Spanish Word Classes: Nouns, Adjectives and Grammatical Categories Explained
Class D Words:
Words can be classified as: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, determiners, verbs, adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions.
Grammatical Categories
Variable and Invariable Categories:
Variable: Words that vary to express meaning through flexive morphemes of gender and number. The verb is also variable because it changes its morphological form to express person, number, time, manner and aspect.
Invariable: Words that do not change their morphological form. These are adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions.
Interjections:
Words that do not belong to any category are interjections.
The Nouns:
Nouns are words used to classify and name beings and identities.
- Common and Proper: Common nouns designate all beings of the same class. Proper nouns identify and individualize one being, distinguishing it from its own kind. They include anthroponyms (personal names) and toponyms (geographic names such as cities).
- Concrete and Abstract: Concrete nouns designate beings that can be perceived by the senses. Abstract nouns designate concepts that exist only in the mind and cannot be perceived by the senses.
- Countable and Uncountable: Countable nouns designate realities that beings can count. Uncountable nouns designate realities that cannot be counted, or that cannot be counted in their singular form.
- Individual and Collective: Individual nouns are singular and designate only one member of a set, such as book. Collective nouns designate in singular a set of countable beings of the same kind.
Way:
Variable substantive words are those that admit morphological gender and number, which agree with the nominal structure to match the substantive and the word they refer to.
The Gender:
Masculine / Feminine. When a noun designates an animal or person, the gender distinguishes their sex. Most nouns do not designate a sex, so they do not admit variation. In cases where the noun refers to a being that has sex, the Spanish language differentiates through procedures of masculine and feminine.
- Flexive morphemes: Masculine (-o, -e, -"o) / Feminine (-a)
- Special suffixes (poet - poetess)
- Different words (father - mother)
- Lines: (determiners and adjectives: the journalist - the journalist)
The Number:
Number indicates the variation of whether a word is plural or singular. The plural is marked with flexive morphemes (-s, -es).
- Nouns or adjectives ending in unstressed vowels or "e" form the plural with -s.
- Nouns or adjectives ending in a consonant form the plural with -es, and in some cases with -s.
- Nouns or adjectives ending in -s have two possibilities:
- Acute word: add -es.
- Non-acute word: there is no mark with the plural morpheme, and the plural and singular are distinguished through determiners and adjectives.
The Adjective
Adjectives express qualities, meaning or properties. They are words that accompany a substantive, describing its characteristics, qualities or traits.
The adjective is a variable word that receives morphological gender and number flexives, which must agree with the substantive it refers to. Some adjectives do not admit gender morphology (except for plural rules, as with substantives).
The Gradation of the Adjective
The qualities of adjectives can be expressed with greater or lesser intensity. Gradation of the adjective is the way we express a greater or lesser degree of the quality signified by the adjective. There are three degrees:
- Positive
- Comparative
- Superlative (relative and absolute)
A) Positive: The modifier appears without any additional meaning, simply expressing the quality.
B) Comparative: Expresses intensity through comparing one thing with another regarding the quality. There are three classes:
- Of superiority: more than your content
- Of inferiority: less than your content
- Of equality: as much as your content
C) Superlative: Expresses the quality of the adjective at its highest level. There are two types:
- Absolute: the quality is placed at the highest grade, independent of other elements. It is expressed through adverbs (very, extremely) or through suffixes (-ísimo, -érrimo).
- Relative: one element is distinguished from a group of elements in having the quality to the highest or lowest degree. The adjective is accompanied by a prepositional complement introduced by "de".
Explicative and Specificative Adjectives
Specificative: Expresses a quality of a being that is necessary to distinguish it from other beings of the same set to which it belongs.
Explicative: Expresses a quality of a being that does not distinguish it from other beings or objects, since it is a quality that can be attributed to the substantive it refers to.