What is the word very as a part of speech

The
traditional term “parts of speech” was developed in Ancient Greek
linguistics and reflects the fact that at that time there was no
distinction between language as a system and speech, between the word
as a part of an utterance and the word as a part of lexis. The term
“parts of speech” is accepted by modern linguistics as a
conventional, or “non-explanatory” term (“name-term”) to
denote the lexico-grammatical classes of words correlating with each
other in the general system of language on the basis of their
grammatically relevant properties.

There
are three types of grammatically relevant properties of words that
differentiate classes of words called “parts of speech”:
semantic, formal and functional properties. They traditionally make
the criteria for the classification of parts of speech. The semantic
criterion refers to the generalized semantic properties common to the
whole class of words, e.g.: the generalized (or, categorial) meaning
of nouns is “thingness”, of verbs process, of adjectives
substantive property, of adverbs non-substantive property. The formal
criterion embraces the formal features (word-building and
word-changing) that are characteristic for a particular part of
speech, e.g.: the noun is characterized by a specific set of
word-building affixes, cf.: property, bitterness, worker, etc., and
is changed according to the categories of number, case and article
determination: boy-boys, boy – boy’s, boy – the boy – a boy,
etc. Combinability is also a relevant formal feature for each
particular part of speech; for example, verbs can be modified by
adverbs, while nouns cannot (except in specific contexts). The
functional criterion is based on the functions that the words of a
particular class fulfill in the sentence, e.g.: the most
characteristic functions of the noun are those of a subject and an
object; the only function of the finite form of the verb is that of a
predicate; the adjective functions in most contexts as an attribute;
the adverb as an adverbial modifier.

Classifications
in general may be based either on one criterion (such classifications
are called homogeneous, or monodifferential), or on a combination of
several criteria (such classifications are called heterogeneous, or
polydifferential). The traditional classification of parts of speech
is polydifferential (heterogeneous); it is based on the combination
of all the three criteria mentioned above: ‘meaning – form –
function’.

Traditionally,
all parts of speech are subdivided on the upper level of
classification into notional words and functional words. Notional
words, which traditionally include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
pronouns and numerals, have complete nominative meanings, are in most
cases changeable and fulfill self-dependent syntactic functions in
the sentence. The noun, for example, as a part of speech, is
traditionally characterized by 1) the categorial meaning of substance
(“thingness”), 2) a specific set of word-building affixes, the
grammatical categories of number, case and article determination,
prepositional connections and modification by an adjective, and 3)
the substantive functions of subject, object or predicative in the
sentence. In the same way, all the other notional parts of speech are
described. Functional words, which include conjunctions,
prepositions, articles, interjections, particles, and modal words,
have incomplete nominative value, are unchangeable and fulfill
mediatory, constructional syntactic functions.

The
employment of the three criteria combined, in present-day mainstream
linguistics, was developed mainly by V. V. Vinogradov, L. V. Scherba,
A. I. Smirnitsky, B. A. Ilyish and others.

There
are certain limitations and controversial points in the traditional
classification of parts of speech, which make some linguists doubt
its scientific credibility. First of all, the three criteria turn out
to be relevant only for the subdivision of notional words. As for
functional words – prepositions, conjunctions, particles,
interjections, etc. – these classes of words do not distinguish
either common semantic, or formal, or functional properties, they are
rather characterized by the absence of all three criteria in any
generalized form. Second, the status of pronouns and the numerals,
which in the traditional classification are listed as notional, is
also questionable, since they do not have any syntactic functions of
their own, but rather different groups inside these two classes
resemble in their formal and functional properties different notional
parts of speech: e.g., cardinal numerals function as substantives,
while ordinal numerals function as adjectives; the same can be said
about personal pronouns and possessive pronouns. Third, it is very
difficult to draw rigorous borderlines between different classes of
words, because there are always phenomena that are indistinguishable
in their status. E.g., non-finite forms of verbs, such as the
infinitive, the gerund, participles I and II are actually verbal
forms, but lack some of the characteristics of the verb: they have no
person or number forms, no tense or mood forms, and what is even more
important, they never perform the characteristic verbal function,
that of a predicate. Equally dubious is the part-of-speech
characterization of auxiliary verbs, intensifying adverbs,
conjunctive adverbs and pronouns, and of many other groups of words
which have the morphological characteristics of notional words, but
play mediatory constructional functions in a sentence, like
functional words. There are even words that defy any classification
at all; for example, many linguists doubt whether the words of
agreement and disagreement, yes and no, can occupy any position in
the classification of parts of speech.

