Parts of Speech. Lecture 2

1.

Lecture 2.
Parts of Speech
1. The principles of discriminating classes of
words.
2. Traditional classification.
3. Syntactico – distributional classification
(by Ch.Fries).
4. Notional and functional parts of speech.
Краснопёрова Ю.В.
К.ф.н., доцент кафедры первого ин.яз. и
переводоведения

2.

Parts of Speech
lexico-grammatical classes of
words united by the semantic
meaning, form and function
I. The principles of discrimination

3.

Parts of Speech
The disputable questions are:
Their inventory.
The principles of singling them out.
The hierarchical relations between
them.
I. The principles of discrimination

4.

Parts of speech represent a
non-rigid system of classes
of words. It is revealed:
Parts of Speech
In the existence of intermediate forms.
E.g.: The Participle has properties of a verb and an
adjective.
In the transition of words from one part of speech to
another.
E.g.: substantivized adjectives.
In the neutralization of some qualities in some
constructions.
E.g.: The difference between a noun and an adjective is
neutralized in the predicative function. (It was funny.
It was fun).
I. The principles of discrimination

5.

Parts of Speech
Parts of speech are discriminated
(classified) on the basis of the 3
criteria:
Semantic (meaning)
Formal (morphological)
Functional
I. The principles of discrimination

6.

Parts of Speech
The semantic criterion
presupposes generalized meaning of a given
part of speech.
This meaning is understood as the categorial
meaning of the part of speech.
E.g.: V – action, Adj – quality, N – thing.
I. The principles of discrimination

7.

Parts of Speech
The formal criterion
provides for the exposition of the specific
inflexional and derivational features,
characteristic of a part of speech.
E.g.: Verb: – ed, -s, -ing – inflexional
morphemes.
Verb: dis-, -en, -ify – derivational ones.
I. The principles of discrimination

8.

Parts of Speech
The functional criterion
concerns the syntactic role typical of a
part of speech.
E.g.: noun – a subject, an object, a
predicative.
I. The principles of discrimination

9.

Parts of Speech
NOTE: it’s not always
possible to discriminate
parts of speech based
upon all the 3 criteria.
E.g.: numerals have common meaning of
exact quantity, but in form and function they
coincide with nouns and adjectives.
Pronouns: they do not name the objects, they
only indicate them, refer to them. In other
respects they behave like nouns and
adjectives.
I. The principles of discrimination

10.

Parts of Speech
Classifications
Ancient classification
(Aristotel)
semantic (logical) criterion
all words are divided into division of objective
reality:
1.Objects and their qualities.
2. Actions and their qualities.
Nouns – adjectives; verbs – adverbs.
BUT!!! This classification does not cover other parts of speech.
“Nouns” do not define only thing, but also states.
E.g.: love, hatred.
II. Parts of Speech
Classifications

11.

The Traditional
Classification
Henry Sweet
the morphological (formal)
criterion
words
Declinable
parts of speech, which
are capable of taking
inflexions
A noun, an adjective,
a verb
II. The traditional classification
Indeclinable parts
of speech, which
are incapable of
taking inflexions.
An adverb,
a preposition,
a conjunction,
an interjection

12.

Henry Sweet
The Traditional
Classification
Declinable
parts of speech
according to their function.
1. Noun-words (a noun, pronoun, noun-numeral, gerund,
infinitive).
2. Adjective-words (adjectives, adjective – pronouns:
possessive, demonstrative, participles.)
3. Verb-words (finite, non-finite forms).
II. The traditional classification

13.

Henry Sweet
The Traditional
Classification
The Disadvantages:
1. Function can be different, but form is the same, H. Sweet
separated words with the common form and grammatical
meaning.
2. It Includes totally different elements.
E.g.: adverb can be a part of a sentence, conjunction can
not be such.
3. Adverbs do have grammatical morphemes, thus it’s
declinable.
II. The traditional classification

14.

Otto Jerperson
The Traditional
Classification
an attempt to create the classification
combining different principles.
The classification, which is somewhere between
morphology and syntax
“The theory of 3 ranks”
II. The traditional classification

15.

