Content Words (the Open Class of Words)
Cornelia C. Paraskevas · 2020
This chapter considers content words that includes nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Most nouns will accept the plural and possessive affixes—and can be preceded by a determiner; these are the typical nouns. A small fraction of nouns, however, cannot be made plural; these are the non-typical nouns. Verbs are the second most common category of content words—approximately 10% of the words in a text are verbs. One of the important properties of verbs is that they show tense—broadly understood, tense refers to the time an event occurred. Adjectives are words used primarily to modify (add detail or quality) to nouns; providing more detail to nouns through the use of adjectives is one of the features of academic writing. Adverbs is the least common category, occurring mainly in spoken texts and in fiction. In general, adverbs can perform four functions: intensifiers, adverbial adjuncts, stance adverbials, and connectors or linking adverbials.