Microsoft Word Theoretical Course of English Grammar

Lecture 5 
Major families of words. The problem of parts of speech. 
Words are generally considered to be the basic elements of language. They clearly show 
up in writing, and they are the items defined in dictionaries. According to various formal and 
semantic features, all words are divided into 
three major families of words: lexical (i.e. content) 
words, function words and insert words
(Biber et al 2003: 14-17; Fromkin et al. 2003: 71-74). 
Linguists also speak about grammatically relevant classes of words, called 
parts of speech
. Since 
the word is distinguished not only by grammatical, but also by semantic and lexemic properties, 
some scholars refer to parts of speech as 
lexico-grammatical series of words 
(Blokh 1983).
In modern linguistics, parts of speech are defined as lexico-grammatical series of words 
which are discriminated on the basis of 
semantic
, 
morphological 
and 
syntactic
criteria.
1.
 
the semantic criterion presupposes the generalized categorical meaning, 
which is characteristic of all the subsets of words constituting a given part 
of speech;

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Theoretical Course of English Grammar 
Script by prof. 
Nino Kirvalidze
23
2.
the morphological criterion implies the specific inflectional (form-
changing) and derivational (word-building ) features of a given part of 
speech; 
3.
the syntactical criterion concerns the typical syntactic role, played by a giv-
en part of speech in a sentence.
These three factors of categorical characterization of words are conventionally referred to 
as, respectively, 
meaning
, 
form
and 
function
.
According to the described criteria, scholars differentiate into three major families of 
words: lexical (i.e. content), function and insert words.
Lexical (content) words
Linguists (e.g., Biber, Conrad and Leech) point out the following characteristic features of 
lexical words:
1.
Lexical words are 
the main carriers of information
in a text or speech act.
2.
Lexical (content) words can be used independently in a sentence, performing 
some syntactic function. Therefore they are subdivided into the following 
word classes or notional