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What part of speech is the word my-?
The part of speech that the word my is used as is an
adjective.
What part of the speech is the word warily?
what part of speech is the word warily
Does a dictionary determine the part of speech of a word?
A dictionary can show a word’s part of speech, but it does not
determine it. How a word is used in a sentence determines its part
of speech.
What part of speech is the word specifically?
The part of speech for the word specifically is an adverb.
What part of speech is the word law?
The part of speech for law is a noun.
In traditional grammar words are classified into parts of speech on
the basis of 3 main principles: meaning, form and function.
Meaning implies not the concrete lexical meaning of the word
but a general one, typical of all the words included into this or
that part of speech.
Form implies morphological properties of words, the presence
of some formal language means, signifying the particular grammar
categories.
Function is understood either as a syntactic valency of words
or as a syntactic positional role of the word in the sentence.
Proceeding from these principles, all the words in English are
classified into 12 classes: nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs,
pronouns, numerals, articles, particles, prepositions, conjunctions,
interjections and modal words.
NOUNS.
The general meaning
of nouns is thingness or substance.
Due to their form
nouns can distinguish the morphological category of number. Some
scholars speak of the morphological category of case but this opinion
is doubtful.
Commenting on the functions
of nouns we should say that syntactically they can function as any
member of the sentence but the predicate. As to their syntactic
valency they can combine with adjectives, nouns (picture gallery),
verbs (the child grows), numerals, verbals (a book to read), pronouns
(my book).
Occasionally nouns can combine with adverbs but in
such cases adverbs become adjectivized and perform the attributive
function representing a compressed subordinate attributive clause,
e.g. the then president, the room
downstairs.
Adjectives.
The general meaning of adjectives is property or quality. In their
form most adjectives are unchangeable, only some adjectives
distinguish the morphological category of degrees of comparison,
which is marked by the inflexions — er or — est or by suppletive
forms like good – better – the best.
Commenting on the functions of adjectives we should say that they can
perform the functions of o an attribute and predicative. As for their
syntactic valency, adjectives can combine with nouns (a true friend),
adverbs (very beautiful), link-verbs or notional verbs in nominal or
double predicates (married young), pronouns (sth new).
3) Notional and Functional Parts of Speech.
All the parts of speech are divided into notional and functional.
Notional parts of speech have an independent lexical meaning and can
function as self-dependent members of the sentence. There are 6 of
them in English: nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns and
numerals. Some scholars treat numerals and pronouns as functional
parts of speech.
Functional parts of speech may have a dependent
meaning. They mark various types of syntactic relations or modify
notional parts of speech. Functional parts of speech have no
self-dependent syntactic functions in the sentence. There are 6
functional parts of speech in English: articles, particles,
prepositions, conjunctions, interjections and modal words (certainly,
of course, maybe).
4) The Field Structure of Parts of Speech.
The difficulties of classifying words into parts of speech in many
cases are explained by the fact that words which are traditionally
included into a definite part of speech are not homogeneous in all
their properties. This fact prompted that parts of speech should be
treated as a system of units having a field structure.
The theory of the field structure of parts of speech was started in
the works of the American linguists Glisson and Sledd. This theory
helps us to understand why words of traditionally one part of speech
happen to be classified into different groups or classes like in the
theory of Ch. Fries.
The complicated character of correlation between words or groups of
words within one part of speech was well investigated by the Russian
linguists Admony and Shchur. The theory they have worked out is known
as the theory of grammatical or lexico-grammatical fields.
Grammatical and first of all morphological characteristics are taken
into consideration when describing the field structure of this or
that part of speech.
The theory of the morphological fields of parts of
speech runs that each part of speech includes words, which possess
all its characteristic features. These words make up the nucleus of
the morphological field of the part of speech. Besides these words
the part of speech may include words which possess not all but only
some characteristic features of this part of speech. These words make
up the periphery of the morphological field of this part of speech.
The periphery in its turn can also be subdivided into some groups of
words which differ in their characteristic features.
e.g. words like “table”, “boy”, “street” make up the
nucleus of the noun, while words like “clothes”, “news”,
“air”, “sugar” make up the periphery of the noun, because
they lack such feature of nouns as the category of number.
Besides private peculiarities of the noun, which make up the
periphery, make it possible to single out such groups of nouns as
“Singularia Tantum”, “Pluralia Tantum”, “Collective nouns”,
“Substantivized adjectives” and so on.
But the most important fact is that words making up the periphery of
one part of speech can overlap the boundaries of this part of speech
and get into the periphery of some other part of speech, getting some
of its characteristics.
So morphological fields of parts of speech can overlap each other and
that explains the difficulties defining the status of such words and
their classification.
