Open class (linguistics)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In linguistics, a word class may be either an open class or a closed class. Open classes accept the addition of new morphemes (words), through such processes as compounding, derivation,inflection, coining, and borrowing; closed classes generally do not. Content words, or lexical words, (including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and most adverbs) are words that carry the content or the meaning of a sentence and are open-class words. They contrast withfunction words, such as articles, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and pronouns, which can be found in almost any utterance, no matter what it is about. Words in open classes (content andlexical words) carry the primary communicative force of an utterance, and are variable in form (inflected). Their distribution is not definable by the grammar. Typical open classes are the class of nouns, the class of verbs, the class of adjectives, and the class [2] of adverbs. However, this varies between languages; for example, in Japanese, pronouns form an open class, while verbs form a closed class. With a few exceptions, such as (saboru, "to ditch class") and (guguru, "to google"), new "verbs" in Japanese are formed by appending (suru, "to do") to a noun. Open-class words are not considered part of the core language and as such they can be changed, replaced or dropped from the common lexicon, which can encompass many thousands of them. For living languages, this change is noticeable within an individual lifespan, and usually faster. Closed-class words, on the other hand, are always relatively few and resistant to change. They are unproductively and are generally invariable in form (except demonstratives, modals and some pronouns).
[citation needed] [1]

Noun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Noun (disambiguation).

Examples
The cat sat on the mat. Please hand in your assignments by the end of the week. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Winston Churchill was a Prime Minister of the United Kingdomof Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Please complete this assignment with black or blue pen only, and keep your eyes on your own paper.

A noun can co-occur with an article or an attributive adjective. Verbs and adjectives can't. In the following, an asterisk (*) in front of an example means that this example is ungrammatical.

1.

the name (name is a noun: can co-occur with a definite articlethe.)

2.

*the baptise (baptise is a verb: cannot co-occur with a definite article.)

3.

constant circulation (circulation is a noun: can co-occur with

the attributive adjective constant.) 4. *constant circulate (circulate is a verb: cannot co-occur with the attributive adjective constant.) 5. a fright (fright is a noun: can co-occur with the indefinite articlea.) 6. *an afraid (afraid is an adjective: cannot co-occur with the article a.) 7. terrible fright (The noun fright can co-occur with the adjectiveterrible.) 8. *terrible afraid (The adjective afraid cannot co-occur with the adjective terrible.)

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in thesubject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition (or put more simply, a noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing or abstract idea).[1] Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of expressions. The syntactic rules for nouns differ from language to language. In English, nouns may be defined as those words which can occur with articles andattributive adjectives and can function as the head of a noun phrase. In traditional English grammar, the noun is one of the eight parts of speech.

Classification of nouns in English

[edit]Proper

nouns and common nouns

Main article: Proper noun A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing unique entities (such as London, Jupiter, Larry, or Toyota), [13] as distinguished from common nouns which describe a class of entities (such as city,planet, person or car). [edit]Agent

nouns

Main article: Agent noun Agent nouns are usually common nouns (although they may be proper nouns, such as in titles or adopted surnames) that take the form of a subject (typically a person) performing an action (verb). Examples in English are maker (from to make), teacher (from to teach), and actor and actress (from to act). [edit]Countable

and uncountable nouns

Main articles: Count noun and Mass noun Count nouns are common nouns that can take a plural, can combine with numerals or quantifiers (e.g., one, two, several, every, most), and can take an indefinite article (a or an). Examples of count nouns are chair, nose, and occasion.

