What part of speech is the word grammar

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In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers’ or writers’ composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domains such as phonology, morphology, and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. There are currently two different approaches to the study of grammar: traditional grammar and theoretical grammar.

Fluent speakers of a language variety or lect have effectively internalized these constraints,^[1] the vast majority of which – at least in the case of one’s native language(s) – are acquired not by conscious study or instruction but by hearing other speakers. Much of this internalization occurs during early childhood; learning a language later in life usually involves more explicit instruction.^[2] In this view, grammar is understood as the cognitive information underlying a specific instance of language production.

The term «grammar» can also describe the linguistic behavior of groups of speakers and writers rather than individuals. Differences in scales are important to this sense of the word: for example, the term «English grammar» could refer to the whole of English grammar (that is, to the grammar of all the speakers of the language), in which case the term encompasses a great deal of variation.^[3] At a smaller scale, it may refer only to what is shared among the grammars of all or most English speakers (such as subject–verb–object word order in simple declarative sentences). At the smallest scale, this sense of «grammar» can describe the conventions of just one relatively well-defined form of English (such as standard English for a region).

A description, study, or analysis of such rules may also be referred to as grammar. A reference book describing the grammar of a language is called a «reference grammar» or simply «a grammar» (see History of English grammars). A fully explicit grammar, which exhaustively describes the grammatical constructions of a particular speech variety, is called descriptive grammar. This kind of linguistic description contrasts with linguistic prescription, an attempt to actively discourage or suppress some grammatical constructions while codifying and promoting others, either in an absolute sense or about a standard variety. For example, some prescriptivists maintain that sentences in English should not end with prepositions, a prohibition that has been traced to John Dryden (13 April 1668 – January 1688) whose unexplained objection to the practice perhaps led other English speakers to avoid the construction and discourage its use.^[4][5] Yet preposition stranding has a long history in Germanic languages like English, where it is so widespread as to be a standard usage.

Outside linguistics, the term grammar is often used in a rather different sense. It may be used more broadly to include conventions of spelling and punctuation, which linguists would not typically consider as part of grammar but rather as part of orthography, the conventions used for writing a language. It may also be used more narrowly to refer to a set of prescriptive norms only, excluding those aspects of a language’s grammar which are not subject to variation or debate on their normative acceptability. Jeremy Butterfield claimed that, for non-linguists, «Grammar is often a generic way of referring to any aspect of English that people object to.»^[6]

Etymology[edit]

The word grammar is derived from Greek γραμματικὴ τέχνη (grammatikḕ téchnē), which means «art of letters», from γράμμα (grámma), «letter», itself from γράφειν (gráphein), «to draw, to write».^[7] The same Greek root also appears in the words graphics, grapheme, and photograph.

History[edit]

The first systematic grammar of Sanskrit, originated in Iron Age India, with Yaska (6th century BC), Pāṇini (6th–5th century BC^[8]) and his commentators Pingala (c. 200 BC), Katyayana, and Patanjali (2nd century BC). Tolkāppiyam, the earliest Tamil grammar, is mostly dated to before the 5th century AD. The Babylonians also made some early attempts at language description.^[9]

Grammar appeared as a discipline in Hellenism from the 3rd century BC forward with authors such as Rhyanus and Aristarchus of Samothrace. The oldest known grammar handbook is the Art of Grammar (Τέχνη Γραμματική), a succinct guide to speaking and writing clearly and effectively, written by the ancient Greek scholar Dionysius Thrax (c. 170–c. 90 BC), a student of Aristarchus of Samothrace who founded a school on the Greek island of Rhodes. Dionysius Thrax’s grammar book remained the primary grammar textbook for Greek schoolboys until as late as the twelfth century AD. The Romans based their grammatical writings on it and its basic format remains the basis for grammar guides in many languages even today.^[10] Latin grammar developed by following Greek models from the 1st century BC, due to the work of authors such as Orbilius Pupillus, Remmius Palaemon, Marcus Valerius Probus, Verrius Flaccus, and Aemilius Asper.

The grammar of Irish originated in the 7th century with the Auraicept na n-Éces. Arabic grammar emerged with Abu al-Aswad al-Du’ali in the 7th century. The first treatises on Hebrew grammar appeared in the High Middle Ages, in the context of Mishnah (exegesis of the Hebrew Bible). The Karaite tradition originated in Abbasid Baghdad. The Diqduq (10th century) is one of the earliest grammatical commentaries on the Hebrew Bible.^[11] Ibn Barun in the 12th century, compares the Hebrew language with Arabic in the Islamic grammatical tradition.^[12]

Belonging to the trivium of the seven liberal arts, grammar was taught as a core discipline throughout the Middle Ages, following the influence of authors from Late Antiquity, such as Priscian. Treatment of vernaculars began gradually during the High Middle Ages, with isolated works such as the First Grammatical Treatise, but became influential only in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. In 1486, Antonio de Nebrija published Las introduciones Latinas contrapuesto el romance al Latin, and the first Spanish grammar, Gramática de la lengua castellana, in 1492. During the 16th-century Italian Renaissance, the Questione della lingua was the discussion on the status and ideal form of the Italian language, initiated by Dante’s de vulgari eloquentia (Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua Venice 1525). The first grammar of Slovene was written in 1583 by Adam Bohorič.

Grammars of some languages began to be compiled for the purposes of evangelism and Bible translation from the 16th century onward, such as Grammatica o Arte de la Lengua General de Los Indios de Los Reynos del Perú (1560), a Quechua grammar by Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás.

From the latter part of the 18th century, grammar came to be understood as a subfield of the emerging discipline of modern linguistics. The Deutsche Grammatik of the Jacob Grimm was first published in the 1810s. The Comparative Grammar of Franz Bopp, the starting point of modern comparative linguistics, came out in 1833.

Theoretical frameworks[edit]

Frameworks of grammar which seek to give a precise scientific theory of the syntactic rules of grammar and their function have been developed in theoretical linguistics.

