Topic 2 (session A) - Being creative with words and phrases > Manipulating word classes

Manipulating word classes

This section looks at how the choice of particular word classes can affect style and/or meaning.

Unusual densities or patterns of particular word classes can have effects on style and meaning. Ellegard (1978) has published a set of average frequencies for written English based on the Brown corpus of American English. In the following sections we refer to his average frequencies for nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs for comparative purposes.

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