CLASSIFICATION OF WORDS

By use frequency: basic word stock and non-basic vocabulary

By notion: content words and functional words

By origin: native words and borrowed words

Basic word stock: the foundation of the vocabulary accumulated over centuries and forms the common core of the language. It constitutes a small percentage of the English vocabulary but it is the most important part of it. The characteristics:

1. all national character (the most important feature);

2. stability;

3. productivity;

4. polysemy;

5 collocability.

Non-basic word-stock includes: 1. Terminology ; 2. Jargon ; 3. Slang; 4. Argot; 5. Dialectal words; 6. Archaisms; 7. Neologisms etc.

Content words (notional words) denote clear notions, including: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverb and numerals, which denote objects, phenomena, action, quality, state, degree, quantity. They constitute the main body of the English vocabulary and are numerous. Functional words (empty words or form words): do not have notions of their own. Their chief function is to express the relation between notions, the relation between words and between sentences. They include prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries and articles. Functional words make up a very small number of the vocabulary, remain stable. Functional words do far more work of expression in English on average than content words.

Native words (Anglo-Saxon words) were brought to Britain in the fifth century by the German tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. They are small in number, about 50,000 to 60,000, but they form the mainstream of the basic word stock and stand at the core of the language. They have other two features: neutral in style and frequent in use. The percentage of native words in use runs usually as high as 70 to 90 percent. Borrowed words (loan words or borrowings) are taken over from foreign languages. English is a heavy borrower. Loans constitute approximately 80 percent of the Modern English vocabulary.

There are more criteria for words classification.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 1042