INTRODUCTION
Class refers to a set of items with similar characteristics. Items of the same class belong to the same unit since they usually have the same structural possibilities. One can therefore refer to classes of verbs, nouns, adjectives etc and also to their behaviour as a group. For example verbs act as predicators while the nouns often operate as head of the nominal group in the structure of a clause. Every class also has sub-classes as for instance in the cases of nouns being countable and uncountable (count and non-count nouns), proper and abstract while verbs can be transitive, intransitive or linking. According to Ndimele (1993, p. 25)
In defining word classes, three major criteria are taken into account. They are the form of the word, the meaning of the word and most importantly the function the word performs in a larger construction.
In this unit the categorization of English words into classes and subclasses is done to prepare you for studying their behaviour in larger constructions later.
3.1 Word Classes
Words are grouped into two broad classes; namely content words which constitute the open class elements, and structural words which make the closed class elements. These two can be contrasted thus:
3.2 Open Class Items
Open class items are so named because new items or creations are easily added to them by inflection or derivation. They are defined in the dictionary as lexical items with identifiable meaning. They occur in a succession in a given structure.
Open Class consists of:
- Nouns: name a person, place, thing, state, action or quality e.g
Akpan, Lagos, pen, laughter
- Verbs: act as predicators; express action, state of being e.g. think, be, run,feel
- Adjective: describe, modify, limit the noun, pronoun or another adjective e.g. strong man,few hours, limited quantity
- Adverbs: modify a verb, adjective or another adverb e.g. think quickly, unusually ugly, very slowly
3.3 Closed Class Items
Closed class items are also referred to as closed system items
- They are fixed in number in a given language and do not admit new members as you find in the open class items
- They are defined in terms of structural characteristics
- They are mutually exclusive in the sense that two of them of the same kind cannot function together. For example you cannot say: The book is in under the table as you can do with closed system items as in: He is a tall dark man.
Closed Class consists of
- Pronouns: substitute or take the place of nouns: e.g. he, she, it, they, ours, himself
- Prepositions, show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and some other word e.g. Jump over the fence
Place it on the table
Stand beside the table.
- Conjunctions: Join two words or two groups of words e.g. Esther and James, small but mighty
- Interjections: show emotion or strong feeling e.g alas, hurrah, oh!
In addition to the eight word classes above the following are often added to the closed system items:
- Articles: used with nouns to show whether the thing or person is a particular one or just anyone e.g. the book, a pen, an orange.
- Demonstratives: Used to show the person or thing referred to e.g. this, that, those.
Each word class exhibits a set of features or characteristics by which it can be easily recognized. These different notions include number (singular / plural), voice (active / passive), degree (positive, comparative and superlative), gender (masculine / feminine), person (first, second and third), case (nominative, possessive and objective), order of occurrence, connection (subordinating and coordinating), tense (past and non-past).
Open classes, like closed classes, are structures that are used to realize sentence elements. Together, they form what is generally referred to as parts of speech. They are also referred to in English as form classes or word classes. Some writers use the term open class items. The terms refer to the same thing.
Traditionally, there are eight word classes known as parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, interjections, prepositions and conjunctions. But a word cannot be said to belong to a particular part of speech unless it is used in a context. This is because one word may perform different functions. For instance in the following passage, the word round is used in five different senses:
As I round the building, I think about the fact
that our round world spins round on its axis,
at the same time making a circle round the
sun that result in the round of the seasons.
The word round in the above sentence functions first as a verb, next as an adjective, then as adverb in the next two occurrences and finally as a noun.
3.4 Features and Function of Word Classes
Nouns
One of the most important functions of language is to give names to persons, things, places, groups, qualities, ideas, and concepts, that we come across daily. Nouns perform this function in different dimensions. We have John, Akpan, goat, stone, Lagos, America, goodness, progress, civilization, democracy, Olympics, etc. The different types of nouns can be discussed in pairs:
Proper versus Common Nouns
A proper noun names particular persons (Uche, John), places (Uyo, California), days of the week (Monday, Tuesday), months of the year (January, February), institution (National Open University, World Bank), geographical features (River Niger, Cameroon Mountain), and languages (Hausa, Ibibio, Ijaw). All proper nouns begin with capital letters when they are written.
Common Nouns on the other hand name persons or things that share class features or essential general characteristics. These include dog, stone, table, boy, teacher, farmer, etc.
