1. One form, two (or more) meanings.

Two different meanings can be expressed using the same arrangement of sounds. Since there are clearly two different and unrelated meanings, we would want to say that there are two different morphemes. For example, in Morpheme Set 2, we will learn the two morphemes,

in- 'not' in words like incapable and insufficient, and

in- 'into, within' , as in invade and include.

Similarly,

gon 'birth,type,origin' as gonorrhea, and

gon 'knee,angle' as in diagonal, are not related.

These similarities are just accidental and typically the origins of the two morphemes are completely unrelated.

2. Two (or more) forms, one meaning.

When two different forms have the same meaning, they could be different morphemes -- or they might be a single morpheme. We'll take a look at both situations.

a. Two forms, one meaning = two morphemes

There are two situations in which two forms have the same meaning, but they are different morphemes.

(1) In the first case, the forms are usually rather different from one another. For example, consider

andr 'man,male' as in android, and

vir 'man,male' as in virile.

Both morphemes mean the same thing, but they are very different in form. They have completely different origins, and we want to think of them as different morphemes.

(2) In the second case, the forms may be the same or very similar, but they came into English from different sources. For example,

in- 'into, within' is a prefix English borrowed from Latin. We also have

in 'into, within', a native English preposition.

If we traced the histories of these two morphemes, we would find that they go back to a single morpheme which existed in the parent language of both Latin and English. Since they come ultimately from the same source, they are very similar in form. However, they came into English through very different historical pathways; one is part of the native vocabulary, the other is borrowed. For this reason, it is reasonable to think of them as separate morphemes. This situation is relatively rare.

b. Two (or more) forms, one meaning = one morpheme

Sometimes two forms with the same meaning may be alternate forms of the same morpheme. For example, in Morpheme Set 1 we have

a- and an- , different forms of a Greek morpheme meaning 'not, without'.

Another case is

pan- and pant- , which are different forms of a Greek morpheme meaning 'all,overall'.

Here the two forms are very similar, often differing in only one consonant or vowel. They typically result from a situation in which an original single form adapted its beginning or ending sounds to the sounds found in other morphemes it combined with. For example, the Greek 'not' morpheme is found in the form a- before roots beginning with consonants, and an- before roots beginning with vowels, just like the English words "a" and "an."

2. The problem of grouping words into words classes and distinguishing their categorical status (new concepts and approaches)

a ‘category’ as a class of expressions which share a common set of grammatical properties: we also discussed that inflextional and derivational morphology provide us with strong evidence for categorizing words.

The parts of speech are

• classes of words,

• all the members of these classes having certain characteristics in common

• which distinguish them from the members of other classes.

L. M.Volkova

The parts of speech are

• Are lexico-grammatical classes of words possessing

• A certain common (abstract, categorical) meaning

• The system of grammatical categories typical of this class

• Peculiarities of syntactic function

• Special types of word-form derivation

Olga Sergeyevna Akhmanova

Word Class

• refers to a group of words which have similar functions.

• Word classes are divided into open classes and closed classes.

Cambridge Grammar of English 2007

Open classes

• include lexical words such as

  • nouns (dinner, place, Francis),

  • verbs (meet, drive, go, pick),

  • adjectives (old, angry, helpful),

  • adverbs (quickly, carefully, fast).

• Open classes admit new words

Closed classes

• have limited membership. They include function words such as

  • pronouns (it, he, who, anybody, one),

  • determiners (a, the, that, some, each, several),

  • modal verbs (may, could, must),

  • auxiliary verbs (be, have, do),

  • conjunctions (and, but, if, unless),

  • prepositions (in, at, of, by, with).

• They do not admit new words.

The problem of word classification into parts of speech still remains one of the most controversial problems in modern linguistics.

There is given a dew attention to the syntactic evidence for categorization. ‘ The Cambridge Linguistic School’ which suggests that morphological and syntactic properties can determine the categorical status of a word with ‘substitution’ being used as a test in problematic cases. E.g. verbs(=V) have the morphological properly that they can take a range of inflection and suffixes (+ S,+d,+n +ing) and have syntactic properly that they can be used as the complement of a word like ‘can’

Nouns (=N) have the morphological property that they typically inflected for number ( cat/cats) and the syntactic properly that they can be preceded by a/the.

