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Describing language
Describing language

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2.3 Can you tell what class a word is from its shape?

There is often enough information in the form of a word, and its place in a sentence, to tell what word class it belongs to, even if the meaning is unclear or unknown. Nonsense poetry, as written by the Victorian writers Edward Lear (1812–88) and Lewis Carroll (1832–98), depends on this information to make it work. Let’s look at an example, an extract from the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

You shouldn’t have a problem recognising and, the, did, in, all and were (they are all closed class words, which you’ll take a closer look at in a minute). But what about the other ones: brillig, slithy, toves, gyre, and the rest? Can you guess what class of words they are? Try the following activity to find out.

Activity 4 Making sense of nonsense

Timing: This activity should take around 10 minutes

a. 

Pronoun


b. 

Adjective


c. 

Determiner


d. 

Auxiliary verb


e. 

Verb


f. 

Preposition


g. 

Noun


The correct answer is b.

a. 

Adjective


b. 

Noun


c. 

Verb


d. 

Determiner


e. 

Auxiliary verb


f. 

Preposition


g. 

Pronoun


The correct answer is a.

a. 

Adjective


b. 

Pronoun


c. 

Preposition


d. 

Determiner


e. 

Verb


f. 

Auxiliary verb


g. 

Noun


The correct answer is g.

a. 

Verb


b. 

Determiner


c. 

Pronoun


d. 

Adjective


e. 

Noun


f. 

Preposition


g. 

Auxiliary verb


The correct answer is a.

a. 

Determiner


b. 

Pronoun


c. 

Noun


d. 

Verb


e. 

Preposition


f. 

Adjective


g. 

Auxiliary verb


The correct answer is d.

a. 

Preposition


b. 

Pronoun


c. 

Verb


d. 

Determiner


e. 

Adjective


f. 

Noun


g. 

Auxiliary verb


The correct answer is f.

a. 

Pronoun


b. 

Adjective


c. 

Noun


d. 

Determiner


e. 

Verb


f. 

Auxiliary verb


g. 

Preposition


The correct answer is b.

a. 

Adjective


b. 

Pronoun


c. 

Determiner


d. 

Noun


e. 

Preposition


f. 

Auxiliary verb


g. 

Verb


The correct answer is d.

a. 

Adjective


b. 

Noun


c. 

Pronoun


d. 

Preposition


e. 

Determiner


f. 

Auxiliary verb


g. 

Verb


The correct answer is a.

a. 

Verb


b. 

Pronoun


c. 

Adjective


d. 

Preposition


e. 

Noun


f. 

Determiner


g. 

Auxiliary verb


The correct answer is e.

a. 

Auxiliary verb


b. 

Verb


c. 

Adjective


d. 

Noun


e. 

Pronoun


f. 

Determiner


g. 

Preposition


The correct answer is b.

Discussion

Your expanding knowledge of morphology probably helped you here. The -s at the end of toves, borogroves and raths, for example, probably suggested to you that these words were plural nouns. This deduction is supported by the being directly before the word (or before what could be an adjective: slithy and mome). We can use grammatical information like this to help us understand any difficult text. But even a writer as creative as Lewis Carroll, who found it easy to invent what look and sound like new open class words, couldn’t come up with any useful new closed class words.

It’s not possible to give an accurate number of how many open class words there are in English; new words are always being created, and old ones fall out of use. But we can estimate that they make up the vast majority of the 20–40,000 words known by an average speaker of English. Luckily, there are many fewer closed class words in English. You’ll take a look at each main type in the next section.