Mass nouns (or non-count nouns) differ from count nouns in precisely that respect: they can't take plural or combine with number words or quantifiers. Examples from English include laughter, cutlery,helium, and furniture. For example, it is not possible to refer to a furniture or three furnitures. This is true even though the pieces of furniture comprising furniture could be counted. Thus the distinction between mass and count nouns should not be made in terms of what sorts of things the nouns refer to, but rather in terms of how the nouns present these [14][15] entities. [edit]Collective

nouns

Main article: Collective noun Collective nouns are nouns that refer to groups consisting of more than one individual or entity, even when they are inflected for the singular. Examples include committee, herd, and school (of fish). These nouns have slightly different grammatical properties than other nouns. For example, the noun phrases that they head can serve as the subject of a collective predicate, even when they are inflected for the singular. [edit]Concrete

nouns and abstract nouns

Further information: physical body and abstract object Concrete nouns refer to physical entities that can, in principle at least, be observed by at least one of the senses (for instance, chair, apple, Janet or atom). Abstract nouns, on the other hand, refer toabstract objects; that is, ideas or concepts (such as justice or hatred). While this distinction is sometimes exclusive, some nouns have multiple senses, including both concrete and abstract ones; consider, for example, the noun art, which usually refers to a concept (e.g., Art is an important element of human culture) but which can refer to a specific artwork in certain contexts (e.g., I put my daughter's art up on the fridge). Some abstract nouns developed etymologically by figurative extension from literal roots. These include drawback, fraction, holdout, and uptake. Similarly, some nouns have both abstract and concrete senses, with the latter having developed by figurative extension from the former. These include view, filter, structure, and key. In English, many abstract nouns are formed by adding noun-forming suffixes (-ness, -ity, -ion) to adjectives or verbs. Examples are happiness (from the adjective happy), circulation (from the verbcirculate) and serenity (from the adjective serene). [edit]Noun

phrases

Main article: Noun phrase A noun phrase is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word (nominal) optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives. [edit]Pronouns Main article: Pronoun Nouns and noun phrases can typically be replaced by pronouns, such as he, it, which, and those, in order to avoid repetition or explicit identification, or for other reasons. For example, in the sentenceJanet thought that he was weird, the word he is a pronoun standing in place of the name of the person in question. The English word one can replace parts of noun phrases, and it sometimes stands in for a noun. An example is given below: John's car is newer than the one that Bill has. But one can also stand in for bigger subparts of a noun phrase. For example, in the following example, one can stand in for new car. This new car is cheaper than that one.

Verb

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the part of speech. For the physical activity program, see VERB (program). For English usage of verbs, see English verbs. "Verbs" redirects here. For the Christian gospel rapper, see Verbs (rapper).
This article needs attention from an expert on the subject. See the talk page for details. WikiProject Linguistics or the Linguistics Portal may be able to help recruit an expert. (November 2008)

Examples
I washed the car yesterday. The dog ate the homework. John studies English and French.

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word (part of speech) that in syntax conveys an action (bring, read, walk,run, learn), an occurrence (happen, become), or a state of being (be, exist, stand). In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encodetense, aspect, mood and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object.
Contents
[hide]

1 Agreement 2 Valency 3 Tense, aspect, and modality 4 Voice 5 See also

o o o

5.1 Verbs in various languages 5.2 Grammar 5.3 Other

6 References 7 External links

Agreement
Main article: Grammatical conjugation In languages where the verb is inflected, it often agrees with its primary argument (the subject) in person, number and/or gender. With the exception of the verb to be, English shows distinctive agreement only in the third person

singular, present tense form of verbs, which is marked by adding "-s" (I walk, he walks) or "-es" (he fishes). The rest of the persons are not distinguished in the verb (I walk, you walk, they walk, etc.). Latin and the Romance languages inflect verbs for tenseaspectmood and they agree in person and number (but not in gender, as for example in Polish) with the subject. Japanese, like many languages with SOV word order, inflects verbs for tense/mood/aspect as well as other categories such as negation, but shows absolutely no agreement with the subject - it is a strictly dependent-marking language. On the other hand, Basque, Georgian, and some other languages, have polypersonal agreement: the verb agrees with the subject, the direct object and even the secondary object if present, a greater degree of head-marking than is found in most European languages. [edit]Valency Main article: Valency (linguistics) The number of arguments that a verb takes is called its valency or valence. Verbs can be classified according to their valency:

Avalent (valency = 0): the verb has neither a subject nor an object. Zero valency does not occur in English; in some languages such as Mandarin Chinese, weather verbs like snow(s) take no subject or object. Intransitive (valency = 1, monovalent): the verb only has a subject. For example: "he runs", "it falls". Transitive (valency = 2, divalent): the verb has a subject and a direct object. For example: "she eats fish", "we hunt nothing". Ditransitive (valency = 3, trivalent): the verb has a subject, a direct object, and an indirect object. For example: "He gives her a flower."

