10) Parts of speech. The criteria applied in discriminating parts of speech. The

problem of notional and structural parts of speech.

The words of language, depending on various formal and semantic features, are divided

into grammatically relevant sets of classes. The traditional grammatical classes of words

are called “parts of speech”. It should be noted that the term “parts of speech” is purely

traditional and conventional, it cannot be taken as in any way defining or explanatory.

In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of the three criteria:

“semantic”, “formal”, and “functional”. The semantic criterion presupposes the

evaluation of the generalized meaning, which is characteristic of all subsets of words

constituting a given part of speech. This meaning is understood as the “categorical

meaning of the part of speech”. The formal criterion provides for the exposition of the

specific inflexional and derivational (word-building) features of all the lexemic subsets

of a part of speech. The functional criterion concerns the syntactic role of words in the

sentence typical of a part of speech. The said three factors of categorical characterization

of words are conventionally referred to as, respectively, “meaning”, “form”, and

“function”. In accord with the described criteria, words of the upper level of classification

are divided into notional and functional, which reflects their division in the earlier

grammatical tradition into changeable and unchangeable. Notional parts of speech unite

the words of complete nominative meaning characterized by self-dependent functions in

the sentence. To the notional parts of speech of the English language belong:

1. The noun 2. The adjective 3. The numeral 4. The pronoun 5. The verb 6. The adverb.

Contrasted against the notional parts of speech are words of incomplete nominative

meaning and non-self-dependent, mediatory functions in the sentence. There are

functional parts of speech: 1.The article 2.The preposition 3.The conjunction

4. The particle 5. The modal word 6. The interjection

Each part of speech after its identification is further subdivided into subseries in accord

with various particular semantico-functional and formal features of the constituent words.

This subdivision is sometimes called “subcategorization” of parts of speech:

Nouns: 1. Proper – common 2.animate – inanimate 3. countable – uncountable

4. concrete – abstract Verbs: 1. fully predicative – partially predicative

2. transitive – intransitive 3. actional – statal 4. purely nominative – evaluative.

Adjectives: 1. qualitative – relative 2. of constant feature – temporary feature (statives)

3. factual – evaluative etc…

The Three-Layer Classification (M. BLOKH)

1. “names” (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)

2. “substitutes of names” (pronouns, words of broad meaning – “matter”,

numbers)

3. “specifiers of names” (determiners, prepositions, conjunctions, particles…)

There are 8 parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, prepositions,

conjunctions, interjections.

Objections:

• The definitions are largely notional and often extremely quite vague; e.g. A

pronoun is a word used instead of a noun (John came this morning – a man,

someone, you-know-who, the aforementioned).

• The number of parts of speech in the traditional grammars seems to be arbitrary.

Why 8? Prof. Ilyish – 12 (+ numerals, statives, modal words and particles),

prof. Khaimovich and Rogovskaya – 14 (+ articles and response words).

H.Sweet: declinables (nouns, adjectives, verbs) and indeclinables (adverbs, prepositions,

conjunctions, interjections). One more classification (based on syntactic functions of

word classes): noun-words (nouns, noun-numerals, noun-pronouns, Infinitives, Gerunds),

adjective-words (adjectives, adjective-pronouns, adjective-numerals, Participles),

verb-words (verbs, verbals).

O.Jespersen (his theory is between syntax and morphology):

1. substantives (including proper nouns)

2. adjectives (In some respect (1) and (2) may be classed together as nouns)

3. pronouns (including numerals and pronominal adverbs)

4. verbs (with doubts as to the inclusion of verbals)

5. particles (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections) characterized

negatively as made up of all those that cannot find any place in any of the first

4 classes.

An adjective is usually an adjectival but it may be a nominal, etc.:

The poor boy became president. The poor can afford no vacations.

The strong points: 1) emphasis on inflexions as indicators of parts of speech 2) the idea

of heterogeneity of word-classes.