1.What is a word?(give various definitions of a word, their authors) Difficulties in clarifying the nature of the word.

A word is a unit which is a constituent at the phrase level and above. It is sometimes identifiable according to such criteria as being the minimal possible unit in a reply having features such as

a regular stress pattern, and phonological changes conditioned by or blocked at word boundaries

being the largest unit resistant to insertion of new constituents within its boundaries, or being the smallest constituent that can be moved within a sentence without making the sentence ungrammatical.

Word is

• a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed:I don’t like the word ‘unofficial’why so many words for so few ideas?

• a single distinct conceptual unit of language, comprising inflected and variant forms.

2. Morphemes: the smallest meaningful units of language. The

difference between Morphemes, Morphs and Allomorphs.(examples)

According to the guidelines of morphology, the linguistics branch concerned with the internal structure of words, a morpheme is the very smallest meaningful linguistic unit in the grammar of a language. For example, the word infamous is made up of three morphs -in, fam(e), -eous - each of which represents one morpheme.

While a morpheme is an abstract unit of meaning, a morph is a formal unit with a physical shape.

"The basic unit of grammatical meaning is the morpheme. The unit of grammatical form which realizes a morpheme is called a morph. Generally speaking, the difference between the unit of meaning and the unit of form is theoretical and academic, as in most cases a morpheme is realized by only one morph.

The term allomorph explains the comprehension of phonological variations for specific morphemes. When we find a group of different morphs, all versions of one morpheme, we can use the prefix allo- ( = one of a closely related set) and describe them as allomorphs of that morpheme.

We can also call these morphs allomorphs or variants. For example, the English past tense morpheme that we spell -ed has various morphs. It is realized as [t] after the voiceless [p] of jump (cf. jumped), as [d] after the voiced [l] of repel (cf. repelled), and as [əd] after the voiceless [t] of root or the voiced [d] ofwed (cf. rooted and wedded).

3. Types of Morphemes: Roots, Affixes, Stems and Bases.(examples)

words have internal structure which is created by word-building elements. The elements include roots, affixes, stems, and bases. Root is the irreducible core of a word, with absolutely nothing else attached to it. Roots can be free morphemes and bound morphemes. Roots which are capable of standing independently are free morphemes while bound morphemes are roots which are incapable of occurring in isolation. Affix is a morpheme which only occurs when attached to some other morpheme or morphemes such as a root or stem or base. There are three kinds of affixes which are explained as follows:

Prefix is an affix attached before a root or stem or base like re-, un-, and in-.

Suffix is an affix attached after a root or stem or base like ly, -er, -ist, -s, -ing and ed.

Infix is an affix inserted into the root itself.

Stem is part of word that is in existence before any inflectional affixes.

Example:

cats > stem : cat, inflectional affix: -s

workers > stem: worker, inflectional: -s

Base is any unit whatsoever to which affixes of any kind, inflectional affixes and derivational affixes, can be added. All roots are bases. Bases are called stems only in the context of inflectional morphology.

Example:

Boys> root: boy, stem: boy, base:boy, inflectional affix: -s

Boyish>root: boy, base:boy, derivational affix: -ish

4. The role of morphological criteria and syntactic evidence in determining the categorization of words (meaning, form and function)

In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of the three criteria: "semantic", "formal", and "func-tional". The semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of the generalised meaning, which is characteristic of all the subsets of words constituting a given part of speech. This meaning is un-derstood as the "categorial meaning of the part of speech". The formal criterion provides for the exposition of the specific in-flexional 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 categorialcharacterisa-tion of words are conventionally referred to as, respectively, "meaning", "form", and "function".In accord with the described criteria, words on the upper level of classification are divided into notional and functional, which reflects their division in the earlier grammatical tradition into changeable and unchangeable. To the notional parts of speech of the English language be-long the noun, the adjective, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, the adverb.The features of the noun within the identificational triad "meaning — form — function" are, correspondingly, the fol-lowing: 1) the categorial meaning of substance ("thingness"); 2) the changeable forms of number and case; the specific suffixal forms of derivation (prefixes in English do not discriminate parts of speech as such); 3) the substantive functions in the sen-tence (subject, object, substantival predicative); prepositional connections; modification by an adjective.