• Dependency grammar: dependency relation (Lucien Tesnière 1959)
  • Link grammar
• Functional grammar (structural–functional analysis):
  • Danish Functionalism
  • Functional Discourse Grammar
  • Role and reference grammar
  • Systemic functional grammar
• Montague grammar

Other frameworks are based on an innate «universal grammar», an idea developed by Noam Chomsky. In such models, the object is placed into the verb phrase. The most prominent biologically-oriented theories are:

• Cognitive grammar / Cognitive linguistics
  • Construction grammar
    • Fluid Construction Grammar
  • Word grammar
• Generative grammar:
  • Transformational grammar (1960s)
  • Generative semantics (1970s) and Semantic Syntax (1990s)
  • Phrase structure grammar (late 1970s)
    • Generalised phrase structure grammar (late 1970s)
      • Head-driven phrase structure grammar (1985)
      • Principles and parameters grammar (Government and binding theory) (1980s)
  • Lexical functional grammar
  • Categorial grammar (lambda calculus)
  • Minimalist program-based grammar (1993)
• Stochastic grammar: probabilistic
  • Operator grammar

Parse trees are commonly used by such frameworks to depict their rules. There are various alternative schemes for some grammar:

• Affix grammar over a finite lattice
• Backus–Naur form
• Constraint grammar
• Lambda calculus
• Tree-adjoining grammar
• X-bar theory

Development of grammar[edit]

Grammars evolve through usage. Historically, with the advent of written representations, formal rules about language usage tend to appear also, although such rules tend to describe writing conventions more accurately than conventions of speech.^[15] Formal grammars are codifications of usage which are developed by repeated documentation and observation over time. As rules are established and developed, the prescriptive concept of grammatical correctness can arise. This often produces a discrepancy between contemporary usage and that which has been accepted, over time, as being standard or «correct». Linguists tend to view prescriptive grammar as having little justification beyond their authors’ aesthetic tastes, although style guides may give useful advice about standard language employment based on descriptions of usage in contemporary writings of the same language. Linguistic prescriptions also form part of the explanation for variation in speech, particularly variation in the speech of an individual speaker (for example, why some speakers say «I didn’t do nothing», some say «I didn’t do anything», and some say one or the other depending on social context).

The formal study of grammar is an important part of children’s schooling from a young age through advanced learning, though the rules taught in schools are not a «grammar» in the sense that most linguists use, particularly as they are prescriptive in intent rather than descriptive.

Constructed languages (also called planned languages or conlangs) are more common in the modern-day, although still extremely uncommon compared to natural languages. Many have been designed to aid human communication (for example, naturalistic Interlingua, schematic Esperanto, and the highly logic-compatible artificial language Lojban). Each of these languages has its own grammar.

Syntax refers to the linguistic structure above the word level (for example, how sentences are formed) – though without taking into account intonation, which is the domain of phonology. Morphology, by contrast, refers to the structure at and below the word level (for example, how compound words are formed), but above the level of individual sounds, which, like intonation, are in the domain of phonology.^[16] However, no clear line can be drawn between syntax and morphology. Analytic languages use syntax to convey information that is encoded by inflection in synthetic languages. In other words, word order is not significant, and morphology is highly significant in a purely synthetic language, whereas morphology is not significant and syntax is highly significant in an analytic language. For example, Chinese and Afrikaans are highly analytic, thus meaning is very context-dependent. (Both have some inflections, and both have had more in the past; thus, they are becoming even less synthetic and more «purely» analytic over time.) Latin, which is highly synthetic, uses affixes and inflections to convey the same information that Chinese does with syntax. Because Latin words are quite (though not totally) self-contained, an intelligible Latin sentence can be made from elements that are arranged almost arbitrarily. Latin has a complex affixation and simple syntax, whereas Chinese has the opposite.

Education[edit]

Prescriptive grammar is taught in primary and secondary school. The term «grammar school» historically referred to a school (attached to a cathedral or monastery) that teaches Latin grammar to future priests and monks. It originally referred to a school that taught students how to read, scan, interpret, and declaim Greek and Latin poets (including Homer, Virgil, Euripides, and others). These should not be mistaken for the related, albeit distinct, modern British grammar schools.

A standard language is a dialect that is promoted above other dialects in writing, education, and, broadly speaking, in the public sphere; it contrasts with vernacular dialects, which may be the objects of study in academic, descriptive linguistics but which are rarely taught prescriptively. The standardized «first language» taught in primary education may be subject to political controversy because it may sometimes establish a standard defining nationality or ethnicity.

Recently, efforts have begun to update grammar instruction in primary and secondary education. The main focus has been to prevent the use of outdated prescriptive rules in favor of setting norms based on earlier descriptive research and to change perceptions about the relative «correctness» of prescribed standard forms in comparison to non-standard dialects. A series of metastudies have found that the explicit teaching of grammatical parts of speech and syntax has little or no effect on the improvement of student writing quality in elementary school, middle school of high school; other methods of writing instruction had far greater positive effect, including strategy instruction, collaborative writing, summary writing, process instruction, sentence combining and inquiry projects.^[17][18][19]

The preeminence of Parisian French has reigned largely unchallenged throughout the history of modern French literature. Standard Italian is based on the speech of Florence rather than the capital because of its influence on early literature. Likewise, standard Spanish is not based on the speech of Madrid but on that of educated speakers from more northern areas such as Castile and León (see Gramática de la lengua castellana). In Argentina and Uruguay the Spanish standard is based on the local dialects of Buenos Aires and Montevideo (Rioplatense Spanish). Portuguese has, for now, two official standards, respectively Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese.

The Serbian variant of Serbo-Croatian is likewise divided; Serbia and the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina use their own distinct normative subvarieties, with differences in yat reflexes. The existence and codification of a distinct Montenegrin standard is a matter of controversy, some treat Montenegrin as a separate standard lect, and some think that it should be considered another form of Serbian.

Norwegian has two standards, Bokmål and Nynorsk, the choice between which is subject to controversy: Each Norwegian municipality can either declare one as its official language or it can remain «language neutral». Nynorsk is backed by 27 percent of municipalities. The main language used in primary schools, chosen by referendum within the local school district, normally follows the official language of its municipality. Standard German emerged from the standardized chancellery use of High German in the 16th and 17th centuries. Until about 1800, it was almost exclusively a written language, but now it is so widely spoken that most of the former German dialects are nearly extinct.

Standard Chinese has official status as the standard spoken form of the Chinese language in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China (ROC), and the Republic of Singapore. Pronunciation of Standard Chinese is based on the local accent of Mandarin Chinese from Luanping, Chengde in Hebei Province near Beijing, while grammar and syntax are based on modern vernacular written Chinese.

Modern Standard Arabic is directly based on Classical Arabic, the language of the Qur’an. The Hindustani language has two standards, Hindi and Urdu.

In the United States, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar designated 4 March as National Grammar Day in 2008.^[20]

See also[edit]

• Ambiguous grammar
• Constraint-based grammar
• Grammeme
• Harmonic Grammar
• Higher order grammar (HOG)
• Linguistic error
• Linguistic typology
• Paragrammatism
• Speech error (slip of the tongue)
• Usage (language)
• Usus

Notes[edit]

External links[edit]

• Grammar from the Oxford English Dictionary
• Sayce, Archibald Henry (1911). «Grammar» . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).

Grammar Definition

In general, when defining Grammar, it is important to start by saying that this discipline is an inseparable part of Linguistics, a science dedicated to the study of language, at each of its levels: Phonetic-Phonological; Syntactic-morphological, lexical-semantic and pragmatic. Consequently, grammar will be conceived as the linguistic discipline, which is responsible for studying, describing and in some cases even promulgating (in the case of prescriptive grammar) the different rules by which a language is handled, as well as the different rules and relationships that are established between words and sentences, so it can be said then that the vast majority of Grammar develops at the syntactic-morphological level of the Language, even when there are sources that They say that this point is not so precise when one thinks for example that within the Grammar there are rules of concern directly to the phonetic-phonological level.

