Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов

the
principle of function
, or combinability (the position of a word in the 
sentence is the syntactic function of word). Being a structuralist, he would not 
speak of function: function is meaning while position is not. His classification is 
not beyond criticism. First, not all relevant positions were tested. Class 3 words are 
said to be used in the position of 
good
(Frame A). But the most typical position of 
these words is before Class l words. If this position had been used by the scholar, 
such words as 
woolen
, 
wooden
, 
golden
, etc. (i.e. relative adjectives) would have 
found their place in the classification. But if he had done it, the classification 
would have collapsed, for their position can be filled by other word-classes: nouns, 
numerals, pronouns. Second, his functional classes are very much ‘splintered’, i.e. 
broken into small groups. This is good for practice but bad for theory, for 
theoretical grammar is more interested in uniting linguistic facts than in separating 
them. Third, being deprived of meaning, his word-classes are “faceless”, i.e. they 

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have no character. No wonder, other structuralists deemed it necessary to return to 
traditional terminology and to use the criterion of form and, additionally, position.
The Classification of Words in Post-Structural Traditional Grammar 
In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated according to three 
criteria: 
semantic
, 
formal
and 
functional
. This approach may be defined as 
complex
. 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. 
Thus, when characterizing any part of speech we are to describe: a) its semantics; 
b) its morphological features; c) its syntactic peculiarities. 
The lexemes of a part of speech are united by their meaning. This meaning 
is a category-forming one. Therefore, it is referred to as categorical meaning. 
Lexemes that have the meaning of substance or thingness are nouns, those having 
the meaning of property are adjectives; those having the meaning of process are 
verbs; those having the meaning of circumstantial property are adverbs. As 
categorical meaning is derived from lexemes, it is often called lexico-grammatical 
meaning. In the surface, lexico-grammatical meaning finds outward expression. 
For instance, the meaning of substance, or thingness, is realized by the following 
lexico-grammatical morphemes:-er,-ist,-ness,-ship,- ment. It is also realized by 
specific grammatical forms constituting the grammatical categories of number and 
case. These outward features are a formal criterion of classification. The functional 
criterion concerns the syntactic role of a word in the sentence. 
In accordance with the said criteria, we can classify the words of the English 
language into