Table of content

TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………….1

MAIN PART

1.Contemporary criteria for classifiying words to parts of speech……………………………………………………………….………2

2.Subcategorization of parts of speech………………………….……………………………………………4

3.Notional and functional parts of speech………………………………….……………………………………5

CONCLUSION

A thorough study of linguistic literature on the problem of English parts of speech enables us to conclude that there were three tendencies in grouping English words into parts of speech or into form classes:

1. Pre - structural tendency;

2. Structural tendency;

3. Post - structural tendency;

1. Pre - structural tendency is characterized by classifying words into word - groups according to their meaning, function and form (H. Sweet, O. Jespersen, O. Curme, B. Ilyish and other grammarians).

2. The second tendency is characterized by classification of words exclu­sively according to their structural meaning, as per their distribution (Ch. Fries, W. Francis, A. Hill and others).

3. The third one combines the ideas of the two above-mentioned tenden­cies. They classify words in accord with the meaning, function, form; stem-building means and distribution (or combinability). To this group of scientists we can refer most Russian grammarians such as: Khaimovitch and Rogovskaya (22), L. Barkhudarov and Shteling (4) and others.

The words of language, depending on various formal and semantic features, are divided intogrammatically relevant sets or classes. The traditional grammatical classes of words are called “partsof speech”. Since the word is distinguished not only by grammatical, but also by semantico-lexemicproperties, some scholars refer to parts of speech as “lexico-grammatical” series of words, or as “lexico-grammatical categories”. In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of the three criteria: semantic, formal and functional. The semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of the generalized meaning, which is characteristic of all the subsets of words constituting a given part of speech. This meaning is understood as the “categorical 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 categorical characterization of words are conventionally referred to as, respectively, “meaning”, “form”, and “function”. Each part of speech is characterized by the general meaning which is an abstraction from the lexical meaning of the constituent word. Thus, the general meaning of nouns is thingness (substance), the general meaning of verbs is action, state, process; the general meaning of adjectives — quality, quantity.

Parts of speech are the great taxonomic classes into which all the words of a language fall. An adequate definition of parts of speech must naturally proceed from a set of criteria that can be consistently applied to all lexical units of a given language. We cannot, for instance, use only "lexical meaning" as the basis for the definition of some word-classes, "function in the sentence" for others, and "formal characteristics" for still others.

As the basis for the definition of word-classes we naturally must use not only their morphological and word-making characteristics but semantic and syntactical features as well. The latter are particularly important for such parts of speech as have no morphological distinctions ai all 1 It will be more in accord with the nature of language to say that parts of speech — must be identified proceeding from:

1)a common categorial meaning of a given class of words abstracted from the lexical meaning of all the words belonging to this class;

2)a common paradigm and

3)identity of syntactic functions.

To find out what particular class a given English word belongs to we cannot look at one isolated word. Nor is there any inflexional ending that is the exclusive property of any single part of speech. The ending -ed (-d), for instance, is generally found in verbs (opened, smoked, etc.), but it may be also added to nouns to form adjectives (kind-hearted, talented, blue-eyed, etc.); the inflexion -s changes the noun into a plural and -s is also used to indicate the third person singular in verbs, etc. The attitude of grammarians with regard to parts of speech and the basis of their classification has varied a good deal at different times. Some modern grammarians maintain that the only criterion of their classification should be the form of words. Taking "form" in rather a wide sense, they characterise nouns, for instance, as possessing certain formal characteristics which attach to no other class of words. These are the prefixing of an article or demonstrative, the use of an inflexional sign to denote possession and plurality, and union with prepositions to mark relations originally indicated by inflexional endings. This does not seem justified however because the absence of all the features enumerated should not exclude a word from being a noun, and this should be described as a word which has, or in any given usage may have those formal signs.

Grammatical categories identifying the parts of speech are known to be expressed in paradigms. We generally distinguish inflec-tional and analytical types of the paradigm. In the former the in-variable part is the stem, in the latter the lexical element of the

paradigm. The so-called interparadigmatic homonymy resulting from the fact that the root, the stem and the grammatical form of the word may be identical in sound, is most frequent. Some type of structural ambiguity always results in English whenever the form-classes of the words are not clearly marked. Vivid examples of such kind of ambiguity are given by Ch. Fries

1 with reference to the use of the article in Modern English:

"The utterance ship sails today (which might appear in a telegram) is ambiguous as it stands because of the absence of clear part-of-speech markers. If a clear part-of-speech marker the is put before the first word as in 'The ship sails today', there is no ambiguity; we have a statement. If, however, the same marker is put before the second word as in 'Ship the sails today', there is also no ambiguity, but the utterance is different; we have a request. Other clear part-of-speech markers would also resolve the ambiguity, as with the addition of such a marker as the ending -ed: 'Shipped sail today'; 'Ship sailed today'." Newspaper headlines very frequently are structurally ambiguous be-cause of the lack of definite part-of-speech or form-class markers. Some typical examples out of many are the following:

(1) "Vandenberg Reports Open Forum". The ambiguity of this heading could be cleared by the use of such markers as the or an, as:

'Vandenberg Reports Open the Forum', 'Vandenberg Reports an Open Forum'.

