Word classes and functions

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Both
the traditional and the syntactico — distributional classifications
divide parts of speech into notional
and
functional.

Criteria
for differentiating:

1. the
   prominence of their lexical meaning

2. peculiarities
   of their combinability

3. ability
   to be substituted by a word of a more general meaning

4. ability
   to create/add new items

Notional
words

1. Complete
   nominative force

2. Self-dependent
   functions in a sentence

3. Can
   be used in isolation

4. Can
   be substituted by a word of a more general meaning

5. Open
   classes (new items can be added to them, they are indefinitely
   extendable)

Functional
words

1. Incomplete
   nominative force

2. Non-self-dependent
   mediatory functions:
   linking
   or specifying

3. Obligatory
   combinability

4. Cannot
   be substituted

5. Closed
   classes (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.

Pronouns
constitute a class of words which takes an intermediary position
between notional and functional words. On the one hand, they can
substitute for nouns and adjectives, on the other hand, pronouns are
used as connectives and specifiers.

Groups
of functional words (function words — Ch. Fries)

• With
  a
  unilateral combinability
  – articles, auxiliaries, modals, particles

• With
  a
  bilateral combinability
  – prepositions and conjunctions which connect 2 or more notional
  words or word- groups

• Heterogeneous
  subclass
  uniting introductory it/there, interrogative words, interjections
  etc

There
may be also groups of closed-system items(functional words) within an
open class notional words)- e.g. notional,
functional and auxiliary verbs.

A
word in English is very often not marked morphologically and it is
easy for words to pass from one class to another (round
as
a noun, adjective, verb, preposition). Such words arc treated either
as lexico-grammatical homonyms or as words belonging to one class.

7.The noun. The category of number

Noun
as a part of speech:

1. Semantic
   – a part of speech which categorial meaning is thingness

2. Formal
   – a) form-building – the category of number, the category of
   case, the category of gender, the category of article determination

b)
derivational – typical word-building patterns: suffixation,
compounding, convertion (to walk – a walk)

3)
Functional – a) combinability: left-hand prepositional
combinability with another N/V/Adj./Adv. [+ prep.Noun],casal
combinability [N’s+N](
.:
the
speech of the President —
the
President’s speech),
contact comb-ty [N+N]- stone-wall constructions, take
an intermediary position between compound nouns and noun phrases
(stone wall, car roof, speech sound),
comb-ty with articles and other determiners [art./det. + N]

b)
Syntactic functions – subject, object, other functions are less
typical

Nouns
fall into several subclasses which differ as to their semantic and
grammatical properties: common — proper, concrete — abstract,
countable — uncountable (count — non-count, count — mass),
animate — inanimate, personal — non-personal (human —
non-human).

Lexico-
semantic variants of nouns may belong to different subclasses: paper
— a paper, etc.

The
class of nouns can be described as a lexico-grammatical field.
Nouns denoting things constitute the centre (nucleus) of the field.
Nouns denoting processes, qualities, abstract notions (predicate
nouns) are marginal, peripheral elements of the field.

• Nucleus
  and periphery are distinguished on the basis of lexico-semantic
  properties and morph. characteristics – subclasses of Nouns

• The
  nucleus -> common- concrete-countable- animate Nouns

• The
  periphery -> abstract – material- uncountable Nouns

The
category of number

The
only category of nouns, which is generally accepted, is the category
of number. Many scholars think that the notion of case applies to
English pronouns, but not to nouns. Gender distinctions are not
marked morphologically.

The
category of number
— is a semantically rooted morphological category ,

• depends
  on how the referent is perceived: as a discrete, hence countable
  entity, one or more than one, OR as an indiscrete indivisible, hence
  uncountable entity

• this
  semantic contrast is revealed through lexical and morphological
  means which are accompanied by syntactic marking

Lexical
( lexico-syntactic) means:

• The
  process of lexicalizing
  semantic contrast consists in denoting a discrete countable entity
  by one word – a meal and an indiscrete uncountable entity – by
  another – food.

We
made a journey – we made a travel

Lexico-
grammatical means:

-s
– news – singularia tantum, goods – pluralia tantum, marked
through syntactic
patterning – the
form of the predicate verb, use of articles and corresponding
pronouns

Lexicalization
of the plural form (the
process when a word requires a new name, a word already having a
meaning gets a new one)

Colours
— > flag, pains -.> efforts

Grammatical
means:

The
morph. Category of Number is realized through inflectional
marking (categorial
forms) and/or syntactic patterning

Form:
the category of Number is constituted by the inflectional opposition
of 2 categorial forms of Noun:

Non-pl.(sg.)
— Pl⁺
binary,
privative opposition

Dog⁻
dogs⁺
⁺
—a
strong marked member, marked through the inflexion, ⁻-
zero morpheme.

