ABSTRACT
A content word, also known as a noun, is in general a word that normally functions as the subject or the object of a verb in sentences. There are eight classes of content words: nouns, proper names, place words, time words, determinatives, measures, localizers and pronouns. Pronouns, localizers, determinatives and measure words can be easily told apart, since they are enumerable closed sets. The major portions of the content words are nouns. Their primary syntactic property is that they are modifiable by determinative-measure (D-M) compounds but not by adverbs. In general, proper names are content words that cannot be modified by D-M compounds, although there are some exceptions. A place word is a content word which can occur in the following grammatical patterns. Time words are content words that express temporal concepts. Proper names are different from common nouns as a common noun refers to a type of object while a proper noun refers to a specific individual.