Weather verbs are often impersonal (subjectless, or avalent) in null-subject languages like Spanish, where the verb llueve means "It rains". In English, they require a dummy pronoun, and therefore formally have a valency of [dubious discuss] 1. Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal and objective verbs are somewhat different from the norm. In the objective the verb takes an object but no subject; the nonreferent subject in some uses may be marked in the verb by an incorporated dummy pronoun similar to that used with the English weather verbs. Impersonal verbs in null subject languages take neither subject nor object, as is true of other verbs, but again the verb may show incorporated dummy pronouns despite the lack of subject and object [citation phrases. Tlingit lacks a ditransitive, so the indirect object is described by a separate, extraposed clause.
needed]

English verbs are often flexible with regard to valency. A transitive verb can often drop its object and become intransitive; or an intransitive verb can take an object and become transitive. For example, the verb move has no grammatical object in he moves (though in this case, the subject itself may be an implied object, also expressible explicitly as in he moves himself); but in he moves the car, the subject and object are distinct and the verb has a different valency. In many languages other than English, such valency changes are not possible; the verb must instead be inflected [citation ne in order to change the valency.

Adjective
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2010)

Examples

That's an interesting idea. (attributive) That idea is interesting. (predicative) Tell me something interesting. (postpositive) The good, the bad, and the ugly. (substantive)

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified. Adjectives are one of the traditional eight English parts of speech, though linguists today distinguish adjectives from words such as determiners that were formerly considered to be adjectives. In this paragraph, "traditional" is an adjective, and in the preceding paragraph, "main" and "more" are.
Contents
[hide]

1 Distribution 2 Adjectives and adverbs 3 Determiners 4 Form 5 Adjectival phrases 6 Other noun modifiers 7 Adjective order 8 Comparison of adjectives 9 Restrictiveness 10 Agreement 11 See also 12 References 13 Bibliography 14 External links

[edit]Distribution

Most but not all languages have adjectives. Those that do not typically use words of another part of speech, often verbs, to serve the same semantic function; for example, such a language might have a verb that means "to be big", and would use as attributive verb construction analogous to "big-being house" to express what English expresses as "big house". Even in languages that do have adjectives, one language's adjective might not be another's; for example, whereas English uses "to be hungry" (hungry being an adjective), Dutch and French use "honger hebben" and "avoir faim," respectively (literally "to have hunger", hunger being a noun), and whereas Hebrew uses the adjective "( "zaqq, roughly "in need of"), English uses the verb "to need".

Adjectives form an open class of words in most languages that have them; that is, it is relatively common for new adjectives to be formed via such processes as derivation. However, Bantu languagesare well known for having only a small closed class of adjectives, and new adjectives are not easily derived. Igbo has an extremely limited number, just eight: ukwu 'big', nta 'small'; ojii 'dark', oca 'light';ohuru 'new', ocye 'old'; oma 'good', ojoo 'bad'.[1] Similarly, native Japanese adjectives (i-adjectives) are a closed class (as are native verbs), though nouns (which are open class) can be used in thegenitive and there is the separate class of adjectival nouns (na-adjectives), which is also open, and functions similarly to noun adjuncts in English.
[edit]Adjectives

and adverbs

Many languages, including English, distinguish between adjectives, which qualify nouns and pronouns, and adverbs, which modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Not all languages have exactly this distinction and many languages, including English, have words that can function as both. For example, in English fast is an adjective in "a fast car" (where it qualifies the noun car), but an adverb in "he drove fast" (where it modifies the verb drove).
[edit]Determiners

Main article: Determiner (linguistics) Linguists today distinguish determiners from adjectives, considering them to be two separate parts of speech (or lexical categories), but formerly determiners were considered to be adjectives in some of their uses. In English dictionaries, which typically still do not treat determiners as their own part of speech, determiners are often recognizable by being listed both as adjectives and as pronouns. Determiners are words that are neither nouns nor pronouns, yet reference a thing already in context. Determiners generally do this by indicating definiteness (as in a vs. the), quantity (as in one vs.some vs. many), or another such property.
[edit]Form