5. O. Jesperson’s most original contribution to Grammatical theory (English) is probably his setting up the two Categories of Rank and Nexus. Dwell on the Theory of Three Ranks. (examples)

The syntactic theoryof O.Jespersen can be applied to phrases and sentences. The theory of three ranks is based on the principle of determination. In the word-group a furiously³ barking² dog¹ 1 is independent and is called a primary, 2 modifies 1 and is called a secondary, 3 modifies 2 and is called a tertiary.A secondary may be joined to a primary in two ways: junction and nexus. These terms are used to differentiate between attributive and predicative relations (relations between the subject and the predicate), or the relations of subordination and interdependence.He advanced the theories of Rank and Nexus in Danish in two papers: Sprogetslogik (1913) and De to hovedarterafgrammatiskeforbindelser (1921). Jespersen in this theory of ranks removes the parts of speech from the syntax, and differentiates between primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries; e.g. in "well honed phrase," "phrase" is a primary, this being defined by a secondary, "honed", which again is defined by a tertiary "well". The term Nexus is applied to sentences, structures similar to sentences and sentences in formation, in which two concepts are expressed in one unit; e.g., it rained, he ran indoors. This term is qualified by a further concept called a junction which represents one idea, expressed by means of two or more elements, whereas a nexus combines two ideas. Junction and nexus proved valuable in bringing the concept of context to the forefront of the attention of the world of linguistics.O. Jesperson’s Classification

He distributed all the words into 5 parts of speech:

1)Nouns;

2)Adjectives;

3)Pronouns, including numerals and pronominal

adverbs (where, why, how, when);

4)Verbs, including verbids or verbals (inf., ger.,

part.);

5)Particles: particles proper (just, too, enough, only,

yet, etc.), prepositions, conjunctions.

The 5th class was a kind of dump where he included

the words which didn’t fit into the four previous

classes.

6.Henry Sweet’s principle of Declinables and Indeclinables . Give examples. Ch. Fries’s “Set of Position” . Give examples. The components of the phrase can be connected by different types of syntactic relations. H.Sweet: the most general type of relation is that of the modifier and modified (headword and adjunct), or the relation of subordination. He also distinguished the relation of coordination.

Declinable and indeclinable (based on form).

Declinable:

1) noun-words: nouns proper, noun-pronoun, noun-numeral

(cardinal – hundreds of people), infinitive, gerund;

2) adjective-words – adjective proper, adjective-pronoun,

adjective-numeral (ordinal), participle I and II;

3) verb-words – finite verbs, infinitive, gerund, participle I andII;

Indeclinable:

adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections.

Subdivision is based on the principle of function and

meaning.Therefore some words occur in two groups simultaneously.

Such classes as pronoun and numerals have no status of their

own, but are distributed between nouns and adjectives. The

adverb, included into the group of indeclinable words, has

degrees of comparison, which means it can change its forms.

Charles Fries’ syntacticodistributional classification of words

It is based on the study of their combinability by means of substitution

testing.

The testing results in developing the standard model of four main

“positions” of notional words in the English sentence: noun, verb,

adjective, adverb.

The words isolated from the records of spontaneous conversation were

tested on the three typical sentences (substitution test-frames).

Frame A. The concert was good (always). [The thing and its

quality at a given time]

Frame B. The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly). [Actoraction-thing acted upon-characteristic of the action]

Frame C. The team went there. [Actor-action-direction of the

action]

As a result of those tests the following lists of words were established:

Class 1.concert, coffee, taste, difference, clerk, husband, team,

husband, woman, etc.

Class 2.was, seemed, became, remembered, wanted, went,

came, ran, lived, worked, etc.

Class 3.good, large, necessary, foreign, new empty, etc.

Class 4.there, here, always, then, sometimes, clearly,

sufficiently, especially, there, back, out, etc.

All these words can fill in the positions of the frames without damage to their general structural meaning. 7. “Parts of Speech” issue in the Traditional Grammar of English.