Adjectives(=A) have the morphological property that they have +er,+est inflectional suffixes of only gradable adjectives. Distributional properly involves ‘very’ us the modifier and always proceeds the adjective.

Adverb (=Ad) have the morphological property that they end in –ly and the distributional property that they can follow a verb like ‘behave’

On the above related grounds the modern grammarians distinguish lexical categories (content words) the word belonging to this category have descriptive content.

They are : Noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition.

We also stated that English hs a number of functional categories those words lack descriptive content and serve to mark grammatical properties.

Particles, auxiliaries, determiners, pronouns belong to functional categories.

The lexical/ functional dichotomy was rooted by descriptive grammarians Bolinger and Sears (1981) between two different types of words. Andrew readford, I.Lyors, I.Bresnan, S.R. Anderson gave further development to the theory.

Another most original ‘revolutionary’ [some grammarians would out it] point of view the categorization of words have been closely treated by Otto Jesperson in his work “philosophy of Grammar” (1933) and “ A modern English grammar” (1914). He treated the grammatical problems according to notional categories. Otto Jesperson’s most original contribution to ( English) grammatical theory is his setting up of the two categories of RANK 2 NEXUS. Jespersen in his theory of RANKS keeps the parts of speech out of syntax instead distinguishes between primaries, secondaries, and tertiaries.

Thus: ‘ a cleverly worded remark’

Remark- a primary word

Worded- a secondary word

Cleverly- a tertiary word.

Functional-Formal Principles of Classification ( Non-Structural Descriptive Grammarians )

Otto Jespersen, a descriptivist, (1935) “ In my opinion everything should be kept in view, form, function and meaning...”

He distinguishes:

• substantives,

• adjectives,

• pronouns,

• verbs,

• particles (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections).

separates nouns (which he calls substantives) from noun-words, a class of words distinguished on the basis of function – a noun word is a word that can function as a noun;

distinguishes pronouns as a separate part of speech, thus isolating them from Henry Sweet’s noun-words and adjective-words.

Although the scholar speaks of form, function and meaning, in practice he gives preference to form.

H.Sweet finds meaning not very. Henry Sweet speaks of three principles of classification: form, meaning, and function. However, the results of his classification of parts of speech into nominative and particles is a division based on form. Only within the class we can see the operation of the principle of function. Much necessary in categorizing words. According to H. Sweet the parts of speech are divided into two main groups. Declinables and indeclinables, that is incapable of inflections.

Declinables are : nouns, adjectives, verbs

Indeclinables are: adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.

Parts of speech classification

(according to H. Sweet)

Declinable [3] Indeclinable [4]

Verbs:

Finite forms

Non-finite forms

Infinite forms

Infinitive Gerund Participles

Noun

Non-pronoun

Noun-numeral

Infinitive

Gerund

Adjectives.

Adjective – pronoun

Adjective-numeral

participles

Particles

1. Adverb

2. Preposition

3. Conjunction

4. Interjection

3

Verbs

1

Noun words

2

Adjective words

Distributional Principles of Classification ( Structural Descriptive Grammarians )

Charles Fries (1956)

• rejected the traditional principle of classification of words into parts of speech

• replaced it with the methods of distributional analysis and substitution.

The distribution of a word is the position of a word in the sentence ( the ability of words to combine with other words of different types). At the same time, the lexical meaning of words was not taken into account.

According to Ch. Fries each part of speech is marked off from other parts of speech by a set of formal contrasts. One need not know the lexical meaning of each item of the following examples.

1. woggles ugged diggles

2. uggs woggled digs

3. woggs diggled uggles.