(2) "Unfavourable Surveyor Reports delayed Michigan Settlement".

The ambiguity of this heading would be cleared by the use of such markers as have or a 'Unfavourable Surveyor Reports Have delayed Michigan Settlement'; 'Unfavourable Surveyor Reports a Delayed Michigan Settlement' .

We cannot fail to see that in such cases the article as a clear part-of-speech marker serves to contrast the paradigmatic forms. This is closely related to the development of conversion which is one of the most peculiar features of English and presents a special point of interest in its structure. By conversion we mean a non-affix word-making device where the paradigm of the word and its syntactical function signal the lexico-grammatical nature of the word. The newly formed word differs both lexically and grammatically from the source word and the latter becomes its homonym . It is to be noted that some modern linguists have abandoned many of the commonly held views of grammar. With regard to the methodology employed their linguistic approach differs from former treatments in language learning. Structural grammatical studies deal primarily with the "grammar of structure", and offer an approach to the problems of "sentence analysis" that differs in point of view and in emphasis from the usual treatment of syntax l . Each part of speech after its identification is further subdivided into subseries in accord withvarious particular semantico-functional and formal features of the constituent words. This subdivisionis sometimes called "subcategorization" of parts of speech.Thus, nouns are subcategorized into proper and common, animate and inanimate, countable anduncountable, concrete and abstract, etc. Cf.:

Mary, Robinson, London, the Mississippi, Lake Erie - girl, person, city, river, lake;
man, scholar, leopard, butterfly - earth, field, rose, machine;
coin/coins, floor/floors, kind/kinds - news, growth, water, furniture;
stone, grain, mist, leaf- honesty, love, slavery, darkness.

Verbs are subcategorized into fully predicative and partially predicative, transitive and intransitive,actional and statal, purely nominative and evaluative, etc. Cf.: walk, sail, prepare, shine, blow - can, may, shall, be, become;

take, put, speak, listen, see, give - live, float, stay, ache,- ripen, rain;
write, play, strike, boil, receive, ride - exist, sleep, rest, thrive, revel, suffer;
roll, tire, begin, ensnare, build, tremble - consider, approve, mind, desire, hate, incline.Adjectives are subcategorized into qualitative and relative, of constant feature and temporaryfeature (the latter are referred to as "statives" and identified by some scholars as a separate part ofspeech under the heading of "category of state"), factual and evaluative, etc. Cf.: long, red, lovely, noble, comfortable- wooden, rural, daily, subterranean, orthographical;healthy, sickly, joyful, grievous, wry, blazing - well, ill, glad, sorry, awry, ablaze;tall, heavy, smooth, mental, native - kind, brave, wonderful, wise stupid. The adverb, the numeral, the pronoun are also subject to the corresponding subcategorizations.

Some linguists prefer to avoid the traditional terminology and establish a classification of words based only on the distributive analysis, i. e., their аbility to combine with other words of different types. Thus, for instance, the words and and but will fall under one group, while because and whether are referred to as belonging to another group.

The four major parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) set up by the process of substitution in С h. Fries' recorded material are given no names except numbers: class 1, class 2, class 3, class 4. Assumptions have been made by Ch. Fries that all words which can occupy the same "set of positions" in the patterns of English single free utterances must belong to the same part of speech 2 . These four classes make up the "bulk"of functioning units in structural patterns of English. Then come fifteen groups of so-called function words, which have certain characteristic in common. In the mere matter of number of items the fifteen groups differ sharply from the four classes. In the four large classes, Ch. Fries points out, the lexical meanings of the words depend on the arrangement in which these words appear. In function-words it is usually difficult if not impossible to indicate a lexical meaning apart from the structural meaning which these words signal.

Ch. Fries made an attempt to establish the form-classes of English purely yntactically. His work presents a methodical analysis of a corpus of recorded fifty hours of diverse conversation by some three hundred different speakers. This material, in his words, covers the basic matters of English structure. The book presents a major linguistic interest as an experiment rather than for its achievements.

