Let us begin with – words. 

Most everyone is familiar at some level with word classes, or types: Nouns, adjectives, prepositions, pronouns, and so forth. In this section we will introduce some fundamental ideas about word types that are essential for understanding how language works.

There are two basic categories of words, a division which seems to hold true for most any language you are likely to encounter. Linguistics call these open and closed word classes, but teachers often call them content words and function words.They differ in fundamental ways, and are further subdivided into some categories you are probably familiar with (like nouns), and some you might not be (such as intensifiers). 

Open class, or content, words (also sometimes called lexical words), are those words that carry the main meanings, or content, of a text. In English and other languages, content words are further subdivided into four large groups: 

• Nouns – words that name people, places, things, and – well, it gets more complicated quickly! 
• Adjectives – words that describe and identify nouns
• Verbs – words that describe actions, states of mind, or conditions
• Adverbs – words that describe verbs, and do other describing-like things

The reason linguists call them “open class” is because there are thousands of these words, and English speakers are constantly adding new ones, changing or adding meanings of existing ones, using existing words in new categories, and so on. A major task of dictionary authors is to decide which “new words” have become popular enough to be added to dictionaries, when to add or subtract secondary definitions to or from existing content words, and so on. The vast majority of these open class words are low in frequency, and learning content words is perhaps the single most difficult and most important task that a language learner faces. 

In the text box, write in some words that think did not exist 50 or 100 years ago – or if they did exist, maybe they had a completely different meaning.

For some interesting linguistic facts about words: 

Activity

Closed class words, or function words, are by contrast those words which help us to make sense of, or better understand, the content words. Some examples of function words include: From, you, the, under, but, therefore, and so on. A sentence composed entirely of content words can make perfect sense – for example, Dogs need exercise or Rich people eat expensive food. By comparison, it is impossible to make sense of sentences consisting only of function words. Linguists also call these words “closed class” because for each type there is a limited and fixed set of words. For example, the subject pronouns in English are generally thought to be the following: I, you, he, she, it, they, and we. There are no other subject pronouns which are universally used in English. Another example of this phenomenon of the closed class are the articles – in English the articles in general use are the, a, and an. In addition to being limited in their number, function words tend to change form and meaning far less frequently than do content words  – in fact, function words can continue fundamentally unchanged for centuries. A student of English will generally be expected to know all, or most, of the function words of English. These are some of the major classes of function words we will examine: 

Pronouns 

Prepositions 

Determiners (this class includes several important subgroups such as articles, demonstratives, and others) 

Conjunctions 

Modals (and other types of auxiliary verbs)

And so on. 

In the text box, write several words that you  think would be classed as function words. 

Note: There is a third “class” of words that don’t quite fit either of these definitions. These are individual words that stand entirely on their own and don’t require (or allow, really) anything else alongside them to carry meaning. They are called “inserts” and are very common in speech but far less common in writing.  They include exclamations such as Ouch!, Wow! And Hey!, curse words when used by themselves, interjections, and sounds that have some qualities of words, such as oof and ugh. Because these words don’t really have “rules for use” and don’t require any grammar, per se, they are not discussed further – but