But one knows ‘woggles’, ‘uggs’, ‘woggs’ are thing words; ‘ugged’, wogged’, diggled’ are action words. So Ch.Fries in classifying words doesn’t rely on meaning but ‘set of positions’. In concord with Ch.Fries approach all words that could occupy the same set of positions’ must belong to the same Part of Speech. He takes minimum free utterances as ‘test frame’. They formed the basis for the classification of words into parts of speech. They are:

Frame A: the concert was good(always)

Frame B: the clerk remembered the tax( suddenly)

Frame C: the team went there.

Class 1 words. E.g.

The words can substitute (occupy the position) are listed as class 1

THE concert was good (always)

Food

Coffee

Taste

Book

Teacher

Student…

Charles Fries’s substitution frames

Frame A

1 2 3 4

The concert was good (always).

Frame B

1 2 1 4

The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly).

Frame C

1 2 4

The team went there.

Charles Fries was the first linguist to pay attention to some of function words (form-classes) peculiarities. He used the principle of function, or combinability (the position of a word in the sentence is the syntactic function of word). Not all relevant positions were tested. His functional classes are very much broken into small groups. Being deprived of meaning, his word-classes are “faceless”, i.e. they have no character.

Complex Principles of Classification (Post-Structural Traditional Grammar)

Parts of speech are discriminated according to three criteria: semantic, formal and functional.

• The semantic criterion presupposes the grammatical meaning of the whole class of words (general grammatical meaning).

• The formal criterion reveals paradigmatic properties: relevant grammatical categories, the form of the words, their specific inflectional and derivational features.

• The functional criterion concerns the syntactic function of words in the sentence and their combinability in the phrase.

Ch.Fries distinguishes national words (open character) functional words ( closed character)

notional words

are those denoting things, objects, notions, qualities, etc. – words with the corresponding references in the objective reality –

function words, or grammatical words

are those having no references of their own in the objective reality; most of them are used only as grammatical means to form up and frame utterances

Notional words

• nouns,

• pronouns,

• numerals,

• verbs,

• adjectives,

• adverbs.

The notional parts of speech present open classes: the number of items constituting the notional word-classes is not limited

Function word

• articles,

• particles,

• prepositions,

• conjunctions,

• modal words,

• the interjection.

The functional parts of speech present closed classes: the number of items constituting the functional word-classes is limited and can be given by the list.

The contrast Notional word-classes vs. Functional word-classes

As suggested by B.Khaimovich and B.Rogovskaya (1967), function words can be called semi-notional. This distinction is to some extent reflected in the phenomenon of substitution: notional words usually have substitutes:

I saw a cat in the street. It was shivering with cold.

He gave me an interesting book. vs. He gave me this book.

John has ten friends. vs. John has many friends.

He speaks English better than you do .

She lay down. Her eyes closed . It was thus (i.e. in this manner) that Robert saw her.

Function words

are to ‘service’ the notional words

• by restricting the reference of a notional word (the article),

• by substituting for them (the pronoun),

• by expressing a relation between notional words or predications (the preposition and the conjunction),

• by intensifying the meaning of a notional word (the particle).

As for the modal words and interjections, they function as restrictors of predications: modal words help to remove the directness of a statement or express the presence or absence of an obligation interjections serve to colour our statement emotionally.

A

• The dog is man’s best friend ( the dog refers to the whole class ).

• I need a dog ( a dog refers to an unspecified member of the class ).

• I saw a dog running across the street ( a dog refers to a specific, i.e. concrete member of the class ).

• The dog came to our house again ( the dog refers to a particular member of the class: you know what dog I’m talking about ).

B

• He was a member of a famous golf club.

• I came here in 1972 and I have lived here ever since.

C

• Even Anthony enjoyed it.

• The video is to be used for teaching purposes only .

D

• There are perhaps fifty women here.

• If nothing is done, there will certainly be an economic crisis.

E

• “ He refused to marry her the next day!” “ Oh!” said Scarlett, her hopes dashed (M. Mitchell).

• Oh dear , I’m late.

3.The inherent and configurational categoriescof the Noun.New assumptions and ideas in parsing the English.