The new approach — the application of two of the methods of structural linguistics, distributional analysis and substitution — makes it possible for Ch. Fries to dispense with the usual eight parts of speech. He classifies words, as may be seen from the extracts into four "form-classes", designated by numbers, and fifteen groups of "function words", designated by letters. The form-classes correspond roughly to what most grammarians call nouns and pronouns, verbs, adjective and adverbs, though Ch. Fries especially warns the reader against the attempt to translate the statements which the latter finds in the book into the old grammatical terms. The group of function words contains not only prepositions and conjunctions, but also certain specific words that mosttraditional grammarians would class as a particular kind of pronouns, ad-verbs and verbs.

Other modern grammarians retain the traditional names of parts of speech, though the methods they use to identify the various parts of speech, the number of them and the distribution of words among them are all different from what is found in traditional grammar. They also exclude function words from the classification of parts of speech and give them entirely separate treatment 1.

Setting aside function words and observing the remaining words as they are combined into utterances with clear and unambiguous structural meaning, W. Francis finds it necessary to identify four different parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective and adverb. In his analysis nouns are identified, for instance, by five formal criteria, some more important than others.

The most common noun-marking signal is a group of function words called noun-determiners. These precede the nouns they mark, either immediately or with certain types of words between; nouns have inflections; many nouns may be identified as such by various noun-marking derivational suffixes; nouns fill certain characteristic positions in relation to other identified parts of speech in phrases and utterances, etc. Verb-marking criteria as given by W.Francis are the following: inflections, function words, derivational affixes, positions and "superfixes", і. e. "morphological" stress in cases like import — to import; contract — to contract; perfect — to perfect, etc.

It must be recognised that recent studies and practical suggestions made by structural linguists in this field, though not yet quite successful at all points, still new and experimental, are becoming increasingly interesting and important for language learning and practical training in linguistic skills. The subject matter of structural grammar has already supplied much material in the field of descriptive techniques. Some new methods of linguistic analysis promise to be rather efficient and are now being tried out.

English school grammars deal extensively with the parts of speech, usually given as eight in number and explained in definitions that have become traditional. It had long been considered that these eight parts of speech — noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection — are basic classifications that can be applied to the words of any language and that the traditional definition furnishes an ad-equate set of criteria by which the classification can be made.

We cannot however admit without question that the eight parts of speech inherited from the past will be the most satisfactory for present-day

English.

The linguistic evidence drawn from our grammatical study gives every reason to subdivide the whole of the English vocabulary into eleven parts of speech; in point of fact, eight of them are notional words which make up the largest part of the vocabulary and five are "function words", comparatively few in actual number of items, but used very frequently. Notional or fully-lexical parts of speech are: nouns, adjectives, verbs., ad-verbs, pronouns, numerals, modal words and interjections. Prepositions, conjunctions and particles are parts of speech largely devoid of lexical meaning and used to indicate various functional relationship among the notional words of an utterance.

Generally speaking we can say that all nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are capable of making direct reference and are the main units which carry the burden of referential information, and that all other words provide functional information.

Subcategorization is a natural language phenomenon, which denotes the tendency of verbs to have restrictions on the arguments that they can take. For example, some verbs do not take a noun-phrase object, while some verbs do take an object, or two objects (direct and indirect). The name subcategorization comes from the fact that the category of verbs is divided into finer-grained subcategories of different types of verbs based on the arguments they take.

Alternatively, Subcategorization is a concept by which differences in syntactic valency between words is

expressed. For example, a transitive verb has to be followed by a direct object NP contrary to intransitive

verbs. We can say that transitive verbs form a subcategory of the category of verbs, by virtue of the fact

that they must be followed by an NP complement. It is the obligatory presence of the object which gives

rise to the subcategory of transitive verbs. The object subcategorizes the verb, or the verb is

subcategorized by the object.

A Subcategorization frame is a formalization of the notion of subcategorization. For example, (i) gives the

subcategorization frame of the verb hit. It says that the pseudo-transitive verb hit optionally (indicated by

the parentheses) selects an NP-complement (a sister-node, as indicated by the square brackets) to its

right (indicated by the order '__ NP' rather than 'NP __').

(i) hit: [ __ (NP)]

Major categories

The main “parts of speech'' are called major categories.

• Noun (teacher)

• Verb (teach)

• Adjective (stupid)

• Adverb (stupidly)

• Preposition (with)

Major categories are typically ``open-class''. (you can invent new ones easily)

Minor categories

The other parts of speech are called minor categories.

• Determiner (the, every)

• Conjunction (and)

• Interjection (oh!)

Minor categories are typically “closed-class''. (you cannot invent new ones easily)

Note: prepositions are a closed-class major category.

