Content Words And Structure Words.doc 4v4a3a

A content word refers to a thing, quality, state, action or event. Structural words are effective transitions that establish logical relationships between sentences, between paragraphs, and between whole sections of text. The writer uses them to recall for the reader that which has already been said and to help the reader anticipate that which is about to follow. This includes phrases that contain words like "but," "however," "moreover," "on the other hand," "nevertheless." Content Words - are best explained and listed in the dictionary, like ‘book’, ‘teddy bear’ or ‘encapsulate’

Structure Words - are best explained in the grammar, i.e. in of how they fit into sentences: ‘the’ is a definite article goes with nouns

- exist in large numbers, tens or hundreds of thousands, as - are very limited in number, consisting of 220 or so in English seen in any dictionary - are mostly very high frequency, for example all the top - vary in frequency from common words like ‘beer’ to ten for English and 45% of the top 100 are structure very rare like ‘adduction’ (6 times in a 100 million words) words - are used more in written language

- are used more in spoken language

- are more likely to be preceded by a pause in speech ‘I like … bananas’, perhaps because there are more to choose from

- are less likely to be preceded by a pause in speech ‘I hate …the referee’, perhaps because there are less of them to choose from

- consist of Nouns (‘glass’), Verbs (‘move’), Adjectives (‘glossy’) etc

- consist of Prepositions (‘to’), Articles (‘the’), Auxiliaries (‘can’) etc

- vary in pronunciation for emphasis etc; ‘have’ can be - are always pronounced and spelled in essentially the same way; ‘tree’ is always said with the same consonants said as /hQv/, as /h‚v/ with a change of vowel and as /v/ and vowels (‘ve)

- usually have a fixed stress or stresses; ‘theatre’ is always - are usually unstressed but given stress for emphasis etc; ‘theatre’ /'Ti‚t‚/) never ‘theatre’ /Ti‚'t‚:/ ‘I’ve done it/I have done it/I have done it’ - usually have more than two letters, as in ‘eye’, ‘two’, ‘inn’

- can consist of one or two letters, as in ‘I’, ‘to’, ‘in’

- starting in ‘th’ are pronounced with a voiceless ‘th’ /T/ - starting in ‘th’ are pronounced with a voiced ‘th’ /D/ ‘think’, ‘theme’ ‘this’, ‘them’, ‘there’ - can never be invented, apart from changes over time. - can always be invented – I heard ‘vagueity’ on the One attempt was ‘per’ for ‘he/she’, which has never radio this morning. Virtually all the new words caught on. coming into the language say ‘cyberpunk’, are content words.

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Prefixation is the formation of words by means of adding a prefix to the stem. In English it is characteristic for forming verbs. Prefixes are more independent than suffixes. Prefixes can be classified according to the nature of words in which they are used : prefixes used in notional words and prefixes used in functional words. Prefixes used in notional words are proper prefixes which are bound morphemes, e.g. un- (unhappy). Prefixes used in functional words are semi-bound morphemes because they are met in the language as words, e.g. over- (overhead) ( cf over the table ). The main function of prefixes in English is to change the lexical meaning of the same part of speech. But the recent research showed that about twenty-five prefixes in Modern English form one part of speech from another (bebutton, interfamily, postcollege etc). Prefixes can be classified according to different principles : 1. Semantic classification : a) prefixes of negative meaning, such as : in- (invaluable), non- (nonformals), un(unfree) etc, b) prefixes denoting repetition or reversal actions, such as: de- (decolonize), re(revegetation), dis- (disconnect), c) prefixes denoting time, space, degree relations, such as : inter- (interplanetary) , hyper- (hypertension), ex- (ex-student), pre- (pre-election), over- (overdrugging) etc. 2. Origin of prefixes: a) native (Germanic), such as: un-, over-, under- etc. b) Romanic, such as : in-, de-, ex-, re- etc. c) Greek, such as : sym-, hyper- etc. When we analyze such words as : adverb, accompany where we can find the root of the word (verb, company) we may treat ad-, ac- as prefixes though they were never used as prefixes to form new words in English and were borrowed from Romanic languages together with words. In such cases we can treat them as derived words. But some scientists treat them as simple words. Another group of words with a disputable structure are such as : contain, retain, detain and conceive, receive, deceive where we can see that re-, de-, con- act as prefixes and -tain, -ceive can be understood as roots. But in English these combinations of sounds have no lexical meaning and are called pseudo-morphemes. Some scientists treat such words as simple words, others as derived ones. 2

