Spanish words and their structure

In this and subsequent chapters we will make reference to the traditional parts of speech according to which the words of Spanish and many other languages have been classied. ese are listed, with brief characterisations, in Table 3.1:

Table 3.1 The traditional parts of speech

part of speech characteristic functions

characteristic forms examples

noun (nombre, sustantivo)

a word denoting a thing, a person or an abstract notion

Spanish nouns are masculine or feminine in gender and singular or plural in number.