For example, Substantivized adjectives like “the poor”, “the
young” function like nouns but do not differentiate the category of
number on the one hand, and on the other hand they may have degrees
of comparison like adjectives (the poorest).
Verbals which make up the periphery of the morphological field of the
verb also share the characteristics of the verb and some other part
of speech (noun, adjective, adverb).
When referring a word to a definite part of
speech, the most significant part of speech characteristics of this
word, which are revealed in the actual context, should be taken into
consideration.
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Слайд 1Lecture 3:
Parts of Speech Theory
Parts of Speech – lexico-semantic classes of
words, distinguished on the basis of their syntactic, morphological and semantic characteristics (L.V.Scherba).
Plato a noun,
a verb,
an adjective
Слайд 2H. Sweet’s theory:
Declinables (nouns, adjectives, verbs) morphological
Indeclinables (adverbs,
prepositions, criterion conjunctions, interjections)
Noun words (nouns, noun-pronouns,
noun-numerals, infinitive , gerund syntactic
Adjective words (adjectives, adjective- criterion
pronouns, adjective numerals, participle
Verb-words (finite and non-finite forms)
Слайд 3O. Jespersen’s theory of 3 ranks
A furiously barking dog
3 2
1
Criterion – functioning in the sentence
Слайд 4Ch. Fries’s theory
Criterion – position in the sentence
The concert was good.
It was there.
1 2 3 4
Class 1: Nouns (he, reading, to read, the rich…)
Class 2: Verbs
Class 3: Adjectives
Class 4: Adverbs
Слайд 5Group A: words, that can occupy the position of “the”: no,
their, John’s, each, this…
Group B: words that occur in the position of “may”: might, can, would, will..
Group C: “not”
Group G: the word “do-did-does”
Group H: — “there”
Group L: “yes”, “no”
Group M: attention-getting signals: listen, look, say…
Слайд 6Parts of Speech
Notional Functional
Have lexical meaning, Demonstrate the relations
Denote a notion between the notional
words
or specify the grammatical
meaning.
Слайд 7Disputable questions:
Category of State: It’s easy (warm)
Modal words: probably, perhaps…
Pronouns (this-that,
one, each, other, myself…) and particles (to, not,)
Article
Auxiliary verbs (to be, to have, to do…)
Functional parts of speech
Слайд 8Functional parts of Speech
Are distinguished on the basis of functional commonness
Demonstrate the relations between the notional words or specify the grammatical meaning
Denote subjective modality
Don’t denote a notion
Don’t have grammatical categories
Are characterized by a simple word structure and usually have 1 syllable
Can’t be a member of the sentence
Not homogeneous: but-and-if / what-in order that
Слайд 9History:
VII – XI – noun, adjective, adverb, numeral, pronoun, verb
XI –
XV — + articles, Participle 1, 2, Gerund
XV – XXI — + pronoun, preposition, conjunction, particle
Слайд 10Kobrina N., Korneeva E.:
The notional P of S: The functional P of
S
the noun the preposition
the adjective the conjunction
the stative the particle
the pronoun
the numeral
the verb
the adverb
the modal words
the interjection
Слайд 11Kaushanskaya V.
The notional P of S: The functional P of S
the noun the
preposition
the adjective the conjunction
the words of the category
of state the particle
the pronoun the article
the numeral
the verb
the adverb
the modal words
the interjection
Слайд 12Krylova I.
The notional P of S: The structural P of S
the noun the
preposition
the pronoun the conjunction
the adjective the article
the numeral
the verb
the adverb
Слайд 13Questions:
What are the 3 criteria according to which the words of
a language fall into parts of speech?
Give the definition of the parts of speech.
What are the 2 large groups the parts of speech are subdivided into?
Characterize the notional and the functional parts of speech.
Consider the following classifications of the parts of speech of the English language. What parts of speech are mentioned in each classification?
What parts of speech are included only in some classifications?
What parts of speech of the English language are not mentioned at all in all classifications?
Is there any difference with the classification of the parts of speech in the Russian language?
Give the examples of the parts of speech which function as both notional and structural. Use the dictionary.
Give the full classification of your own.
1. Lecture 3: Parts of Speech Theory
Parts of Speech – lexico-semantic classes of words,
distinguished on the basis of their syntactic,
morphological and semantic characteristics
(L.V.Scherba).
Plato
a noun,
a verb,
an adjective
2. H. Sweet’s theory:
Declinables (nouns, adjectives, verbs)
morphological
Indeclinables (adverbs, prepositions,
criterion
conjunctions, interjections)
Noun words (nouns, noun-pronouns,
noun-numerals, infinitive , gerund
Adjective words (adjectives, adjectivepronouns, adjective numerals, participle
Verb-words (finite and non-finite forms)
syntactic
criterion
3. O. Jespersen’s theory of 3 ranks
A furiously barking dog
3
2
Criterion – functioning in the sentence
1
4. Ch. Fries’s theory
Criterion – position in the sentence
The concert was good. It was there.