These,
and a number of other problems, made linguists search for alternative
ways to classify lexical units. Some of them thought that the
contradictions could be settled if parts of speech were classified
following what was seen as a strictly scientific approach, a unified
basis of subdivision; in other words, if a homogeneous, or
monodifferential classification of parts of speech were undertaken.

It
must be noted that the idea was not entirely new. The first
classification of parts of speech was homogeneous: in ancient Greek
grammar the words were subdivided mainly on the basis of their formal
properties into changeable and unchangeable; nouns, adjectives and
numerals were treated jointly as a big class of “names” because
they shared the same morphological forms. This classical linguistic
tradition was followed by the first English grammars: Henry Sweet
divided all the words in English into “declinables” and
“indeclinables”. But the approach which worked well for the
description of highly inflectional languages turned out to be less
efficient for the description of other languages.

The
syntactic approach, which establishes the word classes in accord with
their functional characteristics, is more universal and applicable to
languages of different morphological types. The principles of a
monodifferential syntactico-distributional classification of words in
English were developed by the representatives of American Descriptive
Linguistics, L. Bloomfield, Z. Harris and Ch. Fries.

Ch.
Fries selected the most widely used grammatical constructions and
used them as substitution frames: the frames were parsed into parts,
or positions, each of them got a separate number, and then Ch. Fries
conducted a series of substitution tests to find out what words can
be used in each of the positions. Some of the frames were as follows:
The concert was good (always). The clerk remembered the tax
(suddenly). The team went there. All the words that can be used in
place of the article made one group, the ones that could be used
instead of the word “clerk” another, etc. The results of his
experiments were surprisingly similar to the traditional
classification of parts of speech: four main positions were
distinguished in the sentences; the words which can be used in these
positions without affecting the meaning of the structures were united
in four big classes of words, and generally speaking coincide with
the four major notional parts of speech in the traditional
classification: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Besides these
“positional words” (“form-words”), Ch. Fries distinguished 15
limited groups of words, which cannot fill in the positions in the
frames. These “function words” are practically the same as the
functional words in the traditional classification.

The
syntactico-distributional classification of words distinguished on a
consistently syntactic basis testifies to the objective nature of the
classification of parts of speech. More than that, in some respects
the results of this approach turn out to be even more confusing than
the allegedly “non-scientific” traditional classification: for
example, Group A, embracing words that can substitute for the article
“the” in the above given frames, includes words as diverse as
“the, no, your, their, both, few, much, John’s, twenty”, or one
word might be found in different distributional classes. Thus, the
syntactico-distributional classification cannot replace the
traditional classification of parts of speech, but the major features
of different classes of words revealed in syntactico-distributional
classification can be used as an important supplement to traditional
classification.

The
combination of syntactico-distributional and traditional
classifications strongly suggests the unconditional subdivision of
the lexicon into two big supra-classes: notional and functional
words. The major formal grammatical feature of this subdivision is
their open or closed character. The notional parts of speech are open
classes of words, with established basic semantic, formal and
functional characteristics. There are only four notional classes of
words, which correlate with the four main syntactic positions in the
sentence: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They are
interconnected by the four stages of the lexical paradigmatic series
of derivation, e.g.: to decide – decision – decisive –
decisively. The functional words are closed classes of words: they
cannot be further enlarged and are given by lists. The closed
character of the functional words is determined by their role in the
structure of the sentence: the functional words expose various
constructional functions of syntactic units, and this makes them
closer to grammatical rather than to lexical means of the language.