Grammar Descriptive Role

Despite what most speakers think, Linguistics – and thus its different disciplines, including Grammar – does not produce or promulgate the rules by which the Language works, which are decided by the speakers themselves, unconsciously , intangible, collective and through the multiple generations that make up a speech community, but are simply responsible for observing, studying and recording the use that community makes of the Language. However, as in a linguistic community there are hundreds of ways to perform the Language, Grammar for example chooses to look at the model language of that community, registering then the ideal way in which that language conceives itself, that is, the total norms, forms, uses and relationships of the different grammatical categories and other syntactic constituents. Hence – although there is a prescriptive grammar – the Grammar is generally assumed as a descriptive discipline.

Etymology of the word Grammar

With respect to the etymology of the word Grammar, the different theoretical sources coincide in indicating that this word has its origin in the Latin word grammatĭca, which in turn can be traced to a Greek voice of form γραμματικῆ τέχνη ( grammatikḗ tékhne ) denomination compound, whose meanings would be related to the following:

From Greece, the term grammatikḗ tékhne passed into the Latin language, where it assumed the grammatĭca form . However, during the third century BC by the famous Latin grammarian Elio Donato, a new order was established, since the reading and interpretation of texts, included for the Greeks also in the conception of grammatikḗ tékhne became seen as a branch own, which was called literature (word that comes in turn from the word littera , which can also be translated as letter) while they chose to keep the word grammatĭca, to name the compendium of rules by which the language was governed, meaning with which, in part, it has remained until today.

Types of Grammar

Grammar Types

However, even though Grammar is a great branch of Linguistics that addresses the study of the relations and norms by which a Language is governed, within it you can also find different approaches or ways of approaching the subject of study, hence they also talk about different types of grammar, each of which will then be defined according to the position and conception they have about the language they study . Here is a brief definition of each of them:

Prescriptive grammar

This type of Grammar, also known as normative Grammar, responds perhaps to one of the first approaches that Grammar had, so this discipline is linked to an important traditional sense. As their names indicate, this Grammar aims to study the different rules by which a Language is governed, only instead of observing those that exist, it is responsible for erecting a series of rules and parameters, thereby building a Model language , which is assumed as the ideal that should be pursued by all speakers, either in their oral record, and especially in their written record. Therefore, prescriptive grammar assumes the role of dictating norms on the correct use of the language.

Despite the great presence it had for centuries, nowadays Linguistics considers it an approach to grammar, while pointing out that the norms and conception of the language that prescriptive grammar has gives a partial account of a single level of speech , related to the cultured or academic language, which only a few speakers approach, so it cannot be said that prescriptive grammar actually reports a complete record of the language studied. However, it is still the grammar that everyone who wants to learn the language will study, assuming that she realizes the most standard form of it.

Descriptive grammar

Contrary to the prescriptive grammar, the grammar of descriptive approach has been gaining in linguistics, in recent times. This can be defined as a discipline that approaches a Language, with the purpose of being able to study, observe, identify and register the different norms by which that Language is governed, and that have been conceived naturally by a linguistic community. In this way, the descriptive grammar records these norms and syntactic relations of a language, as well as the use and category of every word used by this community, realizing it, that is, instead of pretending to regulate a language, it describes how it It is regulated.

Traditional grammar

This type of grammar is closely linked to the prescriptive grammar, as well as the conception that it has about the language and its own function of regulating it. In this sense, traditional Grammar receives this name because it is considered part of an academic heritage that could be traced to the very conception that the ancient Greeks had about language. Perhaps because of this, it remains the grammar taught in basic education, in order to convey to the speaker what are the principles by which the language of the linguistic community to which it belongs belongs. Consequently, its approach remains prescriptive, as well as partial, as it takes into account only the Model or standard language.

Functional grammar

On the other hand, Linguistics also calls attention to the so-called Functional Grammar, whose conception is attributed to the Dutch linguist Simon C. Dik, for whom the Language, in addition to social creation, was a social instrument in itself. Therefore, Dik raised in his theory the possibility of studying a language through the observation and recording of the different uses made by speakers of linguistic expressions, typical of his community, hence he receives the name of functional grammar, since his main subject of study will be the functions that perform each of the words and sentences within a language, then studying them as a social instrument. Likewise, functional grammar also assumes that the language is governed by three standards of adequacy: Typological, Pragmatic and Psychological.

Generative Grammar

Regarding the Generative Grammar, the different sources coincide in pointing out the linguist Noam Chomsky as the father of this theory, which focuses on the study of the syntax of a Language, starting from the beginning of power – through the study of syntactic relationships – predict possible combinations of words that form a sentence, considered grammatically acceptable (correct). In this way, through the knowledge of the syntax, the nature of the sentences of a language can be known, as well as the processes and relationships that will intervene in the formation of new sentences. The objective of this type of Grammar will also be to be able to promulgate a series of rules, which can tell the speaker how the different sentences in the Language are generated.

Formal grammar

Finally, within the different types of Grammar, there are the formal Grammatics, which could be understood as those mathematical structures that account for the norms and rules that come into play when generating a string of characters,expressly indicating which are admissible and which are not, within the Logic that the formal Language or Grammar admits. Although these formal languages ​​are common to disciplines such as Logic or Mathematics, they can also be found within Computational Linguistics, as well as within the theoretical Linguistics itself. Regarding its approach, formal grammar would focus on describing the form taken by the different well-formed formulas that comprise it, without being interested in describing their meaning, hence receiving the name of formal grammar.

55

Bochkova
G.Sh.

A
COURSE IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Lecture
One

1. Grammar
   as part of language. Grammar as a linguistic discipline.

2. Parts
   of grammar. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of grammatical
   units.

3. The
   main notions of grammar. Grammatical meaning, grammatical form.
   Grammatical category.

1.
We should distinguish between language as an abstract system of signs
(meaningful units) and speech as the use of language in the process
of communication. Language and speech are interconnected. Language
functions in speech. Speech is the manifestation of language.

The main distinctions of
language and speech are:

1. language
   is abstract while speech is concrete;

2. language
   is common, general for all the bearers while speech is individual;

3. language
   is stable, less changeable while speech tends to changes;

4. language
   is a closed system, its units are limited while speech tends to be
   open and endless.

The system of language is
constituted by 3 subsystems: phonetics, vocabulary, grammar. The
three constituent parts of language are studied by the corresponding
linguistic disciplines: phonology, lexicology, grammar.

Grammar may be defined as a
system of word changing and other means of expressing relations of
word in the sentence.

Grammar
as a linguistic discipline may be practical (descriptive, normative)
or theoretical. Practical
grammar
describes the grammatical system of a given language.
Theoretical grammar
gives a scientific explanation of the nature and peculiarities of the
grammatical system of the language.

