Grammatical Categories: Nouns, Verbs, Pronouns, Determiners

Determiners (Determinants)

Determiners are classified into the following types:

• Articles: (e.g., the, a)
• Demonstrative: (e.g., this, that)
• Possessive: (e.g., my, your, his)
• Indefinite: (e.g., no, many)
• Numerals: (cardinal, ordinal, duales)
• Punctuation Marks/Interrogatives: (e.g., how, why) (Note: These words typically function as adverbs or interrogatives, not standard determiners.)

Syntactic Function of Determiners

Determiners accompany a noun. When they function as modifiers or updaters, they operate when adjacent to the noun.

Verbs

A verb is a word that expresses an action, process, or state.

Morphological Structure of Verbs

Verbs are distinguished because they can be decomposed into a root and an ending (or suffix).

• The root provides the basic meaning of the verb.
• The ending provides the grammatical meaning, including:
  • Tense
  • Mood
  • Person
  • Number
  • Aspect

Syntactic Function of Verbs

The verb performs the core function of the verbal predicate. This function can also be performed by a periphrasis (a multi-word verbal construction).

Nouns

A noun is a variable word class that designates entities with independent existence: humans, animals, objects, and concepts.

Semantic Classification of Nouns

Nouns are classified semantically into:

• Common and Proper
• Concrete and Abstract
• Countable and Uncountable
• Collective and Individual

Morphological Inflection of Nouns

Nouns support inflection for gender and number.

Gender

All nouns have gender (masculine or feminine). In some nouns, gender distinguishes sex. There are nouns referring to people where gender and sex do not support typical gender inflections. These include:

• Heteronyms: Using different nouns to distinguish sex (e.g., father, mother).
• Common Gender Nouns: Changing the gender of the determiner or the adjective (e.g., the girl child).
• Epicene Nouns: Adding modifiers like 'male' or 'female' (e.g., chimpanzee male / female).

Number

Nouns may be singular or plural. The plural morpheme is formed by adding the inflectional morphemes -s or -es.

Syntactic Function of Nouns

Nouns combine with functional determiners and adjectives, serving as the core of the noun phrase.

Pronouns

Pronouns are variable words that appear in place of a noun and can play the same roles as the noun.

Syntactic Function of Pronouns

Pronouns perform the same functions as nouns. They are distinguished because they combine with determiners and adjectives (in certain contexts).

Morphological Inflection and Classification

Pronoun inflection supports gender, number, and person. They are classified as:

• Personal: (e.g., I, me, you, him)
• Relative/Interrogative: (e.g., what, who, which, and their plural forms)
• Demonstrative: (e.g., this, that, and their feminine and plural forms)
• Indefinite: (e.g., someone, something, nobody, nothing)
• Exclamative/Interrogative: (e.g., what, how, which)