Parts of Speech

1. Classification of word classes

2. Criteria of classification

3. Types of word classes (historical background)

4. Christopher Fries' Distributional Model

1. Classification of word classes

In the earliest English grammar where the Latin classification of the parts of speech is reproduced, the parts of speech are divided into: declinable and indeclinable. The 1st group included nouns, pronouns, verbs and participle I, II. The 2nd - adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections.

B. Jonson increases the number of parts of speech in his classification, introduced the article as the 9th part of speech (17th century).

In the 18th century another scheme appeared. Brightland reduced the member of parts of speech to 4, rejecting the traditional terminology. The 4 parts were: nouns (names), adjectives (qualities), verbs (affirmations), determinants.

The 2nd part of the 18th century is known as the age of prescriptional grammar. Such grammarians as South and Murray wrote the most popular work in theory of grammar. They retained the scheme of 9 parts of speech.

The grammar of the 19th century changed very little, but the conception of the parts of speech differs greatly from that of the grammars of the 2nd half of the 19th century because a new grammar (logical and historical) appeared. Henry Sweet wrote this grammar in 1991; describes 3 main features of characterizing the parts of speech, namely meaning, form and function.

By meaning we don't mean the individual meaning of each separate word, but the meaning common to all the words of the given class and constituting the essence,

E.g. The meaning of substantives 'thing-ness'. This applies to all and every noun as a type of word. The meaning of verb as a type of word is that of a process.

By form we mean the morphological characteristic of a type of a word, thus the noun is characterized by number, the verb - tense, voice, mood.

By function we mean the syntactical properties of a type of a word. These are subdivided into two:

1) Its method of combining with other words;

2) Its function in the sentence.

19.10.12

a) We can state that a verb combines with a noun as in the example 'write letters' and with an adverb 'write quickly'.

b) As to the verb 'to be' the syntactic function of this verb in a sentence is that of a predicate.

The Noun

1. The noun (general characteristic)

2. Grammatical category of number

3. Grammatical category of case

4. Grammatical category of gender

1. The noun (general characteristic)

The English noun is a part of speech which is characterized by:

1) A generalized lexico-grammatical primary meaning of thingness (table, chair, etc.);

2) A generalized grammatical secondary meaning of thingness (joy, peace, milk, etc.);

3) By the combinability with:

a) Verbs both in preposition and in postposition (he closed the door; the door closed);

b) With adjectives - usually in preposition (she was a beautiful girl);

c) Prepositive nouns, both in the genitive and in the common case (I saw it in the Chicago newspaper);

d) Prepositions (he read a letter from his wife);

e) Prepositive articles (wait a minute; the father tried his best).

4) The syntactic functions of subject and object (father decided to take a holiday from his office; you love your parents, don't you?).

As far as morphological structure is concerned, the nouns fall under:

a) Simple nouns (book, pencil, chair);

b) Derivative nouns

The productive noun forming suffixes are -er (reader), -ist (tobacconist), -ess (actress), -ness (madness), -ism (heroism). Derivative prefixes are less productive in the sphere of a noun: by- (by-election), dis- (disorder), ex- (ex-president).

c) Compound nouns (blackboard, weekend, sportsman, speedometer).

The nouns which possess a generalized lexico-grammatical primary meaning of thingness and are placed in a sentence of a noun field have the morphological categories of case and number.