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October 02, 2005
Language Chapter 3 Assignment
Question #2
The auxiliary verb “to be” is different from other verbs, like the verb “ask”, because the verb is conjugated by using different words which have almost no similarity to one another. For example, the first person singular form of the verb “to be” is “am”. The third person singular is “is”. The third person plural is “are”. These verb forms follow no pattern and are very random. On the other hand, the verb “see” is conjugated by adding a suffix to the verb. For example, the third person singular form is “sees”. This is distinctly different from the way that the verb “to be” is conjugated. Thus, I have to conclude that although the verb “to be” may seem like an auxiliary verb, it is not. It has a very strong, straightforward purpose and definitely is not just a “helping verb”. The verb “to be” is often used along with other verbs, for example, “Johnny is playing with Suzy.”. However, it is also used by itself, for example, in the sentence “Maria is five years old”. Thus, I would definitely say that the verb “to be” is a content word.
Quantifiers are definitely not a closed class. Quantifiers are created every day and used differently by various groups. For example, as a Rhode Islander, I say “wicked” as a quantifier. For example, I commonly say, “This pasta is wicked good.”. For people from another region, this may seem odd, but for my friends and I this term is perfectly normal and part of everyday speech.
I definitely believe that this our brain handles function words differently than content words. Content words have a distinct purpose in our brain; we can attach a picture to the content word in our head. However, function words are much more ambiguous, and it is difficult for most people to attach a distinct meaning to function words. In the same way, function words are very difficult to translate into other languages. In my French course, that is one of the things I struggle with most because function words do not follow any finite rules, instead they are used interchangeably and without pattern. Thus, I think our brain does store these two types of words differently, simply because content words are easier to attach a concrete idea onto.
Posted by lciscotis at October 2, 2005 12:17 AM