As
for pronouns and the numerals, according to the functional approach
they form a separate supra-class of substitutional parts of speech,
since they have no function of their own in the sentence, but
substitute for notional parts of speech and perform their
characteristic functions. The difference between the four notional
parts of speech and substitutional parts of speech is also supported
by the fact that the latter are closed groups of words like
functional parts of speech.

The
three supra-classes are further subdivided into classes (the parts of
speech proper) and sub-classes (groups inside the parts of speech).
For example, nouns are divided into personal and common, animate and
inanimate, countable and uncountable, etc.; pronouns are subdivided
into personal, possessive (conjoint and absolute), objective
pronouns, demonstrative, reflexive, relative, etc.; numerals are
subdivided into cardinal and ordinal, et

The
field approach, which was outlined in the previous units, also helps
clarify many disputable points in the traditional classification of
parts of speech. The borderlines between the classes of words are not
rigid; instead of borderlines there is a continuum of numerous
intermediary phenomena, combining the features of two or more major
classes of words. Field theory states that in each class of words
there is a core, the bulk of its members that possess all the
characteristic features of the class, and a periphery (marginal
part), which includes the words of mixed, dubious character,
intermediary between this class and other classes. For example, the
non-finite forms of the verb (the infinitive, the gerund, participles
I and II) make up the periphery of the verbal class: they lack some
of the features of a verb, but possess certain features
characteristic to either nouns, or adjectives, or adverbs. There are
numerous intermediary phenomena that form a continuum between the
notional and functional supra-classes; for example, there are adverbs
whose functioning is close to that of conjunctions and prepositions,
e.g.: however, nevertheless, besides, etc. Notional words of broad
meaning are similar in their functioning to the substitutive
functioning of the pronouns, e.g.: He speaks English better than I
do; Have you seen my pen? I can’t find the wretched thing. Together
with the regular pronouns they form the stages of the paradigmatic
series, in which the four notional parts of speech are substitutively
represented, cf.: one, it, thing, matter, way… — do, make, act…-
such, similar same… — thus, so, there…

The
implementation of the field approach to the distribution of words in
parts of speech was formulated by the Russian linguists G. S. Schur
and V. G. Admoni.

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In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class^[1] or grammatical category^[2]) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assigned to the same part of speech generally display similar syntactic behavior (they play similar roles within the grammatical structure of sentences), sometimes similar morphological behavior in that they undergo inflection for similar properties and even similar semantic behavior. Commonly listed English parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, interjection, numeral, article, and determiner.

Other terms than part of speech—particularly in modern linguistic classifications, which often make more precise distinctions than the traditional scheme does—include word class, lexical class, and lexical category. Some authors restrict the term lexical category to refer only to a particular type of syntactic category; for them the term excludes those parts of speech that are considered to be function words, such as pronouns. The term form class is also used, although this has various conflicting definitions.^[3] Word classes may be classified as open or closed: open classes (typically including nouns, verbs and adjectives) acquire new members constantly, while closed classes (such as pronouns and conjunctions) acquire new members infrequently, if at all.

Almost all languages have the word classes noun and verb, but beyond these two there are significant variations among different languages.^[4] For example:

• Japanese has as many as three classes of adjectives, where English has one.
• Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese have a class of nominal classifiers.
• Many languages do not distinguish between adjectives and adverbs, or between adjectives and verbs (see stative verb).

Because of such variation in the number of categories and their identifying properties, analysis of parts of speech must be done for each individual language. Nevertheless, the labels for each category are assigned on the basis of universal criteria.^[4]

History[edit]

The classification of words into lexical categories is found from the earliest moments in the history of linguistics.^[5]

India[edit]

In the Nirukta, written in the 6th or 5th century BCE, the Sanskrit grammarian Yāska defined four main categories of words:^[6]

1. नाम nāma – noun (including adjective)
2. आख्यात ākhyāta – verb
3. उपसर्ग upasarga – pre-verb or prefix
4. निपात nipāta – particle, invariant word (perhaps preposition)

These four were grouped into two larger classes: inflectable (nouns and verbs) and uninflectable (pre-verbs and particles).