A given occurrence of an adjective can generally be classified into one of four kinds of uses: 1. Attributive adjectives are part of the noun phrase headed by the noun they modify; for example, happy is an attributive adjective in "happy people". In some languages, attributive adjectives precede their nouns; in others, they follow their nouns; and in yet others, it depends on the adjective, or on the exact relationship of the adjective to the noun. In English, attributive adjectives usually precede their nouns in simple phrases, but often follow their nouns when the adjective is modified or qualified by a phrase acting as an adverb. For example: "I saw three happy kids", and "I saw three kids happy enough to jump up and down with glee." See also Postpositive adjective.

2. Predicative adjectives are linked via a copula or other linking mechanism to the noun or pronoun they modify; for example, happy is a predicate adjective in "they are happy" and in "that made me happy." (See also: Predicative (adjectival or nominal), Subject complement.) 3. Absolute adjectives do not belong to a larger construction (aside from a larger adjective phrase), and typically modify either the subject of a sentence or whatever noun or pronoun they are closest to; for example, happy is an absolute adjective in "The boy, happy with his lollipop, did not look where he was going." 4. Nominal adjectives act almost as nouns. One way this can happen is if a noun is elided and an attributive adjective is left behind. In the sentence, "I read two books to them; he preferred the sad book, but she preferred the happy", happy is a nominal adjective, short for "happy one" or "happy book". Another way this can happen is in phrases like "out with the old, in with the new", where "the old" means, "that which is old" or "all that is old", and similarly with "the new". In such cases, the adjective functions either as a mass noun (as in the preceding example) or as a pluralcount noun, as in "The meek shall inherit the Earth", where "the meek" means "those who are meek" or "all who are meek".
[edit]Adjectival

phrases

Main article: Adjectival phrase An adjective acts as the head of an adjectival phrase. In the simplest case, an adjectival phrase consists solely of the adjective; more complex adjectival phrases may contain one or more adverbsmodifying the adjective ("very strong"), or one or more complements (such as "worth several dollars", "full of toys", or "eager to please"). In English, attributive adjectival phrases that include complements typically follow their subject ("an evildoer devoid of redeeming qualities").
[edit]Other

noun modifiers

In many languages, including English, it is possible for nouns to modify other nouns. Unlike adjectives, nouns acting as modifiers (called attributive nouns or noun adjuncts) are not predicative; a beautiful park is beautiful, but a car park is not "car". In plain English, the modifier often indicates origin ("Virginia reel"), purpose ("work clothes"), or semantic patient ("man eater"). However, it can generally indicate almost any semantic relationship. It is also common for adjectives to be derived from nouns, as in boyish, birdlike, behavioral, famous, manly, angelic, and so on. Many languages have special verbal forms called participles that can act as noun modifiers. In some languages, including English, there is a strong tendency for participles to evolve into adjectives. English examples of this include relieved (the past participle of the verb relieve, used as an adjective in sentences such as "I am so relieved to see you"), spoken (as in "the spoken word"), and going(the present participle of the verb go, used as an adjective in sentences such as "Ten dollars per hour is the going rate").

Other constructs that often modify nouns include prepositional phrases (as in "a rebel without a cause"), relative clauses (as in "the man who wasn't there"), other adjective clauses (as in "the bookstorewhere he worked"), and infinitive phrases (as in "a cake to die for"). In relation, many nouns take complements such as content clauses (as in "the idea that I would do that"); these are not commonly considered modifiers, however.
[edit]Adjective