Modern English, as distinct
from Modern Russian, is a language of analytical structure. Relations
of words in the sentence are expressed mainly by the positions of
words or by special form-words. The main means of expressing
syntactic relations in Russian (a language of synthetic structure) is
the system of word changing.

2. Main units of grammar are a
word and a sentence. A word may be divided into morphemes, a sentence
may be divided into phrases (word- groups). A morpheme, a word, a
phrase and a sentence are units of different levels of language
structure. A unit of a higher level consists of one or more units of
a lower level.

Grammatical units enter into
two types of relations: in the language system (paradigmatic
relations) and in speech (syntagmatic relations).

In
the language system each unit is included into a set of connections
based on different properties. For example, word forms child,
children, child’s, children’s
have the same lexical meaning and have different grammatical
meanings. They constitute a lexeme.

Word-forms children, boys,
men, books have the same grammatical meaning and have different
lexical meanings. They constitute a grammeme (a categorical form, a
form class).

The
system of all grammemes (grammatical forms) of all lexemes (words) of
a given class constitutes a paradigm.

Syntagmatic
relations are the relations in an utterance: I
like children.

There
is an essential difference in the way lexical and grammatical
meanings exist in the language and occur in speech. Lexical meanings
can be found in a bunch only in a dictionary or in the memory of a
man, or, scientifically, in the lexical system of the language. In
actual speech a lexical morpheme displays only one meaning of the
bunch in each case and that meaning is singled out by the context or
the situation of speech (syntagmatically): He
runs fast. He runs a hotel.

The meanings of a grammatical
morpheme always come together in the word. They can be singled out
only relatively in contrast to the meanings of other grammatical
morphemes (paradigmatically).

Main grammatical units, a word
and a sentence, are studied by different sections of Grammar:
Morphology (Accidence) and Syntax. Morphology studies the structure,
forms and the classification of words. Syntax studies the structure,
forms and the classification of sentences. In other words, Morphology
studies paradigmatic relations of words; Syntax studies syntagmatic
relations of words and paradigmatic relations of sentences.

According to another approach
Morphology should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations
of words. Syntax should study both paradigmatic and syntagmatic
relations of sentences.

Syntactic syntagmatics is a
relatively new field of study, reflecting the functional approach to
language, i.e. the description of connected speech, or discourse.

3. The basic notions of
grammar are the grammatical meaning, the grammatical form and the
grammatical category.

The
grammatical meaning is a general, abstract meaning which embraces
classes of words (ox –
oxen,
bush – bushes).

The grammatical meaning
depends on the lexical meaning and is connected with objective
reality indirectly, through the lexical meaning.

The
grammatical meaning is relative, it is revealed in relations of word
forms: put – puts.

The grammatical meaning is
obligatory. The grammatical meaning must be expressed if the speaker
wants to be understood.

The
grammatical meaning must have a grammatical form of expression
(inflexions, analytical forms, word-order, etc.). Compare the
word-forms reads, is
writing. Both forms
denote process, but only the second form expresses it grammatically.

The term form may be used in a
wide sense to denote all means of expressing grammatical meanings. It
may be also used in a narrow sense to denote means of expressing a
particular grammatical meaning (plural number, present tense, etc.).

Grammatical
elements are unities of meaning and form, content and expression. In
the language system there is no direct correspondence of meaning and
form. Two or more units of the plane of content (meaning) may
correspond to one unit of the plane of expression (polysemy,
homonymy) – bushes,
speaks,
man’s;
oxen,
spoken.
Two or more units of the plane of expression (form) may correspond to
one unit of the plane of content (synonymy) – books,
buses,
children,
feet, criteria, data,
nuclei.

1. In the system of language
   grammatical elements are connected on the basis of similarity and
   contrast.

Partially
similar elements, i.e. elements having common and distinctive
features, constitute oppositions: goes
– went, box – boxes, good – better – best.
Consider the opposition box – boxes. Members of the opposition
differ in form and have different grammatical meanings (singular and
plural). At the same time they express the same general meaning –
number.

The
unity of the general meaning and its particular manifestations, which
is revealed through the opposition of forms, is a grammatical
category. There may be
different definitions of the category laying stress either on its
notional or formal aspect. But the category exists only if there is
an opposition of at least two forms. If there is one form, there is
no category.

The minimal (two-member)
opposition is called binary.

Oppositions may be of three
main types:

1. privative. One member has a
   certain distinctive feature. This member is called marked, or
   strong (+). The other member is characterized by the absence of
   this distinctive feature. This member is called unmarked, or weak
   (-):

speak
– speaks ⁺

1. equipollent. Both members of
   the opposition are marked:

am⁺
— is⁺

1. gradual. Members of the
   opposition differ by the degree of certain property:

good – better – best

Most grammatical oppositions
are privative.

The
marked (strong) member has a narrow and definite meaning. The
unmarked (weak) member has a wide, general meaning.

Grammatical
forms express meanings of different categories. The form goes denotes
present tense, 3^rd
person, singular number, indicative mood, active voice, etc. These
meanings are revealed in different oppositions:

goes
– is going

goes
– went

goes
– has gone

But
grammatical forms cannot express different meanings of the same
category. So if a grammatical form has two or more meanings, they
belong to different categories.

In
certain contexts the difference between members of the opposition is
lost, the opposition is reduced to one member. Usually the weak
member acquires the meaning of the strong member: The
train starts at 8 p.m. tomorrow.
This kind of oppositional reduction is called neutralization.

On
the other hand, the strong member may be used in the context typical
for the weak member. This use is stylistically marked: He
is always complaining.
This kind of reduction is called transposition.

Grammatical
categories reflect phenomena of objective reality. Thus the category
of number in nouns reflects the essential properties of
noun-referents. Such categories may be called notional, or
referential. Other categories reflect peculiarities of the
grammatical structure of the language (number in verbs). Such
categories may be called formal, or relational.

Besides
grammatical, or inflexional categories, based on the oppositions of
forms, there are categories, based on the oppositions of classes of
words. Such categories are called lexico-grammatical, or selective.
Compare: стол
– доска
– окно;
большой
– большая
– большое.The
formal difference between members of a lexico-grammatical opposition
is shown syntagmatically: большой
стол.

Grammatical
categories may be influenced by the lexical meanings. Such categories
as number, case, voice strongly depend on the lexical meaning. They
are proper to certain subclasses of words. Thus, only objective verbs
have the voice opposition, subjective verbs have only one form, that
of the weak member of the opposition. Other categories (tense, mood)
are more abstract. They cover all words of a class.

As
grammatical categories reflect relations existing in objective
reality, different languages may have the same categories. But the
system and character of grammatical categories are determined by the
grammatical structure of a given language.

Lecture
Two

THE
STRUCTURE OF WORDS. MEANS OF FORM-BUILDING

1. A word and a morpheme. The
   notion of allomorphs.

2. Synthetic means of
   form-building.

3. Analytical forms.

As the object of morphology is
the structure, classification and combinability of words, let’s
define what the word is. There exist many definitions of the term
word and none of them is generally accepted.