The ancient work on the grammar of the Tamil language, Tolkāppiyam, argued to have been written around 2nd century CE,^[7] classifies Tamil words as peyar (பெயர்; noun), vinai (வினை; verb), idai (part of speech which modifies the relationships between verbs and nouns), and uri (word that further qualifies a noun or verb).^[8]

Western tradition[edit]

A century or two after the work of Yāska, the Greek scholar Plato wrote in his Cratylus dialogue, «sentences are, I conceive, a combination of verbs [rhêma] and nouns [ónoma]».^[9] Aristotle added another class, «conjunction» [sýndesmos], which included not only the words known today as conjunctions, but also other parts (the interpretations differ; in one interpretation it is pronouns, prepositions, and the article).^[10]

By the end of the 2nd century BCE, grammarians had expanded this classification scheme into eight categories, seen in the Art of Grammar, attributed to Dionysius Thrax:^[11]

1. ‘Name’ (ónoma) translated as «Noun«: a part of speech inflected for case, signifying a concrete or abstract entity. It includes various species like nouns, adjectives, proper nouns, appellatives, collectives, ordinals, numerals and more.^[12]
2. Verb (rhêma): a part of speech without case inflection, but inflected for tense, person and number, signifying an activity or process performed or undergone
3. Participle (metokhḗ): a part of speech sharing features of the verb and the noun
4. Article (árthron): a declinable part of speech, taken to include the definite article, but also the basic relative pronoun
5. Pronoun (antōnymíā): a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for a person
6. Preposition (próthesis): a part of speech placed before other words in composition and in syntax
7. Adverb (epírrhēma): a part of speech without inflection, in modification of or in addition to a verb, adjective, clause, sentence, or other adverb
8. Conjunction (sýndesmos): a part of speech binding together the discourse and filling gaps in its interpretation

It can be seen that these parts of speech are defined by morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria.

The Latin grammarian Priscian (fl. 500 CE) modified the above eightfold system, excluding «article» (since the Latin language, unlike Greek, does not have articles) but adding «interjection».^[13][14]

The Latin names for the parts of speech, from which the corresponding modern English terms derive, were nomen, verbum, participium, pronomen, praepositio, adverbium, conjunctio and interjectio. The category nomen included substantives (nomen substantivum, corresponding to what are today called nouns in English), adjectives (nomen adjectivum) and numerals (nomen numerale). This is reflected in the older English terminology noun substantive, noun adjective and noun numeral. Later^[15] the adjective became a separate class, as often did the numerals, and the English word noun came to be applied to substantives only.

Classification[edit]

Works of English grammar generally follow the pattern of the European tradition as described above, except that participles are now usually regarded as forms of verbs rather than as a separate part of speech, and numerals are often conflated with other parts of speech: nouns (cardinal numerals, e.g., «one», and collective numerals, e.g., «dozen»), adjectives (ordinal numerals, e.g., «first», and multiplier numerals, e.g., «single») and adverbs (multiplicative numerals, e.g., «once», and distributive numerals, e.g., «singly»). Eight or nine parts of speech are commonly listed:

1. noun
2. verb
3. adjective
4. adverb
5. pronoun
6. preposition
7. conjunction
8. interjection
9. article* or (more recently) determiner

Additionally, there are other parts of speech including particles (yes, no)^[a] and postpositions (ago, notwithstanding) although many fewer words are in these categories.

Some traditional classifications consider articles to be adjectives, yielding eight parts of speech rather than nine. And some modern classifications define further classes in addition to these. For discussion see the sections below.

The classification below, or slight expansions of it, is still followed in most dictionaries:

Noun (names)

a word or lexical item denoting any abstract (abstract noun: e.g. home) or concrete entity (concrete noun: e.g. house); a person (police officer, Michael), place (coastline, London), thing (necktie, television), idea (happiness), or quality (bravery). Nouns can also be classified as count nouns or non-count nouns; some can belong to either category. The most common part of speech; they are called naming words.