1
2
3
4
Class 1: Nouns (he, reading, to read, the rich…)
Class 2: Verbs
Class 3: Adjectives
Class 4: Adverbs
5.
Group A: words, that can occupy the
position of “the”: no, their, John’s, each,
this…
Group B: words that occur in the position of
“may”: might, can, would, will..
Group C: “not”
Group G: the word “do-did-does”
Group H: — “there”
Group L: “yes”, “no”
Group M: attention-getting signals: listen,
look, say…
6.
Parts of Speech
Notional
Have lexical meaning,
Denote a notion
Functional
Demonstrate the relations
between the notional words
or specify the grammatical
meaning.
7. Disputable questions:
Category of State: It’s easy (warm)
Modal words: probably, perhaps…
Pronouns (this-that, one, each, other,
myself…) and particles (to, not,)
Article
Auxiliary verbs (to be, to have, to do…)
Functional parts of speech
8. Functional parts of Speech
Are distinguished on the basis of functional
commonness
Demonstrate the relations between the notional
words or specify the grammatical meaning
Denote subjective modality
Don’t denote a notion
Don’t have grammatical categories
Are characterized by a simple word structure and
usually have 1 syllable
Can’t be a member of the sentence
Not homogeneous: but-and-if / what-in order that
9. History:
VII – XI – noun, adjective, adverb,
numeral, pronoun, verb
XI – XV — + articles, Participle 1, 2,
Gerund
XV – XXI — + pronoun, preposition,
conjunction, particle
10.
Kobrina N., Korneeva E.:
The notional P of S:
the noun
the adjective
the stative
the pronoun
the numeral
the verb
the adverb
the modal words
the interjection
The functional P of S
the preposition
the conjunction
the particle
11.
Kaushanskaya V.
The notional P of S:
the noun
the adjective
the words of the category
of state
the pronoun
the numeral
the verb
the adverb
the modal words
the interjection
The functional P of S
the preposition
the conjunction
the particle
the article
12.
Krylova I.
The notional P of S:
The structural P of S
the noun
the pronoun
the adjective
the numeral
the verb
the adverb
the preposition
the conjunction
the article
13. Questions:
What are the 3 criteria according to which the words of a
language fall into parts of speech?
Give the definition of the parts of speech.
What are the 2 large groups the parts of speech are subdivided
into?
Characterize the notional and the functional parts of speech.
Consider the following classifications of the parts of speech of
the English language. What parts of speech are mentioned in
each classification?
What parts of speech are included only in some classifications?
What parts of speech of the English language are not mentioned
at all in all classifications?
Is there any difference with the classification of the parts of
speech in the Russian language?
Give the examples of the parts of speech which function as both
notional and structural. Use the dictionary.
Give the full classification of your own.
Parts of Speech. Principles of Classification of the Parts of Speech.
√ Parts of speech.
√ Semantic.
√ Morphological.
√ Syntactic.
√ Meaning.
√ Form.
√ Function
√ Meaning
Parts of speech
Parts of speech are grammatical classes of words which are distinguished on the basis of four criteria:
— semantic;
— morphological;
— syntactic;
that of valency (combinability)
1) Meaning. Each part of speech is characterized by the general meaning which is an abstraction from the lexical meaning of the constituent word. Thus, the general meaning of nouns is thingness (substance), the general meaning of verbs is action, state, process; the general meaning of adjectives — quality, quantity.
The general meaning is understood as categorial meaning of the class of words.
Semantic properties of every part of speech find their expression in their grammatical properties. If we take «to sleep, a night sleep, sleepy, asleep» they all refer to the same phenomena of the objective reality but belong to different parts of speech as they have different grammatical properties.
Meaning is supportive criterion in the English language which only helps to check purely grammatical criteria — those of form and function.
Глокая куздра штэка будланула бокра и кудрячит бокрёнка. V. V. Vinogradov
Green ideas sleep furiously.
Such examples though being artificial help us to understand that — grammatical meaning is an objective thing by itself though in real speech it never exists without lexical meaning.
2) Form, (morphological properties) The formal criterion concerns the inflectional and derivational features of words belonging to a given class. That is the grammatical categories they possess, the paradigms they form and derivational and functional morphemes they have.
With the English language this criterion is not always reliable as many words in English are invariable, many words have no derivational affixes and besides the same derivational affixes may be used to build different parts of speech.(e.g. «~ly»: quickly , daily , weakly(n.)).
Because of the limitation of meaning and form as criterion we should rely mainly on words’ syntactic functions (e.g. «round» can be adjective, noun, verb, preposition).