order

In many languages, attributive adjectives usually occur in a specific order. In general, the adjective order in English is: 1. quantity or number 2. quality or opinion 3. size 4. age 5. shape 6. color 7. proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin, or material) 8. purpose or qualifier So, in English, adjectives pertaining to size precede adjectives pertaining to age ("little old", not "old little"), which in turn generally precede adjectives pertaining to color ("old white", not "white old"). So, we would say "A nice (opinion) little (size) old (age) white (color) brick (material) house." This order may be more rigid in some languages than others; in some, like Spanish, it may only be a default (unmarked) word order, with other orders being permissible. Due partially to borrowings from French, English has some adjectives that follow the noun as postmodifiers, called postpositive adjectives, such as time immemorial. Adjectives may even change meaning depending on whether they precede or follow, as in proper: They live in a proper town (a real town, not a village) vs. They live in the town proper (in the town itself, not in the suburbs). All adjectives can follow nouns in certain constructions, such as tell me something new.
[edit]Comparison

of adjectives

Main articles: Comparison (grammar) and Comparative In many languages, adjectives can be compared. In English, for example, we can say that a car is big, that it is bigger than another is, or that it is the biggest car of all. Not all adjectives lend themselves to comparison, however; for example, the English adjective extinct is not considered comparable, in that it does not make sense to describe one species as "more extinct" than another. However, even most noncomparable English adjectives are still sometimes compared; for example, one might say that a language

about which nothing is known is "more extinct" than a well-documented language with surviving literature but no speakers. This is not a comparison of the degree of intensity of the adjective, but rather the degree to which the object fits the adjective's definition. Comparable adjectives are also known as "gradable" adjectives, because they tend to allow grading adverbs such as very, rather, and so on. Among languages that allow adjectives to be compared in this way, different approaches are used. Indeed, even within English, two different approaches are used: the suffixes -er and -est, and the words more and most. (In English, the general tendency is for shorter adjectives and adjectives from AngloSaxon to use -er and -est, and for longer adjectives and adjectives from French, Latin, Greek, and other languages to use more and most.) By either approach, English adjectives therefore have positive forms (big), comparative forms (bigger), and superlative forms (biggest). However, many other languages do not distinguish comparative from superlative forms.
[edit]Restrictiveness

Main article: Restrictiveness Attributive adjectives, and other noun modifiers, may be used either restrictively (helping to identify the noun's referent, hence "restricting" its reference) or non-restrictively (helping to describe an alreadyidentified noun). For example: "He was a lazy sort, who would avoid a difficult task and fill his working hours with easy ones." "difficult" is restrictive - it tells us which tasks he avoids, distinguishing these from the easy ones: "Only those tasks that are difficult". "She had the job of sorting out the mess left by her predecessor, and she performed this difficult task with great acumen." "difficult" is non-restrictive - we already know which task it was, but the adjective describes it more fully: "The aforementioned task, which (by the way) is difficult" In some languages, such as Spanish, restrictiveness is consistently marked; for example, in Spanish la tarea difcil means "the difficult task" in the sense of "the task that is difficult" (restrictive), whereas la difcil tarea means "the difficult task" in the sense of "the task, which is difficult" (non-restrictive). In English, restrictiveness is not marked on adjectives, but is marked on relative clauses(the difference between "the man who recognized me was there" and "the man, who recognized me, was there" being one of restrictiveness).
[edit]Agreement

In some languages, adjectives alter their form to reflect the gender, case and number of the noun that they describe. This is called agreement or concord. Usually it takes the form of inflections at the end of the word, as in Latin:

puella bona puellam bonam puer bonus pueri boni

(good girl, feminine) (good girl, feminine accusative/object case) (good boy, masculine) (good boys, masculine plural)

In the Celtic languages, however, initial consonant lenition marks the adjective with a feminine noun, as in Irish:
buachaill maith girseach mhaith (good boy, masculine) (good girl, feminine)

Often a distinction is made here between attributive and predicative usage. Whereas English is an example of a language in which adjectives never agree and French of a language in which they always agree, in German they agree only when used attributively, and in Hungarian only when used predicatively.
The good () boys. Les bons garons. Die braven Jungen. A j () fik. The boys are good (). Les garons sont bons. Die Jungen sind brav (). A fik jk.

Adverb
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Adverbs" redirects here. For the Daniel Handler novel, see Adverbs (novel).