Pronoun (replaces or places again)

a substitute for a noun or noun phrase (them, he). Pronouns make sentences shorter and clearer since they replace nouns.

Adjective (describes, limits)

a modifier of a noun or pronoun (big, brave). Adjectives make the meaning of another word (noun) more precise.

Verb (states action or being)

a word denoting an action (walk), occurrence (happen), or state of being (be). Without a verb, a group of words cannot be a clause or sentence.

Adverb (describes, limits)

a modifier of an adjective, verb, or another adverb (very, quite). Adverbs make language more precise.

Preposition (relates)

a word that relates words to each other in a phrase or sentence and aids in syntactic context (in, of). Prepositions show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun with another word in the sentence.

Conjunction (connects)

a syntactic connector; links words, phrases, or clauses (and, but). Conjunctions connect words or group of words

Interjection (expresses feelings and emotions)

an emotional greeting or exclamation (Huzzah, Alas). Interjections express strong feelings and emotions.

Article (describes, limits)

a grammatical marker of definiteness (the) or indefiniteness (a, an). The article is not always listed among the parts of speech. It is considered by some grammarians to be a type of adjective^[16] or sometimes the term ‘determiner’ (a broader class) is used.

English words are not generally marked as belonging to one part of speech or another; this contrasts with many other European languages, which use inflection more extensively, meaning that a given word form can often be identified as belonging to a particular part of speech and having certain additional grammatical properties. In English, most words are uninflected, while the inflected endings that exist are mostly ambiguous: -ed may mark a verbal past tense, a participle or a fully adjectival form; -s may mark a plural noun, a possessive noun, or a present-tense verb form; -ing may mark a participle, gerund, or pure adjective or noun. Although -ly is a frequent adverb marker, some adverbs (e.g. tomorrow, fast, very) do not have that ending, while many adjectives do have it (e.g. friendly, ugly, lovely), as do occasional words in other parts of speech (e.g. jelly, fly, rely).

Many English words can belong to more than one part of speech. Words like neigh, break, outlaw, laser, microwave, and telephone might all be either verbs or nouns. In certain circumstances, even words with primarily grammatical functions can be used as verbs or nouns, as in, «We must look to the hows and not just the whys.» The process whereby a word comes to be used as a different part of speech is called conversion or zero derivation.

Functional classification[edit]

Linguists recognize that the above list of eight or nine word classes is drastically simplified.^[17] For example, «adverb» is to some extent a catch-all class that includes words with many different functions. Some have even argued that the most basic of category distinctions, that of nouns and verbs, is unfounded,^[18] or not applicable to certain languages.^[19][20] Modern linguists have proposed many different schemes whereby the words of English or other languages are placed into more specific categories and subcategories based on a more precise understanding of their grammatical functions.

Common lexical category set defined by function may include the following (not all of them will necessarily be applicable in a given language):

• Categories that will usually be open classes:
  • adjectives
  • adverbs
  • nouns
  • verbs (except auxiliary verbs)
  • interjections
• Categories that will usually be closed classes:
  • auxiliary verbs
  • clitics
  • coverbs
  • conjunctions
  • determiners (articles, quantifiers, demonstrative adjectives, and possessive adjectives)
  • particles
  • measure words or classifiers
  • adpositions (prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions)
  • preverbs
  • pronouns
  • contractions
  • cardinal numbers

Within a given category, subgroups of words may be identified based on more precise grammatical properties. For example, verbs may be specified according to the number and type of objects or other complements which they take. This is called subcategorization.

Many modern descriptions of grammar include not only lexical categories or word classes, but also phrasal categories, used to classify phrases, in the sense of groups of words that form units having specific grammatical functions. Phrasal categories may include noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP) and so on. Lexical and phrasal categories together are called syntactic categories.

