forms of object case - Types of pronouns: a) personal pronouns b) possessive pronouns c) reflexive pronouns d) reciprocal pronouns e) relative pronouns f) demonstrative pronouns g) interrogative pronouns h) indefinite pronouns case and number distinction do not apply to all pronoun types, just to personal, possessive and reflexive pronouns pronouns belong to a closed word class morphologically, pronouns are mostly free morphemes, except those in compounds e.g. anybody, somebody etc., reflexive pronouns and some interrogative (whenever, wherever, whatever etc.)

Numerals - they include all numbers, whether as words or digits - there are two types: cardinal and ordinal - they can be considered a subclass of nouns because in certain circumstances they can take plural forms, e.g. five twos are ten; he is in his eighties - they may also take definite article the - if they come before nouns we call them determiners, e.g. one day, three pages etc.

morphologically, cardinal numerals are free morphemes whereas ordinal numerals have derivational suffixes; e.g. four-fourth ; or inflectional suffixes in plural forms

Prepositions - they are invariable in form, they do not take inflections - they are mostly free morphemes and as such they are called simple prepositions - complex prepositions are considered compounds, e.g. according to, instead of, contrary to, on behalf of - their typical position is before nouns - some prepositions are used in verbal form, e.g. Following his resignation, the minister moved to the country. Conjunctions - they are used to express a connection between words - depending on their syntactic status, they can be coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or) and subordinating conjunctions (because, while, although, before, if ) - correlative conjunctions are always used in pairs, e.g. both....end, either....or, neither...nor. Morphologically, they are compounds.