The word is the smallest
naming unit.

According
to Maslov: The word is the minimal unit possessing a certain
looseness (in reference to the place in a sequence – Away
he ran. He
ran away. Away ran he.).

According to Ivanova: The word
is the smallest unit of language capable of syntactic functioning and
the biggest unit of morphology.

Linguists
point out as most characteristic features of words their
isolatability (a word may become a sentence: Boys!
Where? Certainly.),
uninterruptibility (a word is not easily interrupted by a
parenthetical expression as a sequence of words may be: compare –
black – that is
bluish-black birds where bluish-black cannot
be inserted in the middle of the compound blackbird),
a certain looseness in reference to the place in a sequence.

A. Martinet (A Functional View
of Language, Oxford, 1962) states that: “As a matter of fact,
inseparability is one of the most useful criteria for distinguishing
what is formally one word from what is a succession of different
words.

Words are divided into
morphemes. A morpheme is one of the central notions of grammatical
theory. Definition of a morpheme is not an easy matter, and it has
been attempted many times by different scholars. We may briefly
define the morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit.

Morphemes are commonly
classified into free (those which can occur as separate words) and
bound. A word consisting of a single (free) morpheme is
monomorphemic, its opposite is polymorphemic.

According to their meaning and
function morphemes are subdivided into lexical (roots),
lexico-grammatical (word-building affixes) and grammatical
(form-building affixes or inflexions).

In grammar we are concerned
with the grammatical or structural meanings of root morphemes, which
are necessarily lexical, and as to word-building morphemes, we are
only interested in them in so far as they are grammatically relevant,
and that is the case if they show that the word belongs to a certain
part of speech, and if they serve to distinguish one part of speech
from another.

This
grammatical significance of derivation morphemes is always combined
with their lexical meaning. For instance, if we take this pair of
words: gamble –
gambler, the
derivative morpheme –er
has a grammatical significance, as it serves to distinguish a noun
from a verb, and it has its
lexical meaning, as
the lexical meaning of the noun
gambler is different
from that of the verb gamble.

Inflection
(grammatical) morphemes have no lexical meaning or function. There is
not the slightest difference in the way of lexical meaning between
give and gave, or
between house
and houses.
However an inflection morpheme can acquire a lexical meaning in some
special cases, for instance, if the plural form of a noun develops a
meaning which the singular form does not have. Thus, the plural form
“colours” has a meaning “flag” which the singular form
“colour” does not have. These are cases of lexicalization.

There
is in modern English a case where a boundary line between inflection
and derivation is hard to draw, and a morpheme does duty both ways.
This is the morpheme –ing
with its function of a suffix deriving verbal nouns and of an
inflection serving to form a gerund and a participle (homonymy),
which are non-finite verb-forms.

This appears to be quite a
special case in English, and it does not seem to find any parallel in
Russian.

Two
or more morphemes may sound the same but be basically different, that
is they may be homonyms. Thus the –er morpheme indicating the doer
of the action as in gambler
has a homonym – the morpheme –er
denoting the comparative degree of adjectives and adverbs as in
longer.
Which of the two homonymous morphemes is actually there in a given
case can only be determined by examining the other morphemes in the
word.

In
modern descriptive linguistics the term “morpheme” has been given
a somewhat different meaning. Scholars belonging to this trend
approach the problem from this angle: If we compare the four
sentences: the student
comes, the students come, the ox comes, the oxen come,
it will be seen that the change of student to students
is paralleled by the change of ox
to oxen.
That is, the meaning and function of the –en
in oxen is the same as the meaning and function of –s
in students. On this account the –s
and the –en
are said to represent the same morpheme: each of them is a morph
representing the morpheme and they are termed allomorphs
of the morpheme. Furthermore, as in the word goose
the form corresponding to students
and oxen
is geese,
where nothing is added, but the root vowel is changed, the morph
representing the morpheme in this case is said to be the very change
of u:
into J
)graphically, oo
and ee).
Thus, the morpheme in this case, has three allomorphs, -s,
-en,
[H]
¬
[J].

Morphemic
variants are identified in the text on the basis of their
co-occurence with other morphs, or their environment. The total of
environments constitutes the distribution.

There
may be three types of morphemic distribution: contrastive,
non-contrastive, complementary. Morphs are in contrastive
distribution if their position is the same and their meanings are
different: charming
— charmed.
Morphs
are in non-contrastive distribution if their position is the same and
their meanings are the same: learned — learnt. Such morphs
constitute free variants of the same morpheme. Morphs are in
complementary distribution if their positions are different and their
meanings are the same: speaks
— teaches.
Such morphs are allomorphs of the same morpheme.

Grammatical
meanings may be expressed by the absence of the morpheme. Compare:
book
— books.
The meaning of plurality is expressed by the morpheme -s.
The meaning of singularity is expressed by the absence of the
morpheme. Such meaningful absence of the morpheme is called
zero-morpheme.

Will
is a kind of contradiction. Formally it is a word, since it has the
looseness of a word (You
will come. You will certainly come. Will you come?).
As to its content it is not a word, but a grammatical morpheme:

1. unlike
   a word, it has no lexical meaning in

He
will arrive tomorrow;

1. the
   meaning of –ed
   in arrived
   and that of will
   in will
   arrive
   are homogeneous;

2. The
   meaning of will
   is relative like that of grammatical morphemes. Will
   invite
   shows the “future” meaning when it is opposed to invite
   with
   the “present” meaning. But when it is contrasted with shall
   invite,
   it shows the meaning of the second and third person;

3. The
   meaning of will
   is only indirectly connected with reality, through the word it is
   linked with. It does not denote futurity in general, but the
   futurity of the action denoted by invite,
   arrive,
   etc.

Since
will
has the properties of both a word and a grammatical morpheme, we
shall call it a
grammatical word-morpheme.
Units
of the will
invite
type containing grammatical word-morphemes are treated as analytical
forms.

English
possesses also free lexico-grammatical morphemes, or
lexico-grammatical word-morphemes. Units of the give
in
type containing lexico-grammatical word-morphemes are treated as
composite
words.

2. Means of form-building and
grammatical forms are divided into synthetic and analytical.

Synthetic forms are built with
the help of bound morphemes, analytical forms are built with the help
of semi-bound morphemes (word-morphemes).

Synthetic means of
form-building are affixation, sound-interchange (inner — inflexion),
suppletivity.

Typical features of English
affixation are scarcity and homonymy of affixes. Another
characteristic feature is a great number of zero-morphemes.

Though English grammatical
affixes are few in number, affixation is a productive means of form
-building.

Sound
interchange may be of two types: vowel- and consonant-interchange. It
is often accompanied by affixation: bring
— brought.

Sound interchange is not
productive in Modern English. It is used to build the forms of
irregular verbs.