Otto Jerperson
The Traditional
Classification
“The theory of 3 ranks”
The idea:
a word can be primary in function (it can be the nucleus of a
word-group),
secondary (modifying the primary one),
tertiary (subordinated to the secondary one).
E.g.: a furiously(III) barking(II) dog(I).
II. The traditional classification

16.

The Syntactico-distributional
Classification
L. Bloomfield and his
followers Z. Harris
and Ch. Fries
“The structure of
English”
NOTE: the linguistic material of
his book was 40 hours of
telephone conversation.
III. Syntactico-distributional
classification

17.

L. Bloomfield, Z.
Harris, Ch. Fries
The Syntactico-distributional
Classification
based on the combinability of the
structural features of the words by
means of substitution testing.
This testing results in pointing out
4 positions of notional words in the
sentence.
Sentence = N+V+Adj+Adv
III. Syntactico-distributional
classification

18.

L. Bloomfield, Z.
Harris, Ch. Fries
The Syntactico-distributional
Classification
3 repeated frames
positions
I
II
III
Frame 1
The
concert
was
Frame 2
The clerk
remembered the text
(I)
(suddenly).
Frame 3
The team
went
there.
III. Syntactico-distributional
classification
good
IV
-
(always).

19.

L. Bloomfield, Z.
Harris, Ch. Fries
The Syntactico-distributional
Classification
Ch.Fries presents his scheme of English
word-classes:
Things and actors (doers)
Actions
Qualities
Direction of the action, time, and
characteristic of the action.
III. Syntactico-distributional
classification

20.

L. Bloomfield, Z.
Harris, Ch. Fries
The Syntactico-distributional
Classification
Words standing outside these positions are
treated as functional words.
Functional words (a limited group of 154 units)
are distributed into 3 main sets:
1. Specifiers of notional words
(modal verbs, determiners of nouns, intensifiers
of adjectives and adverbs (for ex: so, very).
III. Syntactico-distributional
classification

21.

L. Bloomfield, Z.
Harris, Ch. Fries
The Syntactico-distributional
Classification
2. Interpositional elements, determining the
relations of notional words to one another
(prepositions).
3. The words, which refer to the sentence as a
whole
(question-words, words of affirmation and negation
(for ex: yes, no)), sentence-introducers (it) and
inducement words (please, let’s)
III. Syntactico-distributional
classification

22.

M.Y. Blokh
The Syntactic Approach
development
divides the lexicon into
3 unequal parts:
An open set of notional words, which is indefinitely
large. They can be referred to as names:
Noun – as substance name; Verb – as process name;
Adjective – primary property name; Adverb – secondary
property name.
A closed set of substitutes of names: pronouns, broadmeaning notional words (thing, affair, act, do, make).
A closed set includes specifiers of names.
III. The Classification
of Blokh.

23.

Russian linguists
Notional and Functional
Parts of Speech
functional parts of
speech:
notional parts of
speech:
Article
Preposition
Conjunction
Particle
Modal words
(perhaps, probably)
Interjection
Noun
Verb
Adjective
Adverb
Numeral
Pronoun
IV. Notional and functional
parts of speech.

24.

Leningrad linguistic
school
Notional and Functional
Parts of Speech
the words of category of state
E.g.: afraid, asleep, akin
- one function: a predicative.
IV. Notional and functional
parts of speech.

25.

Each part of speech
is identified by
certain features
(meaning, form,
functions)
Notional and Functional
Parts of Speech
E.g.: a noun
Categorical meaning: substance.
Specific suffixal forms of derivation.
Function: subject, object, predicative.
Modified by an article.
IV. Notional and functional
parts of speech.

26.

Notional and Functional
Parts of Speech
Each part of speech after its identification is
further subdivided into subseries in
accordance with various particular
semantic-functional and formal features.
IV. Notional and functional
parts of speech.

27.

Notional and Functional
Parts of Speech
Nouns are subcategorized into proper and
common; animate and inanimate; countable
and uncountable; concrete and abstract
Verbs: fully predicative and partially predicative;
transitive and intransitive; actional/dynamic –
stative.
Adjectives: qualitative and relative, factual
(long) and evaluative (wooden).
IV. Notional and functional
parts of speech.