15.10. The Classification of Words

The words in the English language -- for the most part -- can be divided and classified into fairly simple groups. Yes, there are all sorts of intricacies that complicate the matter but we will ignore these at the present moment for the sake of simplicity:

1. 'Nouns' -- represent life and/or man-made structures (visibly non-moving to very slow-moving things;

2. Verbs -- represent life and/or man-made processes (visibly faster moving things);

3. 'Adjectives' for the most part describe nouns;

4. 'Adverbs' for the most part describe verbs;

5. 'Pronouns' either describe nouns as well (like 'the' or 'a' -- definite vs. indefinite articles), or replace them (like 'I' or 'it'...)

6. 'Conjunctions' and 'prepositions' are words that indicate a particular type of relationship between different things -- structures and/or processes (such as 'and' -- conjunction -- or 'over' and 'under' -- prepositions);

7. 'Exclamations' like 'Hey!' or 'Ohhhh!'

Let us get out of this short discussion before my rustiness with English grammar exposes itself, and/or all of the hundreds of exceptions to the rules start to kick in. English would be a relatively easy language if there were not so many darn exceptions to the rules!

dgb, Nov. 1st, 2007.