Subcategories of Nouns

• Common nouns (city)

• Proper nouns (Helsinki)

• Pronouns (she)

Subcategories have different valency patterns:

• Common nouns (the city is beautiful) Proper nouns (*the Helsinki is beautiful)

• Pronouns (*the she is beautiful)

Common nouns ``subcategorize'' for a determiner.

Subcategories of Verbs

• Intransitive verbs (walk)

• Transitive verbs (like)

• Ditransitive verbs (give)

Subcategories have different valency patterns:

• Intransitive verbs (She walks, *She walks the dog a bone)

• Transitive verbs (She likes the dog, *She likes the dog a bone)

• Ditransitive verbs (She gives the dog a bone, *She gives)

Transitive verbs subcategorize for an object NP. Ditransitive verbs subcategorize for two object NPs.

Many subcategories of verbs

(Using Chomsky's early representation of complements).

• walk: V, __ (She walks)

• like: V, __ NP (She likes the dog)

• give: V, __ NP NP (She gives the dog a bone)

• give: V, __ NP PP(to) (She gives a bone to the dog)

• pretend: V, __ S(fin) (He pretended he had gone home)

• suggest: V, __ S(base) (He suggested we go home)

• intend: V, __ VP(to) (He intended to go home)

• help: V, __ VP(base) (He helped clean up)

• tell: V, __ NP VP(to) (He told them to clean up)

• make: V, __ NP VP(base) (He made them clean up)

• say: V, __ PP S(fin) (He said to me he would clean up)

• bet: V, __ NP NP S(fin) (He bet me ten pounds he would clean up)

• become: V, __ AP (He became unhappy)

• word: V, __ NP ADVP (He worded the reply cleverly)

Difficult to define all possible valency patterns of subcategories. Why not allow every word to have its own

specific valency pattern?

Subcategorization lists

(Representing the valency pattern by a list of the complements).

• walk: V, [ ] (She walks)

• like: V, [NP] (She likes the dog)

• give: V, [NP, NP] (She gives the dog a bone)

• give: V, [NP, PP(to)] (She gives a bone to the dog)

• pretend: V, [S(fin)] (He pretended he had gone home)

• suggest: V, [S(base)] (He suggested we go home)

• intend: V, [VP(to)] (He intended to go home)

• help: V, [VP(base)] (He helped clean up)

• tell: V, [NP, VP(to)] (He told them to clean up)

• make: V, [NP, VP(base)] (He made them clean up)

• say: V, [PP, S(fin)] (He said to me he would clean up)

• bet: V, [NP, NP, S(fin)] (He bet me ten pounds he would clean up)

• become: V, [AP] (He became unhappy)

• word: V, [NP, ADVP] (He worded the reply cleverly)

Parts of speech may be divided into notional (fully lexical, self-dependent functions in the sentence): Noun, Adjective, Numeral, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb; and functional (incomplete nominative meaning, non-self-dependent functions in the sentence): Article, Preposition, Conjunction, Particle, Modal Word, Interjection.

Why is it so difficult to classify parts of speech? Each part of speech has some typical characteristics - the highly organized nucleus, but there may be some peripheral features different from the typical ones. Sledd and Gleason pointed to rather complex relations between the words of one part of speech. Admony of Leningrad puts forward the theory of grammatical field (1974). Every part of speech has the nucleus and the periphery.

The theory of semantic fields has been worked out by Trier, Vicegerber and some other linguists; and the theory of lexico-grammatical field - by the Soviet grammarians Guliga, Shendels, Bondarko, Guhman

Alongside the three-criteria principle of dividing the words into grammatical (lexico-grammatical)classes, modern linguistics has developed another, narrower principle of word-class identificationbased on syntactic featuring of words only.

The fact is that the three-criteria principle faces a special difficulty in determining the part ofspeech status of such lexemes as have morphological characteristics of notional words, but play therole of grammatical mediators in phrases and sentences. Here belong, for instance, modal verbstogether with their equivalents – suppletive fillers, auxiliary verbs, aspective verbs, intensifyingadverbs, determiner pronouns.Still, at the present stage of the development of linguistic science, syntactic characterization ofwords that has been made possible after the exposition of their fundamental morphological properties,is far more important and universal from the point of view of the general classificational requirements.