Open and closed classes[edit]

Word classes may be either open or closed. An open class is one that commonly accepts the addition of new words, while a closed class is one to which new items are very rarely added. Open classes normally contain large numbers of words, while closed classes are much smaller. Typical open classes found in English and many other languages are nouns, verbs (excluding auxiliary verbs, if these are regarded as a separate class), adjectives, adverbs and interjections. Ideophones are often an open class, though less familiar to English speakers,^[21][22][b] and are often open to nonce words. Typical closed classes are prepositions (or postpositions), determiners, conjunctions, and pronouns.^[24]

The open–closed distinction is related to the distinction between lexical and functional categories, and to that between content words and function words, and some authors consider these identical, but the connection is not strict. Open classes are generally lexical categories in the stricter sense, containing words with greater semantic content,^[25] while closed classes are normally functional categories, consisting of words that perform essentially grammatical functions. This is not universal: in many languages verbs and adjectives^[26][27][28] are closed classes, usually consisting of few members, and in Japanese the formation of new pronouns from existing nouns is relatively common, though to what extent these form a distinct word class is debated.

Words are added to open classes through such processes as compounding, derivation, coining, and borrowing. When a new word is added through some such process, it can subsequently be used grammatically in sentences in the same ways as other words in its class.^[29] A closed class may obtain new items through these same processes, but such changes are much rarer and take much more time. A closed class is normally seen as part of the core language and is not expected to change. In English, for example, new nouns, verbs, etc. are being added to the language constantly (including by the common process of verbing and other types of conversion, where an existing word comes to be used in a different part of speech). However, it is very unusual for a new pronoun, for example, to become accepted in the language, even in cases where there may be felt to be a need for one, as in the case of gender-neutral pronouns.

The open or closed status of word classes varies between languages, even assuming that corresponding word classes exist. Most conspicuously, in many languages verbs and adjectives form closed classes of content words. An extreme example is found in Jingulu, which has only three verbs, while even the modern Indo-European Persian has no more than a few hundred simple verbs, a great deal of which are archaic. (Some twenty Persian verbs are used as light verbs to form compounds; this lack of lexical verbs is shared with other Iranian languages.) Japanese is similar, having few lexical verbs.^[30] Basque verbs are also a closed class, with the vast majority of verbal senses instead expressed periphrastically.

In Japanese, verbs and adjectives are closed classes,^[31] though these are quite large, with about 700 adjectives,^[32][33] and verbs have opened slightly in recent years. Japanese adjectives are closely related to verbs (they can predicate a sentence, for instance). New verbal meanings are nearly always expressed periphrastically by appending suru (する, to do) to a noun, as in undō suru (運動する, to (do) exercise), and new adjectival meanings are nearly always expressed by adjectival nouns, using the suffix -na (〜な) when an adjectival noun modifies a noun phrase, as in hen-na ojisan (変なおじさん, strange man). The closedness of verbs has weakened in recent years, and in a few cases new verbs are created by appending -ru (〜る) to a noun or using it to replace the end of a word. This is mostly in casual speech for borrowed words, with the most well-established example being sabo-ru (サボる, cut class; play hooky), from sabotāju (サボタージュ, sabotage).^[34] This recent innovation aside, the huge contribution of Sino-Japanese vocabulary was almost entirely borrowed as nouns (often verbal nouns or adjectival nouns). Other languages where adjectives are closed class include Swahili,^[28] Bemba, and Luganda.

By contrast, Japanese pronouns are an open class and nouns become used as pronouns with some frequency; a recent example is jibun (自分, self), now used by some young men as a first-person pronoun. The status of Japanese pronouns as a distinct class is disputed,^{[by whom?]} however, with some considering it only a use of nouns, not a distinct class. The case is similar in languages of Southeast Asia, including Thai and Lao, in which, like Japanese, pronouns and terms of address vary significantly based on relative social standing and respect.^[35]

Some word classes are universally closed, however, including demonstratives and interrogative words.^[35]

See also[edit]

• Part-of-speech tagging
• Sliding window based part-of-speech tagging

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Media related to Parts of speech at Wikimedia Commons
• The parts of speech
• Guide to Grammar and Writing
• Martin Haspelmath. 2001. «Word Classes and Parts of Speech.» In: Baltes, Paul B. & Smelser, Neil J. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam: Pergamon, 16538–16545. (PDF)