3) Function. Syntactic properties of any class of words are: combinability (distributional criterion), typical syntactic functions in a sentence. The three criteria of defining grammatical classes of words in English may be placed in the following order: syntactic, distribution, form, meaning (Russian: form, meaning, syntactic distribution).
Parts of speech are heterogeneous classes and the boundaries between them 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 even 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 contradicting features (modal words, statives, pronouns and even verbs).
Words belonging to different parts of speech may be united by common feature and they may constitute a class cutting across other classes (e.g. determiners or quantifiers).
Possible Ways of the Grammatical Classification of the Vocabulary.
The parts of speech and their classification usually involves all the four criteria mentioned and scholars single out from 8 to 13 parts of speech in modern English. The founder of English scientific grammar Henry Sweet finds the following classes of words: noun-words ( here he includes some pronouns and numerals), adjective-words, verbs 4 particles (by this term he denotes words of different classes which have no grammatical categories).
The opposite criterion — structural or distributional — was used by an American scholar Charles Freeze. Each class of words is characterized by a set of positions in a sentence which are defined by substitution test. As a result of distributional analysis Freeze singles out 4 main classes of words roughly corresponding to verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and 15 classes of function-words.
Notional and Functional Parts of Speech.
Both the traditional and distributional classification divide parts of speech into notional and functional. Notional parts of speech are open classes, new items can be added to them, we extend them indefinitely. Functional parts of speech are closed systems including a limited number of members. As a rule they cannot be extended by creating new items.
Main notional parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Members of these four classes are often connected derivationally. Functional parts of speech are prepositions, conjunctions, articles, interjections & particles. Their distinctive features are:
— very general & weak lexical meaning;
— obligatory combinability;
The function of linking and specifying words.
Pronouns constitute a class of words which takes an intermediary position between notional and functional words: on the one hand they can substitute nouns and adjectives; on the other hand they can be used as connectives and specifiers. There may be also groups of closed-system items within an open class (notional, functional and auxiliary verbs).
A word in English is very often not marked morphologically. It makes it easy for words to pass from one class to another. Such words are treated as either lexico-semantic phonemes or as words belonging to one class. The problem which is closely connected with the selection of parts of speech is the problem of conversion.
There are usually the cases of absolute, phonetic identity of words belonging to different parts of speech. About 45% of nouns can be converted into verbs and about 50% of verbs — into nouns. There are different viewpoints on conversion: some scholars think that it is a syntactic word-building means. If they say so they do admit that the word may function as parts of speech at the same time.
Russian linguist Galperin defines conversion as a non-affix way of forming words. There is another theory by French linguist Morshaw who states that conversion is a creation of new words with zero-affix. In linguistics this problem is called «stone-wall-construction problem».
Another factor which makes difficult to select parts of speech, in English is abundance of homonyms in English. They are words and forms identical in form, sounding, spelling, but different in meaning. Usually the great number of homonyms in English is explained by monosyllabic structure of words but it’s not all the explanation.
The words are monosyllabic in English because there are few endings in it, because English is predominantly analytical. We differentiate between full and partial homonymity, we usually observe full homonymity within one pan of speech and partial — within different parts of speech. If we have two homonyms within one part of speech their paradigms should fully coincide.
Homonyms can be classified into lexical, lexico-grammatical and purely grammatical. We should differentiate between homonymity and polysemantic words.
The word “THE” is a Definite Article and an Adverb.Take a look at the definitions and examples below and you will see how this little word can be used as different parts of speech.
1. Definite Article
This word “The” is considered as a definite article because it is used to refer to something specific. It is also placed before a noun, if the audience already knows what is being referred to (there is only one or the subject has already been mentioned). For example, let’s look at the sentence below:
“The pope will visit the Philippines in 2015.”
“The” is used because there is only one pope in the whole world.
Definition:
a. used to indicate a person or thing that has already been mentioned or seen or is clearly understood from the situation
- Joe is the tallest boy in class.
b. used to refer to things or people that are common in daily life
- The moon is aligned between the Sun and the Earth.
c. used to refer to things that occur in nature
- The inner planets of the solar system are denser compared to the outer planets.
2. Adverb
Aside from acting as a definite article, “The” can also be used as an adverb. Take for example the sentence below:
“Since getting a new computer, he was able to produce outputs all the quicker.”
In that sentence, “the” serves as an adverb because it modifies the adjective quicker. Take note that the word can only be used as an adverb if it is used together with an adjective or another adverb which is in the comparative degree.
Definition:
a. than before: than otherwise —used before a comparative
- The sooner the better.
b. to what extent
- Mercury is the most cratered planet in our Solar System.
c. beyond all others
- The more the merrier.