6. What does it mean to know a word? Using a word requires four kinds of information: 1. its sound (phonology) 2. its meaning (semantics) 3. how the words are related,such as the plural (for nouns) and past tense (for verbs) in other words, how these are formed (Morphological information) 4. Its category (e.g. noun or verb) and how it is used in the sentence (syntax)
7. How to identify lexical categories (parts of speech) 1. One way of identifying a lexical category is by focusing on closely related forms: fork/forks, book/books, truck/trucks. tall/bright/old. It would be unacceptable to add an –s to adjectives in English, but rather the final –er, -est. 2. Another way of identifying a category is to see how these words occur together in phrases.
8. For example: nouns can be preceded by “the” or “a/an”, a fork/the fork and plural forms with –s can be preceded by the. Basic adjectives such as old can be preceded by very or too, as in too bright. Basic verbs can be preceded by can/will, willlaugh. See the following patterns:
9.
10. Verbs English-speaking children implicitly know that verbs have a set of related forms (talk, talks, talked, talking) and that the basic verb form-the one without an ending-can be preceded by can or will. Subcategories Sarah told the joke *Sarah laughed the joke *sarah told at the joke Sarah laughed at the joke *Sarah told Sarah laugheded.
11. The verbs ‘told’ and ‘laughed’ don’t permit the same structures to occur after them.
12. Nouns Nouns share certain properties of form. They have a shared set of endings. For instance, forks (noun+number). Number is a term used to cover singular and plural. In English nearly all nouns have distinct singular and plural forms. Regular: cat/cats Irregular: tooth/teeth Exceptions: sheep, deer are both sing/plur.