Common nouns can form a unit or a class that needs to be referred to as a complete whole. They refer to a group of people, things etc. This class is called Collective Nouns. Examples are: a crowd of people, a fleet of ships, a battalion of soldiers, a bevy of ladies, a troupe of dancers, a crew of sailors, a congregation of worshippers, a team of players, a host of angels, a clutch of eggs.
Abstract Versus Concrete Nouns
Abstract Nouns name qualities, states, actions, conditions, emotions which can neither be touched nor seen. Concrete Nouns name objects and substances that exist in the physical world of things.
Abstract
faith
joy
goodness
confidence
truth
favour
sweetness
Concrete
lock
table
stone
bottle
key
book
fan
Count versus Non-Count Nouns
Count or Countable nouns refer to items that are separable into identifiable or numerable units while Non-Count or Uncountable nouns are mass nouns which cannot be expressed in terms of singular and plural. Quirk and Greenbaum (1980, p.60) state that there is a considerable degree of overlap between count and non-count words as seen in difficulty/difficulties, experience/experiences, talk/talks, etc. This overlap is explainable in terms of particularization in the count usage and generalization in the non-count usage.
As a guide, count nouns take the articles ‘a’ and ‘an’ in their singular forms and are generally classified into singular and plural forms. Examples of count and non-count nouns:
Count
Non-Count
(Singular
Plural)
--
box
Boxes
oil
boy
Boys
water
ox
Oxen
air
child
Children
sand
passer-by
passers-by
livestock
datum
Data
light
city
Cities
luggage
man
Men
imagery
table
Tables
equipment
house
Houses
accommodation
Features of Nouns
Nouns are generally identified in terms of their morphological
structures, number, gender and case or position in the sentence. We shall now look at these briefly.
i) Number
Nouns express number (singular and plural). Singular nouns are usually converted or changed to plural forms by the following rules:
i) Addition of‘s’ to the singular:
pen - pens girl - girls
boy - boys house - houses
chair - chairs book - books
thing - things clock - clocks
train - trains table - tables
ii) Addition of ‘es’ to forms that end with ‘s’, ‘z’, ‘ch’, ‘sh’ and x
box - boxes mattress - mattresses
church - churches branch - branches
fox - foxes buzz buzzes
iii) Replacement of ‘-y’ with ‘-ies’
city - cities baby - babies
party - parties lady - ladies
iv) Substitution of ‘-f’ and ‘-fe’ with ‘-ves’
loaf - loaves wife - wives
knife - knives leaf - leaves
v) Change of medial vowels
man
-
men
foot
-
feet
mouse
-
mice
louse
-
lice
vi) Addition of ‘-en’ and ‘-ren’
child - children
ox - oxen
vii)
viii)
ix)
x)
xi)
xii)
(ii)
THE STRUCTURE OF MODERN ENGLISH
Addition of ‘-es’ to nouns that end in ‘o’
hero - heroes
potato - potatoes
Change of ‘-um’ to ‘-a’
datum - data
memorandum - memoranda
stratum
-
strata
agendum
-
agenda
curriculum
-
curricula
Retention of original singular form
sheep
deer
swine
-
-
-
sheep deer swine
Change of internal ‘i’ to ‘e’
thesis
-
theses
analysis
-
analyses
basis
-
bases
crisis
-
crises
Change of one component of the compound words
on-looker - on-lookers
passer-by - passers-by
bye-law - bye-laws
step-daughter - step-daughters
maid-servant - maid-servants
going-on - goings-on
Changes in all components of the compound words
man-servant
-
men-servants
woman-journalist
-
women-journalists
lord-justice
-
lords-justices
Gender
Nouns occur in different groupings according to sex. Four genders are often identified in English namely Masculine, Feminine, Common and Neuter.
Masculine denotes male, while feminine denotes female
Man - woman uncle - aunt
stallion - mare wizard - witch
fox - fixen widower - widow
hero - heroine bull - cow
nephew - niece cock - hen
bachelor - spinster peacock - peahen
monk - nun son - daughter
Common gender refers to nouns that denote both male and female. They include reader, teacher, pilot, officer, cook, writer, thinker, dancer, scholar, singer, buyer, baby.
Neuter gender refers to lifeless things or things that are not capable of reproduction. Examples: paper, chalk, stone, table, book, house, sun,
moon, death, earth, love, sleep. Some of these items can be poetically expressed in either the feminine or masculine depending on how strongly the user feels about them or the prevalent convention in the area.
