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- An adjective can occur alone after forms of the verb be: The car was big. This is the adjective’s predicative function.
- An adjective can be immediately preceded by very and other intensifying words as very big, terribly nice.
- An adjective can be compared as in biggerbiggest, moremost beautiful. - Many adjectives permit the addition of –ly to form an adverb. For example:
quiet quietly.
4 Adverbs
Adverbs are similar to adjective in many ways. The difference is that adjectives assign attributes to noun while adverbs assign attributes to verbs,
clauses or entire sentences. Most adverbs are easy to recognize because they are formed by adding an
–ly suffix to an adjective, as in sadly and happily. There are some types of adverb: - Adverbs which have no distinctive element, such as just and soon, or compound
adverbs, somehow and whereby - A few other endings which mark a word as an adverb, used especially in
informal speech: new-style, earthwards, clockwise, and sideways.
b. Function Words 1 Pronouns
Hatch Brown 1995 states that pronouns refer to nouns that have already been mentioned in the discourse or point ahead to noun that we are about
to mention.
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There are many kinds of pronouns: - Personal pronouns are the main means of identifying speakers, addresses, and
others: I, you, he, she, it, we, and they. - Reflexive pronouns, always ending in-self or selves. For example: I cooked for
myself. - Possessive pronouns express ownership, and appear in two forms. My, your, etc.
are used as determiners in the noun phrase, as in my house, his motorcycle. Mine, yours, etc. are used to express their own as in, This is mine. Hers is over there.
There are several other subclasses, they are: - Reciprocal pronouns are used to express a two way relation ship. For example:
each other, one another. - Interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions about personal and non
personal nouns. For example: who?, whom?, whose?, which?, what?. - Relative pronouns who, whom, whose, which, that are used to link a
subordinate clause to head of the noun phrase, as in That’s the video which caused the problem.
- Demonstrative pronouns thisthese, thatthose express a contrast between near and distant, as in Take this one here, not that over there.
- Indefinite pronouns express a notion of quantity. Two types of indefinite pronouns: compound pronouns and of-pronouns. Compound pronouns consist of
two elements: every-, some-, any-, or no-, -one, -body, or thing as in someone and anything. Of-pronouns consist of several form which may appear alone or be
followed by of I’ve bought all the candies all of the candies. Their meanings
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range from the universal sense of all and both to the negative sense of none and few. Other items in this class include each, much, many, more, moat, less, fewer,
some and neither.
2 Conjunctions
Conjunctions are words that join words, phrases or sentences. There are two kinds of conjunctions:
- Coordinating conjunctions consist of and, or and but. And there are few pairs such as neither…nor. These conjunctions signal such meanings as addition and
sequence and, the expression of alternatives or, and contrast but. - Subordinating conjunctions will exist when one clause is subordinated to
another, as in “I love you because you are handsome.” Here, the main clause I love you is joined to subordinate clause you are handsome by the conjunction
because.
3 Prepositions
Hatch Brown 1955 states that prepositions are all those words that help locate items and actions in time and space. There are two prepositions:
1 Single words prepositions include: about, at, on, in, before, by, down, for, etc.
2 Multi-word prepositions include: ahead of, because of, due to, instead of, as far as, by means of, etc.
Preposition can have two kinds of meaning: - Showing destination such as: to, onto, into, out of, off, etc.
- Telling about position such as: at, on, in, behind, under, beside, etc.
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4 Articles and Demonstratives
There are three articles in English: a, an, the. This, these, that and those are the kind of demonstratives.
4. Active Vocabulary vs. Passive Vocabulary
