Words’ Syntactic Functions
Typically, nouns refer to entities in the world like people, animals and things.
Determiners describe the particular reference of a noun and adjectives describe the properties of nouns.
Verbs are used to describe actions, activities and states.
Adverbs modify a verb in the same way as adjectives modify nouns. Prepositions are typically small words that express spatial or time relationships. Prepositions can also be used as particules to create phrasal verbs. Conjonctions and complementizers link two words, phrases or clauses.