Morphosyntactic properties of nouns fall into two groups: distributional(configurational) and structural properities.Distributional properties have to do with how words are distributed in phrases, clauses,or in texts.For ex: nouns can serve as heads of noun phrases,subject and object of clauses, and topics of texts.Structural properties have to do with the internal structure of the noun itself.For example: in some languages noun is exhibit case marking,number,gender, etc whereas other grammatical categories tend not to exhibit these properties.The Head of noun phrase is the one word within the phrase that refers to the same entity that the whole phrase to.For example: an English phrase like that computer man refers to a time –stable concept,so are suspect it is a noun phrase.However, it also contains two words that also refer to time stable concepts,computer and man. So the question arises as to which of the two nouns is the head of the noun phrase.The answer: the whole phrase refers to a man ,not a computer.

A noun is a word other than a pronoun that belongs to the word-class that inflects for plural, and that can function as subject or object in a sentence can be preceded by articles and adjectives, and can be the object of a preposition.

In traditional Grammar, nouns are defined notionally as ‘the name of a person, place or thing’.

Modern grammarians therefore prefer more formal, syntactical definitions. Nouns are divided on syntactic and semantic grounds into.

Proper Nouns Common Nouns

I

Count Uncount etc.

Otto Jesperson characterizes the Noun as follows: “The chief criteria by which substantives are distinguished from other parts of speech are the formation of the plural and the formation of the genitive in’s.”

Ralf Long promotes the functions which are characteristically performed by nouns and are most helpful in part-of-speech classification. They are four.

1. Subject

2. Complement

3. Object of a preposition

4. Head in a nounal headed unit

Inherent Categories of Nouns are Number, Case and Gender. The Category of Number seems to be the most widespread. Otto Jesperson distinguishes only two numbers: singular (to denote ‘oneness’) and plural (to denote more than oneness). He points out to a few survivals of a dual number. He also points to the following six ways of plural.

1. The regular s-ending e.g. roses, toys, boys.

2. Regular-s-ending with the change in the kernel e.g. house-houses, wolf-wolves, wife-wives.

3. Irregular s-ending: pence-penny

4. The addition of the suffix-en, ox-oxen

5. Change of the kernel e. g. woman-women, goose-geese

6. Foreign words e.g. criterion-criteria, memorandum-memoranda

Otto Jesperson puts special accent on the so-called Differentiated Plural. In many cases the plural has a meaning which is more or less different from that of the same word ‘in the singular’ e.g. tea-teas, advice-advices.

Some grammarians speak of the notion of dual number (Otto Jesperson, A. I. Smirnitsky). A. I. Smirnitsky assumes that sometimes the characteristics of the notion of number lie in the semantics of the nouns e.g. when we speak of ‘wings’ we understand that only two wings are meant not ‘wing+wing+wing’…

In some cases the notion of number is a constituent part of the substantive and may acquire a new meaning .Thus number is a grammatical classification used in the analysis of word classes which have contrasts of singular and plural.

The Category of Case of the English Noun.

Expresses the functional role of a noun or noun phrase in relation to other words in the clause or sentence.

A theory about clause organization developed in the late 1960s by the American linguist Charles Fillmore (b 1929) which analyses the semantic roles of nouns and noun phrases. The Theory, along with other developments within generative grammar, grew to some extent out of dissatisfaction with early ‘Standard Theory’. In this analyses case is not a category of surface syntax (as in traditional Grammar) but of meaning e.g. The burglars broke the door down. The grammatical subject is agent.

But in The Jemmy mude little noise. It is instrument.

The room was a mess. It is locative.

The neighbours heard nothing. It is dative.

The original six cases recognized were:

1. Agentive the initiator of the action

2. Instrumental

3. Dative

4. Factitive

5. Locative

6. Objective

1976 F. R. Palmer “The deeper the investigation, the more complex it seems to become… A particularly difficult problem is ‘My car is twitching’ could be ‘agent’, ‘experiencer’ or even ‘location’”

Modern Linguistic school (Fransie Katamba and John Stonham) distinguishes:

1. Grammatical Case, where case is used to mark the function of a noun.

2. Oblique Case marks not the syntactic function of a noun but rather its semantic function. Typically oblique cases mark location and direction.