5. Parts of speech. Principles of classification.

The words of the lang. are divided into gr. classes which differ in formal and semantic features. Traditionally they are called parts of speech (p/of/sp). This term is purely conventional and was introduced in the gr. teaching of Ancient Greece. The problem of the p/of/sp is the most controversial one.

1 Principle The Semantic Approach

It is based on the universal forms of human thought which are reflected in 3 main categorial meanings of words: substance, process, property.

1. However, this principle is open to criticism; it doesn’t always work; it can be hard to define a categorial meaning of a word e.g. whiteness - is it substance of a noun or property of an adjective? action – it denotes process, but it isn’t a verb 2 Principle The Formal Approach Only form should be used as a criterion for the classification of the p/of/sp. (Henry Sweet) They distinguished between two classes of words: declinable (changeable forms) indeclinable (static forms) articles, prepositions This criterion is also unreliable. It doesn’t take into account the way a word functions in the sentence.

2. 3 Principle The Syntactic (Functional) Approach

Fries. The Structure of English. NY, 1956)

Based on the syntactic distribution of words;

three minimum free utterance test frames (diagnostic frames) to fill the positions with the words under the test;

words that fit into a position without changing the structural meaning of the sentence belong to the same form-class

Classes of words are recognized by their formal devices (morphemes) and the position in the utterance – not their concrete lexical meaning

4 Notional classes of words

• Class 1 ~ N + Prn, Num (cardinal);

• Class 2 ~ Vb – Aux & Modal;

• Class 3 ~ Adj + Prn, N's, Num (ordinal);

• Class 4 ~ Adv

154 functional words (individual, unique) arranged in 15 classes. They can be distributed among the three main sets: specifiers of notional words (determiners of nouns, modal verbs, functional modifiers and intensifiers of adjectives and adverbs) interpositional elements, determining the relation of notional words to one another (prepositions and conjunctions) refer to the sentence as a whole (question words, attention-getting words, words of affirmation and negation, sentence introducers (it, there))

3 criteria classification

Vinogradov –> Russian grammar

Smirnitsky, Ilyish –> English grammar

There is a unity of classification criteria:

1. Semantic (lexico-grammatical meaning);

2. Morphological (grammatical categories and derivational patterns);

3. Syntactic (combinability and function)

Typical types of combinability 1) Left-hand ;prepositional connection with another noun or an adj, an adv: an enterance to the house, the turn round the corner; 2) casal combinability characterizes the noun alongside of its prepositional combinability with another noun. (E.g. the speech of the President - the president's speech.)

3)contact combinability (E.g. film festivals, a cannon ball.)

The three criteria applied to notional parts of speech:

• NOUN: 1) substance;

2) number & case; derivational suffixes;

3) combinability with A, Prp, Adj, Vb; functions of S, O, C.

• ADJ: 1) property of substance;

• 2) degrees of comparison; derivational suffixes;

3) combinability with N, Adv, Vb; functions of M_n C_s .

VERB: 1) process;

2) tense, voice, aspect, mood, person, number,order; derivational suffixes;

3) combinability with N, Adj, Adv; function of P.

ADV: 1) property of process;

2) degrees of comparison; derivational suffixes;

3) combinability with Vb, Adj, Adv;functions of M_v .

Criteria applied to formal / functional parts of speech

• Categorial meaning:

Article — specification of the noun;

Preposition — relations between Ns and other wds;

Conjunction — connection of wds and phrases;

Interjection — expressing emotions;

Particle — specification and limitation of meaning

• Syntactic characteristics (combinability)

PRONOUN

• Pronouns have no referential meaning. Their lexico-grammatical meaning is deixis — indication, pointing to things and properties.

• The morphological and syntactic criteria – are different in different subgroups of pronoun.

• Noun pronouns (personal, indefinite, absolute possessive) and adjective pronouns (demonstrative, relative, conjoint possessive, indefinite).