Ingles

EXERCISES – OPEN AND CLOSED WORD CLASSES


EXERCISE 1

a) Which of the following nouns are count nouns (i.e. having a plural), and which are mass nouns?weed, gold, rigidity, laugh, rubbish, employer, music, steam, week

b) Many nouns (like hair) are capable of acting as both count nouns and mass nouns, but withsome difference of meaning.

• Explain such differences of meaning in the following:

paper, grass, cake, coffee, room, business, success, kindness, rope

•Alternatively, illustrate the differences with simple sentences taken from online
dictionaries.

c) Some English nouns have irregular plural forms (e.g. the pluralof man is men, not the regular *mans). Find two examples of each of the following kinds of irregular plural:

Plurals involving a change of vowel in the stem:Plurals ending in –i:
Plurals ending in –a:
Plurals which a have the same form as the singular:


EXERCISE 2

a) Make a table showing the Vo, Vs, Ved, Vingand Ven forms for the following verbs: take, receive, begin, run, sleep, meet. Which of these verbs is regular?

b) Find ten irregular verbs (apart from the verbsalready listed or discussed), and list their five forms. (We talk of ‘five forms’, but two or more of these forms may of course have the same spelling andpronunciation: e.g. the Vo, Ved and Ven forms of put are all put).


EXERCISE 3

Which of the following adjectives are gradable? Explain how you arrived at the answers.a kind thought
dirty water
a major success
criminal law
a Japanese wrestler
a male pig
a chauvinist pig
an absolute pig
careful speech
a whole pizza