It shows the distribution of words between different sets in accord with their functionalspecialization. The role of morphology by this presentation is not underrated, rather it is furtherclarified from the point of view of exposing connections between the categorial composition of the word and its sentence-forming relevance. The principles of syntactic (syntactico-distributional) classification of English words were workedout by L. Bloomfield and his followers Z. Harris and especially Ch. Fries. The syntactico-distributional classification of words is based on the study of their combinability by meansof substitution testing. The testing results in developing the standard model of four main "positions" ofnotional words in the English sentence: those of the noun (N), verb (V), adjective (A), adverb (D). Pronouns are included into the corresponding positional classes as their substitutes. Words standing outsidethe "positions" in the sentence are treated as function words of various syntactic values.Comparing the syntactico-distribulional classification of words with the traditional part of speech
division of words, one cannot but see the similarity of the general schemes of the two: the oppositionof notional and functional words, the four absolutely cardinal classes of notional words (since numeralsand pronouns have no positional functions of their own and serve as pro-nounal and pro-adjectivalelements), the interpretation of functional words as syntactic mediators and their formal representation bythe list. However, under these unquestionable traits of similarity are distinctly revealed essential features ofdifference, the proper evaluation of which allows us to make some important generalizations about thestructure of the lexemic system of language.

In most cases in treating parts of speech in English we shall keep to the conception of scientists that we refer to post-structural tendency. It's because they combine the ideas of traditional and structural grammarians.

The nouns are classified into a separate word - group because:

1. 
   they all have the same lexical - grammatical meaning :
   

substance / thing

2. 
   according to their form - they've two grammatical categories:
   

number and case

3. 
   they all have typical stem-building elements:
   

- er, - ist, - ship, - merit, -hood ...

4. 
   typical combinability with other words: most often left-hand combinability
   
5. 
   function - the most characteristic feature of nouns is - they can be observed in all syntactic functions but predicate.
   

Some words about the distribution of nouns. Because of the fact that nouns express or denote substance / thing, their distribution is bound with the words which express the quality of substance, their number, their actions and their relation to the other words /nouns/ in English.

Each part of speech after its identification is further subdivided into subseries in accord with various particular semantico-functional and formal features of the constituent words. This subdivision is sometimes called "subcategorization" of parts of speech. Thus, nouns are subcategorized into proper and common, animate and inanimate, countable and uncountable, concrete and abstract, etc. Cf.: Mary, Robinson, London, the Mississippi, Lake Erie - girl, person, city, river, lake; man, scholar, leopard, butterfly - earth, field, rose, machine; coin/coins, floor/floors, kind/kinds - news, growth, water, furniture;

stone, grain, mist, leaf- honesty, love, slavery, darkness.
Verbs are subcategorized into fully predicative and partially predicative, transitive and intransitive, actional and statal, purely nominative and evaluative, etc. Cf.:
walk, sail, prepare, shine, blow - can, may, shall, be, become;
take, put, speak, listen, see, give - live, float, stay, ache,- ripen, rain;
write, play, strike, boil, receive, ride - exist, sleep, rest, thrive, revel, suffer;
roll, tire, begin, ensnare, build, tremble - consider, approve, mind, desire, hate, incline. Adjectives are subcategorized into qualitative and relative, of constant feature and temporary feature (the latter are referred to as "statives" and identified by some scholars as a separate part of speech under the heading of "category of state"), factual and evaluative, etc. Cf.: long, red, lovely, noble, comfortable- wooden, rural, daily, subterranean, orthographical; healthy, sickly, joyful, grievous, wry, blazing - well, ill, glad, sorry, awry, ablaze; tall, heavy, smooth, mental, native - kind, brave, wonderful, wise stupid. The adverb, the numeral, the pronoun are also subject to the corresponding subcategorizations.

The noun as a part of speech has the categorial meaning of “substance” or “thingness”. It follows from this that the noun is the main nominative part of speech. The noun has the power, by way ofnomination, to isolate different properties of substances (i.e. direct and oblique qualities, and alsoactions and states as processual characteristics of substantive phenomena) and present them ascorresponding self-dependent substances. E.g.: Her words were unexpectedly bitter. – We were struck by the unexpected bitterness of her words.

At that time he was down in his career, but we knew well that very soon he would be up again. – His career had its ups and downs. The cable arrived when John was preoccupied with the arrangements for the party. – The arrivalof the cable interrupted his preoccupation with the arrangements for the party.
This natural and practically unlimited substantivization force establishes the noun as the central nominative lexemic unit of language. The categorial functional properties of the noun are determined by its semantic properties.
The most characteristic substantive function of the noun is that of the subject in the sentence, since thereferent of the subject is the person or thing immediately named. The function of the object in the sentence is also typical of the noun as the substance word. Other syntactic functions, i.e. attributive, adverbial, andeven predicative, although performed by the noun with equal ease, are not immediately characteristic of itssubstantive quality as such. The noun is characterized by some special types of combinability. In particular, typical of the noun is the prepositional combinability with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb.