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• the “minor” word classes (article, preposition, conjunction, pronoun)
• the “major” word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)
• other word classes (infinitive marker, interjection, numeral)
ystem applies very nicely to Danish as well as English, although some VISL members of
Danish group would like to add one more word class (proper nouns), bringing the
nish count up to 12. More on this below.
PTER 7: “Minor” word classes vs. “major” word classes
It is important at the outset to gain a clear sense of the traditional distinction
between minor and major when these labels are used to refer to word classes.
As a point of departure, it should be noted that the word minor does not mean
“insignificant”, nor does major mean “significant”. Grammatically speaking,
in fact, the minor word classes are highly significant. It would be difficult
indeed to construct an English or Danish text of any length without involving
one or more of these classes. The word minor is therefore best interpreted as
meaning “(relatively) small”, while major means “(relatively) large”. The
minor word classes simply have fewer members than the major word classes.
This is due principally to the fact that the minor word classes do not add new
members readily. The minor classes are more or less “closed” (to new
members), whereas the major classes are “open”.
Furthermore, members of the minor word classes typically do not take endings
(suffixes) of any kind. Thus, while a noun such as book can be made plural by
adding the suffix –s (books), and a verb such as talk can be given past tense
associations by adding the suffix –ed (talked), no suffixes can be added to the
article the, the preposition in, the conjunction and, or the pronoun some
(except when these are treated as specific words in a text: e.g. “How many
and’s are there in this chapter?”).
Another distinction between the minor and major word classes is that the latter
have, in some sense, more “meaning” than the former. Thus in a sentence such
as The beautiful young cashier put some of the money in her purse and then
quietly left the store, the most meaningful words are those belonging to the
major word classes: nouns (cashier, money, purse, store), verbs (put, left),
adjectives (beautiful, young) adverbs (then, quietly) – whereas the items
belonging to the minor word classes are more difficult to define: article (the),
preposition (of), conjunction (and), pronouns (some, her). This distinction is
often captured by saying that the role of the minor word classes is primarily
grammatical, while that of the major word classes is primarily lexical.
The following table summarizes the basic differences between the minor and
major word classes:
page 41
John M. Dienhart