Examples
I found the film incredibly dull The meeting went well, and the directors wereextremely happy with the outcome!

Crabs are known for walking sideways. I often have eggs for breakfast. However, I shall not eat fried eggs again.

An adverb is a part of speech that changes the meaning of verbs or any part of speech other than nouns (modifiers of nouns are primarilyadjectives and determiners). Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives (including numbers), clauses, sentences, and other adverbs.

Adverbs typically answer questions such as how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent?. This function is called the adverbialfunction, and is realized not just by single words (i.e., adverbs) but by adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses.
Contents
[hide]

1 Adverbs in English

1.1 Adverbs as a "catch-all" category

2 Other languages 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit]Adverbs

in English

Adverbs are words like slowly, yesterday, now, soon and suddenly. An adverb usually modifies a verb or a verb phrase. It provides information about the manner, place, time, frequency, certainty or other circumstances of the activity denoted by the verb or verb phrase.

She walked slowly. (Here the adverb slowly shows the manner in which she walked.) The kids are playing upstairs. (Here the adverb upstairs provides information about the place of the activity.)

Adverbs can also modify adjectives and other adverbs.

You are quite right. (Here the adverb quite modifies the adjective right.) She spoke quite loudly. (Here the adverb quite modifies another adverb loudly.)

In English, adverbs of manner (answering the question how?) are often formed by adding -ly to adjectives. For example, great yields greatly, and beautiful yields beautifully. There are also adverbs that do not end with -ly, such as hard in "Asiya worked hard to help her family", or well in "My sister performed well in the examination." Note that some words that end in -ly, such as friendly and lovely, are not adverbs, but adjectives, in which case the root word is usually a noun. There are also underived adjectives that end in -ly, such as holy and silly. The suffix -ly is related to the German word Leiche, which means "corpse". (There is also an obsolete English word lych or lich with the same meaning.) Both words are also related to the word like. The connection between -ly and like is easy to understand. The connection to lich is probably that both are descended from an earlier word that meant something like "shape" or "form".[1] The use of like in the place of -ly as an adverb ending is seen in Appalachian English, from the hardening of the ch in "lich" into a k, originating in northern British speech.

In this way, -ly in English is cognate with the common German adjective ending -lich, the Dutch ending -lijk, the Dano-Norwegian -lig and Norwegian -leg. This same process is followed in Romance languages with the ending -mente, -ment, or -mense meaning "of/like the mind". In some cases, the suffix -wise may be used to derive adverbs from nouns. Historically, -wise competed with a related form -ways and won out against it. In a few words, like sideways, -ways survives; words like clockwise show the transition. Again, it is not a foolproof indicator of a word being an adverb. Some adverbs are formed from nouns or adjectives by prepending the prefix a- (such as abreast,astray). There are a number of other suffixes in English that derive adverbs from other word classes, and there are also many adverbs that are not morphologically indicated at all. Comparative adverbs include more, most, least, and less (in phrases such as more beautiful, most easily etc.). The usual form pertaining to adjectives or adverbs is called the positive. Formally, adverbs in English are inflected in terms of comparison, just like adjectives. The comparative and superlative forms of some (especially single-syllable) adverbs that do not end in -ly are generated by adding -er and -est (She ran faster; He jumps highest). Others, especially those ending -ly, are periphrasticallycompared by the use of more or most (She ran more quickly), while some accept both forms, e.g. oftener and more often are both correct. Adverbs also take comparisons with as ... as, less, andleast. Equative adverbs are used to describe the similarities between two objects or people; for example:

Tom runs as fast as Gary. (Both Tom and Gary run at the same speed.) The students are working as hard as ants. (The students are compared to hard-working ants.)

