bstract

Words can be classified by various criteria, but as a technical term ‘word class’ (or ‘part of
speech’) refers to the morphosyntactically defined categories noun, verb, adjective, adverb,
adposition, conjunction, pronoun (and a few others). There are two main types of word
classes: content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and function words
(adpositions, conjunctions, pronouns, and others). Nouns, verbs, and adjectives are generally
defined by morphosyntactic criteria within a language, but cross-linguistically they can be
identified only semantically. Despite considerable cross-linguistic diversity, there are also
clear general trends: e.g., nouns tend to be marked for number, verbs tend to be marked for
tense, adjectives tend to occur in a special comparative construction. Languages are often
said to lack adjectives entirely, and for some languages it has been claimed that no noun–verb
distinction exists, but on closer inspection it is possible to find differences between nouns,
verbs, and adjectives in almost all languages.

Word Classes and Parts of Speech (PDF Download Available). Available from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279616289_Word_Classes_and_Parts_of_Speech
[accessed May 16 2018].