Forms
of one word may be derived from different roots: go
— went,
I
— me,
good
— better.
This means of form -building is called suppletivity. Different roots
may be treated as suppletive forms if:

1) they have the same lexical
meaning;

2) there are no parallel
non-suppletive forms,

3) other words of the same
class build their forms without suppletivity.

Suppletivity, like
inner-inflexion, is not productive in Modern English, but it occurs
in words with a very high frequency.

3.
Analytical forms are combinations of the auxiliary element (a
word-morpheme) and the notional element: is
writing.

Analytical
forms are contradictory units: phrases in form and word-forms in
function.

In
the analytical form is
writing
the auxiliary verb be
is lexically empty. It expresses the grammatical meaning. The
notional element expresses both the lexical and the grammatical
meaning. So the grammatical meaning is expressed by the two
components of the analytical form: the auxiliary verb be
and the affix —ing.
The word-morpheme be
and the inflexion -ing
constitute a discontinuous morpheme.

Analytical
forms are correlated with synthetic forms. There must be at least one
synthetic form in the paradigm. Analytical forms have developed from
free phrases and there are structures, which take an intermediary
position between free phrases and analytical forms: will
go. more beautiful.

Some
doubt has been expressed about the formations shall
invite and
will
invite.
There is a view that shall
and will
have
a lexical meaning. We will not go into this question now and we will
consider shall
and will
as verbs serving to form the future tense of other verbs. Thus, have,
be, do,
shall,
will
are auxiliary verbs and as such constitute a typical feature of the
analytical structure of modern English.

While
the existence of analytical forms of the English verb cannot be
disputed, the existence of such forms in adjectives and adverbs is
not universally recognized. The question, whether such formations as
more
vivid, the most vivid,
or more
vividly
and most
vividly
are or are not analytical forms of degrees of comparison of vivid
and
vividly,
is controversial.

The
traditional view held both by practical and theoretical grammars
until recently was that phrases of this type were analytical degrees
of comparison. Recently, the view has been put forward that they do
not essentially differ from phrases of the type very
vivid.

Roughly
speaking, considerations of meaning tend towards recognizing such
formations as analytical forms, whereas strictly grammatical
considerations lead to the contrary view.

If that
view is adopted the sphere of adjectives having degrees of comparison
in Modern English will be very limited: besides the limitations
imposed by the meaning of the adjectives (relative – deaf,
wooden),
there will be the limitation depending on the ability of an adjective
to take the inflections –er
and –est.

Lecture Three

PARTS OF SPEECH

1. Principles of
classification. Possible ways of the grammatical classification of
the vocabulary.

2. Notional and functional
(formal) parts of speech.

Parts of speech are
grammatical classes of words distinguished on the

basis of three criteria:
semantic, morphological and syntactic, i.e meaning, form and
function.

MEANING
(Semantic Properties).

Each
part of speech is characterized by the general meaning which is an

abstraction from the lexical
meanings of constituent words. The general

meaning
of nouns is substance, the general meaning of verbs is process, etc.)
This general meaning is understood as the categorial meaning of a
class of words, or the part-of-speech meaning.

Semantic
properties of a part of speech find their expression in the
grammatical properties. To
sleep, a sleep, sleepy, asleep
refer to the same phenomenon of objective reality, but they belong to
different parts of speech, as their grammatical properties are
different.

So
meaning is a supportive criterion which helps to check the purely

grammatical criteria, those of
form and function.

FORM (Morphological
Properties).

The formal criterion concerns
the inflexional and derivationaJ features of words belonging to a
given class, i.e. the grammatical categories (the paradigms) and
derivational (stem-building, lexico-grammatical) morphemes.

Nouns have the categories of
number and case. Verbs possess the categories of tense, aspect,
voice, mood, person, number, order, posteriority. Adjectives have the
category of the degrees of comparison. That’s why the paradigms of
lexemes belonging to different parts of speech are different.

The formal criterion is not
always reliable as many words are invariable and many words contain
no derivational affixes. Besides, the same derivational affixes may
be used to build different parts of speech.

-ly
can end an adjective, an adverb, a noun: a
daily:
)

-tion
can end a noun and a verb: to
position.

Because of the limitation of
meaning and form as criteria we mainly rely on a word’s function as a
criterion of its class.

FUNCTION (Syntactic
Properties)

Syntactic properties of a
class of words are the combinability of words (the distributional
criterion) and typical functions in the sentence.

We
distinguish between lexical, grammatical and lexico-grammatical
combinability: between lexemes (a
wise man
but not milk),
between grammemes (students
sing
but not sings),
between parts of speech (sing
beautifully, a beautiful singer
but not beautifully
singer).

When speaking of the
combinability of parts of speech, lexico-grammatical meanings are to
be considered first. Owing to the lexico-grammatical meanings of
nouns (“substance”) and prepositions (“relation of substances”)
these two parts of speech often go together.

Parts
of speech are said to be characterized by their function in the
sentence. A noun is mostly used as a subject or an object, a verb
usually functions as a predicate, an adjective – as an attribute,
etc. To some extent, this is true. But the subject of a sentence may
be expressed not only by a noun, but also by a pronoun, a numeral, a
gerund, an infinitive, etc. On the other hand, a noun can (alone or
with some other word) fulfill the function of almost any part of the
sentence. Besides, the typical functions of student and student’s
are not the same. Now, prepositions, conjunctions, particles are
usually not recognized as fulfilling the function of any part of the
sentence, so with regard to them the meaning of the term “syntactical
function” is quite different.

The three criteria of defining
grammatical classes of words in English may be placed in the
following order: function, form, meaning.

Parts
of speech are heterogeneous classes and the boundaries are not
clearly cut especially in the area of meaning. Within a part of
speech there are subclasses, which have all the properties of a given
class and subclasses, which have only some of these properties and
may have features of another class. So a part of speech may be
described as a field, which includes both central, most typical
members, and marginal, less typical members. Marginal areas of
different parts of speech may overlap and there may be intermediary
elements with contradictory features (statives, modal words,
pronouns). Words belonging to different parts of speech may be united
by a common feature and constitute a class cutting across other
classes (for example, determiners). So the part-of-speech
classification involves overlapping criteria and scholars single out
from 9 to 13 parts of speech in Modern English.

Alongside
of the three-criteria principle of dividing words into grammatical
classes there are classifications based on one principle,
morphological or syntactic.

The
founder of English scientific grammar H. Sweet finds the following
classes of words: “declinables” — noun-words, adjective -words,
verbs and “indeclinables” — particles. The term
particles
denotes words of different classes which have no categories.

Alongside
of this classification H. Sweet suggests a grouping based on the
syntactical functioning of certain classes of words. Thus, the group
of noun-words includes, besides nouns, noun-pronouns, noun-numerals,
infinitive and gerund; the group of adjectives, besides adjectives,
includes adjective-pronouns, adjective-numerals, participles. The
verb group includes finite forms and verbals; here the morphological
principle seems to dominate again: all non-finite as well as finite
forms possess the categories of tense and voice. Thus, verbals –
infinitive and gerund — turn to belong to noun-words owing to their
syntactical function, and to verb-words, owing to their morphological
properties.