Not all adverbs are comparable; for example in the sentence He wore red yesterday it does not make sense to speak of "more yesterday" or "most yesterday".
[edit]Adverbs

as a "catch-all" category

Adverbs are considered a part of speech in traditional English grammar and are still included as a part of speech in grammar taught in schools and used in dictionaries. However, modern grammarians recognize that words traditionally grouped together as adverbs serve a number of different functions. Some would go so far as to call adverbs a "catch-all" category that includes all words that do not belong to one of the other parts of speech. A more logical approach to dividing words into classes relies on recognizing which words can be used in a certain context. For example, a noun is a word that can be inserted in the following template to form a grammatical sentence: The _____ is red. (For example, "The hat is red".) When this approach is taken, it is seen that adverbs fall into a number of different categories. For example, some adverbs can be used to modify an entire sentence, whereas others cannot. Even when a sentential adverb has other functions, the meaning is often not the same. For example, in the

sentences She gave birth naturally and Naturally, she gave birth, the word naturally has different meanings. Naturally as a sentential adverb means something like "of course" and as a verb-modifying adverb means "in a natural manner". This "naturally" distinction demonstrates that the class of sentential adverbs is a closed class (there is resistance to adding new words to the class), whereas the class of adverbs that modify verbs isn't. Words like very and particularly afford another useful example. We can say Perry is very fast, but not Perry very won the race. These words can modify adjectives but not verbs. On the other hand, there are words like here and there that cannot modify adjectives. We can say The sock looks good there but not It is a there beautiful sock. The fact that many adverbs can be used in more than one of these functions can confuse this issue, and it may seem like splitting hairs to say that a single adverb is really two or more words that serve different functions. However, this distinction can be useful, especially considering adverbs like naturally that have different meanings in their different functions. Huddleston distinguishes between a word and a lexicogrammatical-word.[2] Not is an interesting case. Grammarians have a difficult time categorizing it, and it probably belongs in its own class[3][4]

Interjection
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

In grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker (although most interjections have clear definitions). Filled pauses such asuh, er, um are also considered interjections. Interjections are typically placed at the beginning of a sentence. An interjection is sometimes expressed as a single word or non-sentence phrase, followed by a punctuation mark. The isolated usage of an interjection does not represent a complete sentence in conventional English writing. Thus, in formal writing, the interjection will be incorporated into a larger sentence clause. It also can be a reply to a question or statement.
[edit]Examples

in English

Conventions like Hi, Bye and Goodbye are interjections, as are exclamations like Cheers! and Hooray!. In fact, like a noun or a pronoun, they are very often characterized by exclamation marksdepending on the stress of the attitude or the force of the emotion they are expressing. Well (a short form of "that is well") can also be used as an interjection: "Well! That's great!" or "Well, don't worry." Much profanity takes the form of interjections. Some linguists consider the pro-sentences yes, no, amen and okay as interjections, since they have no syntactical connection with other words and rather work as sentences themselves. Expressions such as "Excuse me!", "Sorry!", "No thank you!", "Oh dear!", "Hey that's mine!", and similar

ones often serve as interjections. Interjections can be phrases or even sentences, as well as words, such as "Oh!" or "Wowee!".
[edit]Phonology

Several English interjections contain sounds that don't (or very rarely) exist in regular English phonological inventory. For example:

Ahem [m], [m], [m], or [hm], ("attention!") may contain a glottal stop [] or a [] in any dialect of English; the glottal stop is common in American English, some British dialects, and in other languages, such as German. Shh [] ("quiet!") is an entirely consonantal syllable. Ps [ps] ("here!"), also spelled psst, is another entirely consonantal syllable-word, and its consonant cluster does not occur initially in regular English words.

Tut-tut [ ] ("shame..."), also spelled tsk-tsk, is made up entirely of clicks, which are an active part of regular speech in several African languages. This particular click is dental. (This also has the spelling pronunciation [tt tt].) Ugh [x] ("disgusting!") ends with a velar fricative consonant, which otherwise does not exist in English, though is common in languages like Spanish, German, and Gaelic .

Whew or phew [u] ("what a relief!"), also spelled shew, may start with a bilabial fricative, a sound pronounced with a strong puff of air through the lips. This sound is a common phoneme in such languages as Suki (a language of New Guinea) and Ewe and Logba (both spoken in Ghana). Gah ("Gah, there's nothing to do!") ends with [h], which does not occur with regular English words. Yeah [j] ("yes") ends, in some dialects, with the short vowel [], which is not found at the end of any regular English words.