(iii) Case
This refers to the grammatical slots that nouns can fill in expressions. They include:
Nominative Case (subject) e.g. Tom is here
Accusative Case (object or complement) e.g This is Tom.
Give me the book.
Possessive Case (ownership or possession) Akpan’s dress, Olu’s car.
Problems related to Nouns
There are some inherent problems related to the use of nouns in English. We shall highlight some of them and proffer solutions.
i) Exceptions to the rules of pluralization (non-pluralization).
They are some nouns that only function in mass interpretation. They do not take determiners that indicate number except another unit of expression is applied.
Examples:
Information
-
some information
advice
-
a piece of advice
equipment
-
some equipment
stationery
-
items of stationery
staff
-
a member of staff
furniture
-
pieces of furniture
soap
-
tablets of soap
ii) Summation Pluralisation occurs in nouns which denote entities comprising parts which sometimes are equal or disproportionate. Those that come in pairs are usually expressed thus: a pair of trousers, a pair of scissors, a pair of pliers, a pair of spectacles.
Other nouns which go with ‘s’ include annals, surroundings, remains, credentials, earnings, means, dregs, thanks, senses, measles, siblings, metrics, economics, statistics, antics, damages (in law), etc.
iii) Problem Plurals:
There are some idiomatic patterns that defy the grammatical rules relating to nouns. Their plural forms are not expressed with the addition of ‘-s’ but by the use of the definite article or determiner ‘the’. These should be noted:
The poor are not recognized.
The young shall grow.
The dumb need some help.
The aged are kept in welfare homes
The elite are to blame.
iv) Choice of articles also constitutes a problem in English.
Articles are classified into definite (the) and indefinite (a and an). They provide different information about the nouns they modify. The general principles are as follows:
a) Use ‘a; with countable nouns that begin with a consonant: a book, a goat, a table, a knife, a man, a woman, etc.
b) Use ‘an’ with count-nouns that begin with a vowel: an egg, an hour, an axe, an angel, an afterthought.
c) Use the definite article with items that indicate previous knowledge of the person, or entity e.g.
(i) The man on the street is good. (ii) The book on the shelf is mine.
d) Use the definite article also to refer to a specific person, thing, event or group e.g. The University of Uyo, The man whose
daughter won the scholarship, The National Association of Women Academics.
v) Changes in usage also affect patterning of nouns.
Some usages are treated as archaic and are being replaced by some dynamic alternatives that are adjudged right by convention. Examples are:
data (now used in the singular form)
agenda (now used in the singular form)
stadiums / stadia (used interchangeably)
medium / media (used interchangeably)
forums / fora (used interchangeably)
Which of the following words belong to the open class and which of them belong to the closed class: happiness, always, go, she, across, ah, nobody, slowly, Thomas, beautiful.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE (SAE) 2
State the characteristics of nouns discussed in this unit
4.0 CONCLUSION
In this unit you studied the grammatical elements of English. You learnt about the categorization of English words and utterances into what is often referred to as grammatical elements, word classes or parts of speech and the function of each element in relation to others. This unit has therefore exposed you to the various categorizations of English words in the grammar of the Language; content words and grammatical words.
5.0 SUMMARY
In this unit the following points have been made:
The words of a language are often categorized into classes known as form classes or parts of speech.
Traditionally, words in English are often categorized into eight classes: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.
Some classifications include articles and demonstratives among the word classes.
Words are grouped into two broad classes namely content words which constitute the open class elements and structural words which make the closed class elements.
Open class items are nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives, they admit new members into the group; they are defined as lexical items in a dictionary and can occur in succession.
Closed class items are fixed in number; they do not admit new members; they are mutually exclusive.
The noun in English is a member of the Open class; it occurs as singular or plural; masculine, feminine or neuter gender and in the subjective, objective or possessive case.
Nouns also perform certain functions in the sentence: they function as subjects, objects, complements, object of prepositions and as appositives.
6.0 TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT (TMA)
Describe and illustrate the functions of nouns in sentences of your own.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Eka, D. (1996) Elements of Grammar and Mechanics of English. Uyo: Samuf Educational.
Quirk, R. and Greenbaum, S. (1980). A University Grammar of English, Longman, London.
Semmelmeyer, M. and Bolander, D. (1984) Instant English Handbook. Illinois: Career Publishing Inc
Udofot, I. and Ekpenyong , B. 2004.A Comprehensive English Course
for Schools and Colleges. Lagos: Quantum Co. Ltd .
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