There are some prefixes which can be treated as root morphemes by some scientists, e.g. after- in the word afternoon. American lexicographers working on Webster dictionaries treat such words as compound words. British lexicographers treat such words as derived ones person - a grammatical category used in the classification of pronouns, possessive determiners, and verb forms according to whether they indicate the speaker, the addressee, or a third party; "stop talking about yourself in the third person" a. Any of three groups of pronoun forms with corresponding verb inflections that distinguish the speaker (first person), the individual addressed (second person), and the individual or thing spoken of (third person). b. Any of the different forms or inflections expressing these distinctions. Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns. It also frequently affects verbs, sometimes nouns, and possessive relationships.

In many languages, the verb takes a form dependent on this person and whether it is singular or plural. In English, this happens with the verb to be as follows: • •

I am (first-person singular) you are/thou art (second-person singular)

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he, she, one or it is (third-person singular)

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we are (first-person plural)

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you are/ye are (second-person plural)

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they are (third-person plural)

The grammars of some languages divide the semantic space into more than three persons. The extra categories may be termed fourth person, fifth person, etc. Such are not absolute but can refer depending on context to any of several phenomena. In grammar the term complement is used with different meanings. The primary meaning is a word, phrase or clause which is necessary in a sentence to complete its meaning. We find complements which function as an argument (i.e. of equal status to subjects and objects) and complements which exist within arguments. Both complements and modifiers add to the meaning of a sentence. However, a complement is necessary to complete a sentence; a modifier is not. For example, "Put the bread on the table" needs "on the table" to make it complete. In most dialects of English, you cannot merely put something; you need to put it 3

somewhere. In this context, the phrase "on the table" is a complement. By contrast, "The bread on the table is fresh." does not require "on the table" to be complete, so here, the phrase "on the table" is a modifier. A modifier, unlike a complement, is an optional element of a sentence. An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what the verb is being done to. In the sentence "My brother bought a car" a car is both the object and the complement. In ""Put the bread on the table" the bread is the object and on the table is the complement. English negation is the process that turns an affirmative statement (I am happy) into its opposite denial (I am not happy). As noted above under Verbs, a finite indicative verb (or its clause) is negated by placing the word not after an auxiliary, modal or other "special" verb such as do, can or be. For example, the clause I go is negated with the appearance of the auxiliary do, as I do not go (see do-). When the affirmative already uses auxiliary verbs (I am going), no other auxiliary verbs are added to negate the clause (I am not going). (Until the period of early Modern English, negation was effected without additional auxiliary verbs: I go not.) Most combinations of auxiliary verbs etc. with not have contracted forms: don't, can't, isn't, etc. (Also the uncontracted negated form of can is written as a single word cannot.) On inversion of subject and verb (such as in questions; see below), the subject may be placed after a contracted negated form: Should he not pay? or Shouldn't he pay? Other elements, such as noun phrases, adjectives, adverbs, infinitive and participial phrases, etc., can be negated by placing the word not before them: not the right answer, not interesting, not to enter, not noticing the train, etc. When other negating words such as never, nobody, etc. appear in a sentence, the negating not is omitted (unlike its equivalents in many languages): I saw nothing or I didn't see anything, but not (except in non-standard speech) *I didn't see nothing (see Double negative). Such negating words generally have corresponding negative polarity items (ever for never, anybody for nobody, etc.) which can appear in a negative context, but are not negative themselves (and can thus be used after a negation without giving rise to double negatives).

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