WORDS CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO FORMATION
CLASSIFICATION OF WORDS ACCORDING TO INFLECTION
There are two kinds of words, thus considered: variable and invariable:
| INVARIABLES: | preposition conjunction interjection | They may be simple or compound, made up, that is, of one word or more. |
| VARIABLES: | in gender and number | nouns | may be of masculine, feminine, neuter or common gender. form their plurals by adding -s or by changing the root vowel (umlaut) | |||
| in gender, number person and case | pronouns | have special words for each form: e.g. he, him, who, whom, I, me, etc. | ||||
| in degree | adjectives adverbs | -er for comparative -est for superlative | ||||
| in person, number, tense and mood | verbs | show third person singular by adding -s, and old second person singular by adding -st show moods by adding -ing, -ed or by vowel change for participles: or by special forms (I be, he be, etc.) for subjunctive. show tense by suffix -ed, -t: or by vowel change (I go, I went). show irregular forms. | ||||
| for phonetic reasons | definite article indefinite | the has two pronunciations according to the following word. a becomes an before a vowel. |
CLASSIFICATION OF WORDS ACCORDING TO THEIR USE
(Parts of Speech)
| Article | Verb | Pronoun |
| Noun | Adverb | Conjunction |
| Adjective | Preposition | Interjection |
Note: In actual usage the parts of speech perform not only their own functions, but also the functions of other parts of speech, for instance, the adjective, verb, adverb, conjunction, etc., may be used as nouns. The participles, etc., may be used as adjectives, or as clauses, etc.