Assignment, CONTENT WORDS

CONTENT WORDS

Compiled by:

Dewiyah

Elis Nurfajar Rachmawaty

Hasanah

Iis Darmayanti

Content words (in blue) are further classified into Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs. There are tens of thousands of them in a language and so they make up most of the words in a dictionary.  Proper nouns (names of people and places) are not usually a problem for understanding, but are also Content Words.

ARTICLE

I. USING A or Ө: GENERIC NOUNS
SINGULAR COUNT NOUN	(a) A banana is yellow.	A speaker uses generic nouns to make generalizations. A generic noun respresents a whole class of things; it is not specific, real, concenrate thing but rather a symbol of a whole group. In (a) and (b): The speaker is talking about any banana, all bananas, bananas in general. In (c), the speaker is talking about any and all fruit, fruit in general. Notice that no article (Ө) is used to make generalizations with plural count nouns and noncount nouns, as in (b) and (c).
PLURAL CONTENT NOUN	(b) Ө bananas are yellow.
NONCOUNT NOUN	(c) Ө fruit is good for you.

II. USING A or SOME: INDEFINITE NOUNS
SINGULAR COUNT NOUN	(a) I ate a banana.	Indefinite nouns are actual things (not symbol), but they are not specifically identified. In (d): The speaker is not referring to “this banana” or “that banana you gave me.” The speaker is simply saying that s/he ate one banana. The listener does not know nor need to know which specific banana was eaten; it was simply one banana out of what whole group of things in this world called bananas. In (e) and (f): Some is often used with indefinite plural count nouns and indefinite noncount nouns. In addition to some, a speaker might use two, a few, several, a lot of, etc., with plural count nouns, or a little, a lot of, etc., with noncount nouns.
PLURAL CONTENT NOUN	(b) I ate some bananas.
NONCOUNT NOUN	(c) I ate some fruit.

 

A / AN

Use 'a' with nouns starting with a consonant (letters that are not vowels),
'an' with nouns starting with a vowel (a,e,i,o,u)

Examples

• A boy
• An apple
• A car
• An orange
• A house
• An opera

NOTE:
An before an h mute - an hour, an honour.
A before u and eu when they sound like 'you': a european, a university, a unit
The indefinite article is used:

• to refer to something for the first time:
  An elephant and a mouse fell in love.
  Would you like a drink?
  I've finally got a good job.
• to refer to a particular member of a group or class

Examples:

• with names of jobs:
  John is a doctor.
  Mary is training to be an engineer.
  He wants to be a dancer.
• with nationalities and religions:
  John is an Englishman.
  Kate is a Catholic.
• with musical instruments:
  Sherlock Holmes was playing a violin when the visitor arrived.
  (BUT to describe the activity we say "He plays the violin.")
• with names of days:
  I was born on a Thursday
• to refer to a kind of, or example of something:
  the mouse had a tiny nose
  the elephant had a long trunk
  it was a very strange car
• with singular nouns, after the words 'what' and 'such':
  What a shame!
  She's such a beautiful girl.
• meaning 'one', referring to a single object or person:
  I'd like an orange and two lemons please.
  The burglar took a diamond necklace and a valuable painting

*Usually a/an is used with a singular generic count noun. Example:

Ø  A window is made of glass

Ø  A doctor heals sick people

Ø  Parents must give a child love

Ø  A box has six sides

Ø  An apple can be red, green, or yellow

III. USING THE: DEFINITE NOUNS
SINGULAR COUNT NOUN	(a) Thank you for the banana.	A noun is definite when both the speaker and the listener are thinking about the same specific thing. In (a): The speaker uses the because the listener knows which specific banana the speaker is talking about, i.e., that particular banana which the listener gave to the speaker. Notice that the is used with both singular and plural count nouns and with noncount nouns.
PLURAL COUNT NOUN	(b) Thank you for the bananas.
NONCOUNT NOUN	(c) Thank you for the fruit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE

Articles in English are invariable. That is, they do not change according to the gender or number of the noun they refer to, e.g. the boy, the woman, the children
'The' is used:
1. to refer to something which has already been mentioned.

Ø  An elephant and a mouse fell in love.

Ø  The mouse loved the elephant's long trunk,
and the elephant loved the mouse's tiny nose.

2. when both the speaker and listener know what is being talked about, even if it has not been mentioned before.

Ø  'Where's the bathroom?'
'It's on the first floor.'

3. in sentences or clauses where we define or identify a particular person or object:

Ø  The man who wrote this book is famous.
'Which car did you scratch?' 'The red one.
My house is the one with a blue door.'

4. to refer to objects we regard as unique:

Ø  the sun, the moon, the world

5. before superlatives and ordinal numbers: (see Adjectives)

Ø  the highest building, the first page, the last chapter.

6. with adjectives, to refer to a whole group of people:

Ø  the Japanese (see Nouns - Nationalities), the old

7. with names of geographical areas and oceans:

Ø  the Caribbean, the Sahara, the Atlantic

8. with decades, or groups of years:

Ø  she grew up in the seventies