As
far as the group of indeclinables is concerned, H. Sweet attributes
to it quite different elements: adverbs which may be parts of
sentences and conjunctions, prepositions and interjections which
can’t be parts of sentences: prepositions, functioning within
predicative units, and conjunctions, linking predicative units.

O.
Jespersen, the Danish linguist, (Philosophy of Grammar) was fully
aware of the difficulty to reconcile 2 main principles – form and
function, morphology and syntax. He states that if we take the
morphological principle (“declinables” and “indeclinables”),
then such words as must, the, then, for, enough must be attributed to
one class – this is the weakest point of Sweet’s classification.

The
opposite criterion, distributional, is used by the American scholar
Ch. Fries. Each class of words is characterized by a set of positions
in the sentence, which are defined by substitution testing.

As
a result of distributional analysis Ch. Fries singles out four main
classes of words, roughly corresponding to nouns, verbs, adjectives
and adverbs.

As
Ch. Fries indicates, any words, taking the position before the words
of class 2, belong to class 1. Thus, the words man,
he, the others,
another
are referred to class 1, because they can take the position before
the word of class 2 (was,
remembered,
went).

Besides
4 classes, Ch. Fries distinguishes 15 groups. Here he again resorts
to the positional principle and these groups include words of various
types. For example, group A contains all words which can take the
position of the:
the,
no, your, their, both, few, much, John’s, four, twenty,
etc. There are groups including one or two words (group C – not;
group H – there,
there is,
group N – please).

Morphological
properties, as you see, are completely neglected, but syntactical
functions are not taken into account either: because modal verbs are
separated from class 2 (notional verbs), but modal verbs of group B
also perform the predicative function like notional verbs.

Thus,
CH. Fries’s classification does not achieve its aim. His division
turns out to be very confusing, classes and groups overlap one
another and one and the same word seems to belong to different
subdivisions. But at the same time, his material gives interesting
data concerning the distribution of words, their syntactical valency
and the relative frequency of classes and groups. Groups containing
mainly function words possess high frequency.

Thus,
all attempts to create a classification of lexemes based on one
principle failed. The traditional classification is not worse and has
the advantage of being well — known at least.

2.
Both the traditional and the syntactico-distributional
classifications divide parts of speech into notional and functional.
Notional parts of speech are open classes — new items can be added
to them, they are indefinitely extendable. Functional parts of speech
are closed systems, including a limited number of members. As a rule,
they cannot be extended by creating new items.

The
main notional parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives and
adverbs. Members of these four classes are often connected by
derivational relations: strength
— strengthen,
strong
— strongly.

Functional
parts of speech are prepositions, conjunctions, articles, particles.
The distinctive features of functional parts of speech are: I) very
general and weak lexical meaning; 2) their practically negative
isolatability, preventing the use of substitutes 3) obligatory
combinability; 4) the function of linking and specifying words.

Lecture Four

THE VERB. CATEGORIES OF TENSE,
ASPECT, CORRELATION (ORDER)

1. Time
   and linguistic means of its expression. Time in Russian and English
   compared.

2. The
   problem of the future and future – in – the past. The category
   of posterioriry (prospect).

3. The
   place of continuous forms in the system of the verb. The category
   of aspect.

4. The
   place of perfect forms in the system of the verb. The category of
   order (correlation, retrospect, taxis).

1.
We should distinguish between time as a universal non-linguistic
concept and linguistic means of its expression (grammatical and
lexical).

The
time of events is usually correlated with the moment of speaking. The
three main divisions of time are present (including the moment of
speaking), past (preceding it), and future (following it).

Events may be also correlated
with other events, moments, situations (for example: in the past or
in the future). They may precede or follow other events or happen at
the same time with other events.

Accordingly
time may be denoted absolutely (with regard to the moment of
speaking) and relatively (with regard to a certain moment).

Languages differ as to the
means of the grammatical expression of time. Time may be expressed by
one category, the category of tense (Russian) or by several
categories (English).

In Modern Russian the category
of tense denotes time both absolutely and relatively:

1. Он работает на
   заводе.

2. Он сказал, что
   работает на заводе.

In
sentence (1) the present form denotes an action, correlated with the
moment of speaking. In sentence (2) it denotes an action, correlated
with a moment in the past. In both sentences the action includes the
moment with which it is correlated.

In Modern English the category
of tense denotes time only absolutely:

(3)
He
works at a plant.

(4)
He
said that he worked at a plant.

In both sentences the action
is correlated with the moment of speaking. In sentence (3) it
includes the moment of speaking. In sentence (4) it precedes the
moment of speaking.

So
the category of tense in Modern Russian denotes the relation of
an
action
to the moment of speaking or to some other moment.

The category of tense in
Modern English denotes the relation of an action to the moment of
speaking. Relative time is expressed by special forms
(future-in-the-past, perfect forms, sometimes continuous forms),
which are very often also treated as tenses.

2. The two main approaches to
the category of Tense in Modern English are: 1) there are three
tenses: present, past, future; 2) there are two tenses: present and
past (O.Jespersen, L.S.Barkhudarov).

According
to the second
view
shall,
will+ infinitive
cannot be treated as analytical forms, as shall
and will
preserve their modal meaning. There are proofs that shall
and. will
may denote pure futurity (B.A.Ilyish), so they may be regarded as
auxiliary verbs.

However the recognition of the
analytical forms of the future does not mean the recognition of the
three-tense system, because in Modern English there arc two
correlated forms, denoting future actions: future and
future-in-the-past. Future-in-the past correlates an action not with
the moment of speaking but with a moment in the past, so it cannot be
included into the system of tenses. Moreover, if it is treated as a
tense-form, there will be two tenses in one form (future and past),
which is impossible. On the other hand, future and non-future forms
constitute an opposition:

comes — will come

came
— would
come

This
opposition reveals a special category, the category of posteriority
(prospect). Will
come
denotes absolute posteriority, would
come —
relative posteriority.

3. English verbs have special
forms for expressing actions in progress, going on at a definite
moment or period of time, i.e. for expressing limited duration —
continuous forms.

When
I came
in
he was writing.

Continuous forms have been
traditionally treated as tense-forms (definite, expanded,
progressive) or as tense-aspect forms.

Consider
the opposition:

comes
— is coming

Members
of the opposition are not opposed as tenses (tense is the same). They
show different character of an action, the manner or way in which the
action is experienced, or regarded: as a mere fact or as taken in
progress. The opposition
common
—
continuous
reveals the category of aspect.

Tense and aspect are closely
connected, but they are different categories, revealed through
different oppositions:

comes — came

comes
— is
coming.

The
fact that the Infinitive has the category of aspect (to
come — to be coming)
and has no category of tense also shows, that these are different
categories.

