Linguistic categories explaining how words are used. Examples are the verb, the noun, the pronoun, the adjective, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection.
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6answers
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What is the lexical class of the word 'worth' when used in a sentence like “Is this apple worth $3?”
The question "Not worth the paper it's printed on" - wrong meaning? got me thinking about what part of speech, or lexical class, the word 'worth' takes?
A comment in "Is it worth ...
13
votes
2answers
728 views
Is it true that a word ending in -y is more likely to be an adjective than a noun?
Claim: a word ending in -y is most likely not a noun but an adjective.
Don't have my tagged corpus handy to check. Anyone have the stats on Parts-Of-Speech of words ending in y and assuming they ...
13
votes
4answers
3k views
What part of speech is “on” in “on fire”?
A while ago, there was an answer on Jeopardy! along the following lines:
In the sentence he was on fire, the word on is this part of speech.
The judges ruled that it was a preposition. But I ...
12
votes
4answers
1k views
Is “so” a pronoun?
Reminded by What is the grammatical function of so in this sentence, something that has always bothered me is that the word "so" can be used as a pronoun:
It looks like rain
Responding with:
...
11
votes
4answers
452 views
“Employee” in the phrase “employee ID” is a determiner, not an adjective—right?
I am a software developer with a bit of a linguistic slant. We were recently given some training on how to name database fields and were told to avoid adjectives in names.
Then we were given an ...
11
votes
1answer
1k views
What form of verb is “thank” in “thank you”?
Is the word thank in Thank you! a verb? If not, what part of speech is it then? If it is a verb, is it in the imperative mood? I'm asking because I've seen someone write
Do thank you!
which ...
10
votes
4answers
981 views
What part of speech are non-human “interjections” like “oink” and “bang”?
As a spin-off from this comment:
If a human exclaims something like "ouch!", I believe it's considered an interjection.
But if a pig exclaims "oink!", what is the part of speech?
And if a bell goes ...
10
votes
1answer
2k views
Yes, no, adverbs, and interjections
There appears to be some disagreement over what function yes and no perform in the following sentences:
Yes, you are right.
No, you are mistaken.
According to ODO (yes, no), they are being used as ...
9
votes
4answers
419 views
What part of speech is “worth”? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What is the lexical class of the word 'worth' when used in a sentence like “Is this apple worth $3?”
In a sentence like the following:
The ...
9
votes
1answer
328 views
What is the word for using one part of speech where another would be more grammatical?
There's a Greek word that means using the wrong part of speech somewhere in a sentence, as in:
I don't know the who or the how or the when.
Where "who", "how", and "when" are being used for ...
8
votes
4answers
946 views
More on 'who should she see': what part of speech is 'should' in this phrase?
Prompted by What does 'should' mean in this sentence?, instead of asking what it means, I'm interested in what part of speech it is.
The sentence is:
She walked through the forest, and who should ...
8
votes
2answers
720 views
Do all words have a part of speech?
Do all words have a part of speech? The closest counterexample I can think of is yes. The dictionary says its supposed to be an adverb but it doesn't really strike me as something that modifies a ...
6
votes
9answers
3k views
What word can fulfill the most parts of speech?
I know there are several parts of speech:
Noun
Verb
Pronoun
Adjective
Adverb
Preposition
Conjunction
Interjection
There might be others as well. Sometimes a word, depending on how it is used, can ...
6
votes
3answers
304 views
The verb form of “Is entered in the race”
[I'm not much of an expert in English usage, just an armchair boffin, so I hope I'm not out of line asking what may be a dumb question, to the regulars here...]
I am trying to figure out the form of ...
6
votes
4answers
3k views
Part of speech for “please” followed by a verb
I know that "please" can be many different parts of speech; interjection, an adverb, or a verb, depending on how it's used. I'm looking specifically to find out what part of speech "please" is when ...
6
votes
3answers
330 views
Is this noun used as an adjective?
I read this recently in The Economist:
At the end of the summit, the French and European officials had
claimed a points victory over the Germans by getting them to agree
more firmly to a ...
6
votes
2answers
288 views
How did 'mad' come to be a determiner?
There's a group of words — I think they're called determiners — used to indicate number in some way... like many, few, most, etc. During a linguistics class my professor said this was a closed group ...
6
votes
1answer
126 views
Is “postchoice” a well-used word?
I came upon the word postchoice in the following sentence of Time magazine’s (May 28) article titled “The optimism bias,” dealing with the benefits of positive thinking:
According to social ...
6
votes
2answers
999 views
English parts of speech — better new treatments
Can anyone please recommend a better treatment of English parts of speech / word classes than that offered by most traditional grammars?
Many of the latter stick with the sacrosanct 8 of antiquity, ...
6
votes
1answer
274 views
Adverb vs. direct object [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
What exactly is an “adverb”?
Consider the following sentences:
She went home.
He swam yesterday.
Are the words "home" and "yesterday" adverbs or direct ...
5
votes
3answers
358 views
Can adverbs be also direct objects?
"The irate customer asked for the chef."
The irate customer asked something. (Noun phrase?)
Since you can fill in something in place of 'for the chef,' does that mean it is a direct object and an ...
5
votes
2answers
1k views
The grammatical function of “How”
What is the grammatical function of "how" in this sentence:
He told us how to do it.
5
votes
3answers
163 views
What part of speech does “here” have in “I am here”?
What part of speech does here have in the following sentence?
I am here.
I say that in that sentence, here must be an adverb because:
It modifies the verb am by describing where I am.
Am is a ...
4
votes
4answers
188 views
Adverbial form of “timely”
The following sentence seems incorrect to me, because the adjective timely is being used as an adverb:
Payments not received timely will be returned and additional interest
will be due.
That ...
