Recognizing Structure WordsAs you will remember, the eight parts of speech divide fairly easily into Content Words (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) and Structure Words (prepositions, conjunctions, determiners and pronouns).
On this page we will look at how to recognize the four types of Structure Words. This is not very difficult, and is mostly a matter of practice, so there are several exercises. See the Recognizing Content Words page for reasons why being able to recognize these word types is important. A few tipsDeterminers are the little words, the most common being articles, that accompany nouns. Words like le,
la, les, un, une, des, son, sa, ses, ce, cette, ces, quelques, plusieurs
and the numbers un, deux, trois, quatre, etc. Conjunctions are either coordinating or subordinating. Coordinating conjunctions you rarely have to worry about, since you won't be looking them up very often (except or and car maybe... Don't mix up car as a conjunction (= for) and car as a noun (= bus). Here they are: mais ou et donc or ni carSubordinating conjunctions always end in que except for comme, si and quand. parce que, avant que, lorsque, dès que, pour que, jusqu'à ce quePrepositions often precede noun phrases, but again, you need to learn the most common ones by heart: dans, de, à, avec, sur, par...dans le jardin, d'un coup, à la maison, avec mon ami, sur le pouce, par tous les temps As usual, practice makes perfect.
ExercisesBefore doing these exercises you should do the exploratory exercise on Parts of Speech.
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