The
category of aspect is closely connected with the lexical meaning. R.
Quirk divides the verb into
dynamic
(having the category of aspect) and stative
(disallowing the continuous form). Stative verbs denote perception,
cognition and certain relations: see,
know, like, belong.
Dynamic verbs may be
terminative (limitive),
denoting actions of limited duration: close,
break, come,
and
durative (unlimitive),
denoting actions of unlimited duration: walk,
read, write, shine.
With durative verbs the aspect opposition may be neutralized.

When I came in he sat in
the corner.

When I came in he was
sitting in the corner.

4.
In Modern English there are also special forms for expressing
relative priority — perfect forms. Perfect forms express both the
time (actions preceding a certain moment) and the way the action is
shown to proceed (the connection of the action with the indicated
moment in its results or consequences). So the meaning of the perfect
forms is constituted by two semantic components:
temporal
(priority) and aspective
(result, current relevance). That is why perfect forms have been
treated as tense -forms or aspect-forms.

Consider the oppositions:

comes
— has
come

is
coming
— has
been coming

Members of these oppositions
are not opposed either as tenses or as aspects (members of each
opposition express the same tense and aspect). These oppositions
reveal the category of order (correlation, retrospect, taxis).

Tense and order are closely
connected, but they are different categories, revealed through
different oppositions:

comes
—came

comes
— has
come.

The
fact that verbals have the category of order (to
come
— to
have come, coming
— having
come)
and have no category of tense also shows the difference of these
categories.

The meaning of perfect forms
may be influenced by the lexical meaning of the verb
(limitive/unlimitive), tense-form, context and other factors.

So temporal relations in
Modern English are expressed by three categories:

tense (present — past)

prospect (future —
non-future)

order (perfect —
non-perfect)

The central category, tense,
is proper to finite forms only. Categories

denoting
time relatively, embrace both finites and verbals.

The
character of an action is expressed by two categories: aspect
(common— continuous) and order.

Lecture Five

A part of speech is a term used in traditional grammar for one of the nine main categories into which words are classified according to their functions in sentences, such as nouns or verbs. Also known as word classes, these are the building blocks of grammar.

Every sentence you write or speak in English includes words that fall into some of the nine parts of speech. These include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections. (Some sources include only eight parts of speech and leave interjections in their own category.)

Learning the names of the parts of speech probably won’t make you witty, healthy, wealthy, or wise. In fact, learning just the names of the parts of speech won’t even make you a better writer. However, you will gain a basic understanding of sentence structure and the English language by familiarizing yourself with these labels.

Open and Closed Word Classes

The parts of speech are commonly divided into open classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and closed classes (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections). The idea is that open classes can be altered and added to as language develops and closed classes are pretty much set in stone. For example, new nouns are created every day, but conjunctions never change.

In contemporary linguistics, the label part of speech has generally been discarded in favor of the term word class or syntactic category. These terms make words easier to qualify objectively based on word construction rather than context. Within word classes, there is the lexical or open class and the function or closed class.

Read about each part of speech below and get started practicing identifying each.

Noun

Nouns are a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on a myriad of roles in a sentence, from the subject of it all to the object of an action. They are capitalized when they’re the official name of something or someone, called proper nouns in these cases. Examples: pirate, Caribbean, ship, freedom, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pronoun

Pronouns stand in for nouns in a sentence. They are more generic versions of nouns that refer only to people. Examples:​ I, you, he, she, it, ours, them, who, which, anybody, ourselves.

Verb

Verbs are action words that tell what happens in a sentence. They can also show a sentence subject’s state of being (is, was). Verbs change form based on tense (present, past) and count distinction (singular or plural). Examples: sing, dance, believes, seemed, finish, eat, drink, be, became

Adjective

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They specify which one, how much, what kind, and more. Adjectives allow readers and listeners to use their senses to imagine something more clearly. Examples: hot, lazy, funny, unique, bright, beautiful, poor, smooth.

Adverb

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They specify when, where, how, and why something happened and to what extent or how often. Examples: softly, lazily, often, only, hopefully, softly, sometimes.

Preposition

Prepositions show spacial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and the other words in a sentence. They come at the start of a prepositional phrase, which contains a preposition and its object. Examples: up, over, against, by, for, into, close to, out of, apart from.

Conjunction

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. There are coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions. Examples: and, but, or, so, yet, with.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners function like adjectives by modifying nouns, but they are different than adjectives in that they are necessary for a sentence to have proper syntax. Articles and determiners specify and identify nouns, and there are indefinite and definite articles. Examples: articles: a, an, the; determiners: these, that, those, enough, much, few, which, what.

Some traditional grammars have treated articles as a distinct part of speech. Modern grammars, however, more often include articles in the category of determiners, which identify or quantify a noun. Even though they modify nouns like adjectives, articles are different in that they are essential to the proper syntax of a sentence, just as determiners are necessary to convey the meaning of a sentence, while adjectives are optional.

Interjection

Interjections are expressions that can stand on their own or be contained within sentences. These words and phrases often carry strong emotions and convey reactions. Examples: ah, whoops, ouch, yabba dabba do!

How to Determine the Part of Speech

Only interjections (Hooray!) have a habit of standing alone; every other part of speech must be contained within a sentence and some are even required in sentences (nouns and verbs). Other parts of speech come in many varieties and may appear just about anywhere in a sentence.

To know for sure what part of speech a word falls into, look not only at the word itself but also at its meaning, position, and use in a sentence.

For example, in the first sentence below, work functions as a noun; in the second sentence, a verb; and in the third sentence, an adjective:

• Bosco showed up for work two hours late.
  • The noun work is the thing Bosco shows up for.
• He will have to work until midnight.
  • The verb work is the action he must perform.
• His work permit expires next month.
  • The attributive noun [or converted adjective] work modifies the noun permit.

Learning the names and uses of the basic parts of speech is just one way to understand how sentences are constructed.

Dissecting Basic Sentences

To form a basic complete sentence, you only need two elements: a noun (or pronoun standing in for a noun) and a verb. The noun acts as a subject and the verb, by telling what action the subject is taking, acts as the predicate. 

• Birds fly.

In the short sentence above, birds is the noun and fly is the verb. The sentence makes sense and gets the point across.

You can have a sentence with just one word without breaking any sentence formation rules. The short sentence below is complete because it’s a command to an understood «you».

• Go!

Here, the pronoun, standing in for a noun, is implied and acts as the subject. The sentence is really saying, «(You) go!»

Constructing More Complex Sentences

Use more parts of speech to add additional information about what’s happening in a sentence to make it more complex. Take the first sentence from above, for example, and incorporate more information about how and why birds fly.

• Birds fly when migrating before winter.

Birds and fly remain the noun and the verb, but now there is more description. 

When is an adverb that modifies the verb fly. The word before is a little tricky because it can be either a conjunction, preposition, or adverb depending on the context. In this case, it’s a preposition because it’s followed by a noun. This preposition begins an adverbial phrase of time (before winter) that answers the question of when the birds migrate. Before is not a conjunction because it does not connect two clauses.