Modern English grammar CLOSED WORD CLASS

Modern English grammar CLOSED WORD CLASS. By S.VISHNUPRIYA 20MEN148 II M.A ENGLISH (SF).

Closed word class ‘ Closed’ Fairly fixed membership Rarely invent new words Do not easily accept new members Different languages have different closed word classes All the closed words occur at or towards the beginning of larger units They are the markers of the units they introduce.

Closed class Symbol Examples Determiner d The, a, this, that, some, any, all, many Pronoun pn I, me, you, he, she, it, her, them, some, one, someone Preposition p Of, in, on, at, before, under, past, from, to, by, for Conjunction cj And, or, but, if, when, because, that, so Operator - verb v Can, may, will, shall, have, be, do Interjection ij Oh, ah, ooh, gee, ugh, hell, shoo, hey Enumerator e One, two, three, first, second, eighteenth.

Determiners Determiners introduce noun phrases and function as modifiers. Unlike adjective modifiers however, they are sometimes obligatory. The articles THE and A are the most common determiners Example: The dog bit a man (in this sentence the and a are determiners ) Pronouns They are in a sense ‘dummy’ Ns or Np’s because they have a generalised or unspecific meaning. Because they are normally obligatory elements of noun phrases, we regard them as acting as head of such phrases, though they are limited in terms of what modifiers can be added to them. Example : This is a very sweet wine (this is a pronoun).

Enumerators Cardinal numbers (one, two) Ordinal numbers (first, second) General ordinals (next, last, further) Prepositions Introduce prepositional phrases Express relations of possession, place, time PP has the structure of an NP Example : I looked up the chimney (up is a preposition) Conjunctions Linking words Introduce clauses rather than phrases Subordinating and Coordinating Correlative Conjunctions.

Operator verbs These constitute a closed class of verbs Function as auxiliaries in the verb phrase also as auxiliaries Modal and Primary verbs Interjections Rather peripheral to Primitive expressions of feeling Only loosely integrated into the linguistic system Particle Little part Prepositions and conjunctions are little Example : But gee, am I hungry.

Thank you.