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Form
and Structure Classes
When the structural linguists
went about identifying the word categories of English, they did so by
examining the language as it is actually used, by reading personal letters
and listening to phone conversations. They looked at the words themselves,
at their forms, their meanings, and their functions in the sentence, and
then established two main categories: the form classes and the structure
classes. To understand the difference between these two groups, imagine
hearing someone say to you, "Boy needs drink water." Your first
response would probably be to recognize the person as a nonnative speaker
of English. By adding extra words wouldn't change the effect of the
message, but they would provide a certain kind of meaning. Those extra
words are structure classes.
Form Classes
These are the large, open classes of words that provide the lexical
content of the language: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Each has
characteristic derivational and inflectional morphemes that distinguish
its forms.
Structure Classes
These are the small, closed classes of words that explain the grammatical
or structural relationships of the form classes.
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