2/ Parts of speech.

parts of speech are lexical and grammatical classes of words possessing generalized grammatical meaning, generalized grammatical form and generalized grammatical function. English parts of speech traditionally include notional and functional. the difference is in the independent character of notional parts of speech and dependent character of functional because the latter express relations. notional parts of speech are noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, numeral, adverb, interjection. functional parts of speech are preposition, conjunction, article. the most difficult aspect of parts of speech is that of meaning: for nouns - abjectness’, for verbs - action of state, for adjectives - quality and characteristics, for adverbs - characteristic of characteristic, for interjections - emotions, for numerals - quantity or order, for article - reference, for conjunctions - relations between the sentences for prepositions - relations between words, for pronouns - deific (indication).

grammatical form in parts of speech renders grammatical categories: case (common and possessive for nouns, nominative, interrogative and objective for pronouns), number (plural and singular for nouns, pronouns and verbs), tense for verbs, finite and nonfinite forms of infinitive, voice (active, passive, reciprocal and reflexive), mood (indicative, imperative and subjunctive), person (first, second, third), degrees of comparison (positive, comparative and superlative), aspect (indefinite, perfect, continuous). nouns function as subjects, predicates, objects, attributes and modifiers. verb functions as a predicate, subject and object. pronouns function as subjects, objects and attributes. adverbs functions as modifiers and parts of compound nominative predicates. numerals function as attributes and modifiers of degree.

the first theory of parts of speech was suggested at the end of XIX century by Henry Sweet, the author of the first theoretical book of English grammar. his classification includes declinable and non-declinables. his books about 3 criteria meaning, form and function, but used only one form. Sweet outlined wish in declinable noun-words including nouns, cardinal numerals, personal pronouns; adjective-words including adjectives, possessive pronouns, ordinal numerals and participles; finite and nonfinite forms. indeclinable include adverbs, conjunctions, articles and prepositions.

Otto Jespersen improved Sweet's classifications, but again divided words into declinable and indeclinable. declinable are nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns. all the rest are indeclinable. he called them particles or "lumber room " of english words".

Structural classification introduced by the German original grammarian Charles Freeze. it's based on 2 principal: substitution and distribution. he divided words into positional and functional, and to prove this classification he used test frames. in the first test frame all words in the first position the good concert was good (always). all the words in the position of concert he called class 1. the clerk remembered the tax (suddenly). all words in the position of remembered he called class 2. the team went there. all words in the position of there in the position of always and suddenly functioning as modifiers he called class 4. all words in the position of good functioning as attributes he called class 3. function words are grouped into 15 classes and named from a to o, 14\54 words in total. in group a he included all determinates corresponding to the article in the first position, possessive and demonstrative pronouns, nouns in possessive case, numerals, adjectives "much " and "few". class b - all words that substitute "may" in "the concert may be good" - may, must, have to, shall, will, ought to, negative particle not which is used after the auxiliary verb. so it is a purely structural classification of word neglecting meaning and exaggerating theory. it is good for english, but not ideal for other languages.

more modern classifications were made by Randolph Quirk who divided all words into open, closed and mixed. open words he called nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. Closed words include articles, demonstrative pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. Mixed words are more limited in number and they may function as units of the open words and closed words classes. it is a very clever classification because it's based on the opposition static - dynamic.

more recent semantic classification of parts of speech are based mainly on meaning, forming semantical classes of words including various traditional parts of speech, for example, words-parasites, words of destruction.

another attempt to classify is a field approach in which every class of words has central and peripheral units. for example, within adjectives there are words with the element a-, abashed, ablaze, abberant,ablative. such words expressing state have a special formal aim and functioning as nominative part of a compound predicate member are called category of state words, they are at the periphery of adjectives and they are separate part of speech.

the second nontraditionally outlined part of speech is modal word which is on the periphery of adverbs which functions as parenthesis (introductory sentence member).

the third nontraditional part of speech is a particle. they are limited in number, their meaning is not generalized because they may be narrative, intensifying, outlining and so on. they have no grammatical form and no independent syntactical function.

parts of speech reflect they synchronous characteristic of English morphology, their classification is many-sided, and the number of such classifications is an open system and another question.