4
votes
6answers
339 views
The name of “Scientific American” — two adjectives without a substantive?
Does the name Scientific American consist of two adjectives? What is the substantive?
4
votes
2answers
264 views
What is the word “who”?
Is the word "who" an adverb? If not, what is it? If it is an adverb, what type of adverb is it?
4
votes
1answer
287 views
Is “it is a fun game” correct?
"It is a lot of fun," sounds correct, but not, "it is a fun game."
Isn't fun a noun? Then why is it used as an adjective?
I have heard this usage even by literary giants, so this cannot be a common ...
4
votes
1answer
138 views
What part of the sentence is “you” in “telling you who that is”?
The object is "who that is", right? And the verb is "telling", but what is "you"?
Further sentences:
Did they give 'him' a reward?
Will you be able to find 'them' a home?
I have given 'her' a lot ...
4
votes
3answers
3k views
Is “architect” a verb and a noun?
I hear the word architect used as a verb in the technical field and now more often in other industries and groups, for example:
We need to architect a better solution to the problem.
I am ...
4
votes
2answers
424 views
How to categorize “grrrr”, “errhh”, “argh”,..?
What are these called in English?
Are they same thing as "Gosh" or "Gee"?
Maybe sounds of emotional changes?
4
votes
3answers
13k views
Part of speech of “very,” “extremely,” “really,” and “quite”
While working on developing the lexicon in one of my constructed languages, I encountered a slight difficulty in using standard classifications for words like very, extremely, really, and quite.
To ...
4
votes
1answer
7k views
Is “is” an auxiliary verb? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Is "is" an auxiliary verb?
My Mum's bag is blue.
Is is an auxillary verb in that sentence? If not, what part of speech is it?
4
votes
3answers
558 views
Can adjectives always be used as nouns when they denote a plural and are preceded by the definite article?
An adjective appears to be used as a noun when denoting an animate plural and preceded by the definite article:
'The successful are those who strive.'
'The foolish are those who ...
4
votes
5answers
937 views
Can someone help me diagram this sentence?
I'm trying to do a sentence/phrase analysis of the following sentence. I just can't figure out, what would “No matter the season” be (Adv. of ...) in terms of sentence elements.
And the next question ...
4
votes
1answer
149 views
Building a phrase structure of “On the weekend …”
I'm reading Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing, and I'm doing one of the early exercises, trying to work out some of the language infliction about the word 'fun'.
On the ...
4
votes
1answer
112 views
Can “stemwind” be used as a verb?
Further to my question on the suitability of the word, heartland to “shout-out” in today’s New York Times’ article, “The Rough Rider and the Professor,” I have one more question about the usage of the ...
4
votes
1answer
66 views
Identifying the class of this word
I'm reading the Wikipedia page on garden-path sentences. One example is:
The government plans to raise taxes were defeated.
What class of word is government in this sentence?
I read this ...
4
votes
1answer
273 views
Most Common Parses of the English language?
I hope I've got the right forum. I want to know about English specifically, although this is a linguistics question.
A common task in NLP and Computational Linguistics is to generate parse trees for ...
3
votes
4answers
403 views
Usage of the word “understatement”
What does it mean when some book says that some algorithm is not so obvious, and then in brackets () says that this is possibly “the biggest understatement in this book”? Is the writer actually ...
3
votes
4answers
964 views
What part of speech is “back” in “put the book back on the table”?
Put the book back on the table.
I'm having trouble. I think it is a preposition.
3
votes
4answers
518 views
Is there a term for the part of a sentence that is in the form “Customers who …” or “Products that …”?
For the purpose of building a dynamic user interface within an software application I wish to separate parts of a set of phrases which would be in the form of the examples below.
Examples:
...
3
votes
3answers
148 views
What part of speech is “methinks”?
Dictionaries call this word a verb, but it doesn't seem to behave like any other verb in the English language. Another question on this site calls it a “conjoined pronoun-verb combination”, which ...
3
votes
2answers
258 views
What is the grammatical function of “never”?
What is the grammatical function of "never" in the following sentence?
You will have to do something you've never done.
Is it an adverb? My father disagrees with this.
In "I have studied" vs. ...
3
votes
2answers
805 views
To use “test” as an adjectival noun, is the proper form “test” or “testing”?
When I write a document, I am confused when to use test or testing in my document. For example, which one makes a better statement below?
A test engineer vs A testing engineer
software test tool vs ...
3
votes
1answer
971 views
Grammar of “married” in “getting married”
What is the grammar of the word married in this sentence?
They are getting married in April.
3
votes
4answers
554 views
Using 'stuck' as a verb
The visual studio kept stucking under RDP yesterday
Should 'stuck' become a present tense verb? It seems like "getting stuck" is too long for the modern world where it happens much more ...
3
votes
2answers
355 views
What part of speech is “atom” in “hydrogen atom”?
What is the type (adjective, noun, etc.) of the word atom in hydrogen atom?
I think that atom here does not qualify hydrogen in any way and we can use it or not, and the meaning of the word hydrogen ...
3
votes
2answers
422 views
Correct usage of “in that”
I've heard in that used as a synonym for because, but I don't think that this is semantically correct in all cases.
That car is nice, in that it is blue.
This sentence generally makes sense to ...
3
votes
1answer
362 views
Are both the “special” and the “needs” in “special needs” adjectives?
In the sentence, "she is a special needs child" (referring to someone with a disability), what parts of speech are the words "special needs"? Are both adjectives on their own, or do they only form an ...
3
votes
1answer
653 views
What is the defiant “HMPH!” sound called?
What's the name of the sound a child makes after an angry, declarative and usually defiant statement.
Parent:
John, you can't take a cookie out of the cookie jar.
Child:
Yes, I can! HMPH!