Sg.
– no positive mark, zero inflexion, a weak unmarked member, many
a river

Pl.
– morpheme of plurality – (e)s, represented by:

• the
  allomorphs ( variants of 1 morpheme) books
  (s), boys(z), boxes(iz)

• by
  some other allomorphs ex. oxen

• internal
  inflexion – sound interchange mouse-mice

• zero
  inflexion (NB! – only in grammar) – sheep,
  means

Meaning
of their category of Number and its members the
foundation
is laid by the opposition

Discreteness
– non- discreteness which
embraces countable and uncountable nouns

Discrete
counts
form the inflexional opposition

Non-pl.-
pl.
dog⁻-dogs⁺

Non-pl.
– a single object having distinct outer boundaries

Pl.
– a set of homogeneous objects having distinct inner and outer
boundaries

Indiscrete
uncounts
constitute the lexico-gram.
opposition of subclasses of nouns:

Sg.
Only – pl. only

Sg.
only –
indiscrete entities having no boundaries ->mainly abstract and
material uncounts

Pl.only
(see
pract. Grammar)

THE
CATEGORY OF NUMBER

Discreteness
Non-discreteness

morphological
c. lexico-gram.
subclass

Non-pl.(oneness)
Sg. only

—
a single discrete entity — indiscrete
entities, no boundaries

Pl.(more
–than- oneness) Pl. only

—
multiplicity of discrete entities <…>

Bloh
Pl only

The
characteristic of the uncountable nouns which denote objects
consisting of two halves
(trousers,
scissors, tongs, spectacles, etc.),
the
nouns expressing some sort of collective meaning,
i.e. rendering the idea of indefinite plurality, both concrete and
abstract (supplies,
outskirts, clothes, parings; tidings, earnings, contents, politics;
police, cattle, poultry, etc.),
the
nouns denoting some diseases as well as some abnormal states of the
body and mind
(measles,
rickets, mumps, creeps, hysterics, etc.).
As is seen from the examples, from the point of view of number as
such, the absolute plural forms can be divided into set absolute
plural (objects of two halves) and non-set absolute plural (the
rest).

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In English grammar, a word class is a set of words that display the same formal properties, especially their inflections and distribution. The term «word class» is similar to the more traditional term, part of speech. It is also variously called grammatical category, lexical category, and syntactic category (although these terms are not wholly or universally synonymous).

The two major families of word classes are lexical (or open or form) classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) and function (or closed or structure) classes (determiners, particles, prepositions, and others).

Examples and Observations

• «When linguists began to look closely at English grammatical structure in the 1940s and 1950s, they encountered so many problems of identification and definition that the term part of speech soon fell out of favor, word class being introduced instead. Word classes are equivalent to parts of speech, but defined according to strict linguistic criteria.» (David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2003)
• «There is no single correct way of analyzing words into word classes…Grammarians disagree about the boundaries between the word classes (see gradience), and it is not always clear whether to lump subcategories together or to split them. For example, in some grammars…pronouns are classed as nouns, whereas in other frameworks…they are treated as a separate word class.» (Bas Aarts, Sylvia Chalker, Edmund Weiner, The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2014)

Form Classes and Structure Classes

«[The] distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning determines the first division in our classification: form-class words and structure-class words. In general, the form classes provide the primary lexical content; the structure classes explain the grammatical or structural relationship. Think of the form-class words as the bricks of the language and the structure words as the mortar that holds them together.»

The form classes also known as content words or open classes include:

• Nouns
• Verbs
• Adjectives
• Adverbs

The structure classes, also known as function words or closed classes, include:

• Determiners
• Pronouns
• Auxiliaries
• Conjunctions
• Qualifiers
• Interrogatives
• Prepositions
• Expletives
• Particles

«Probably the most striking difference between the form classes and the structure classes is characterized by their numbers. Of the half million or more words in our language, the structure words—with some notable exceptions—can be counted in the hundreds. The form classes, however, are large, open classes; new nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs regularly enter the language as new technology and new ideas require them.» (Martha Kolln and Robert Funk, Understanding English Grammar. Allyn and Bacon, 1998)

One Word, Multiple Classes

«Items may belong to more than one class. In most instances, we can only assign a word to a word class when we encounter it in context. Looks is a verb in ‘It looks good,’ but a noun in ‘She has good looks‘; that is a conjunction in ‘I know that they are abroad,’ but a pronoun in ‘I know that‘ and a determiner in ‘I know that man’; one is a generic pronoun in ‘One must be careful not to offend them,’ but a numeral in ‘Give me one good reason.'» (Sidney Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press, 1996)

Suffixes as Signals

«We recognize the class of a word by its use in context. Some words have suffixes (endings added to words to form new words) that help to signal the class they belong to. These suffixes are not necessarily sufficient in themselves to identify the class of a word. For example, -ly is a typical suffix for adverbs (slowly, proudly), but we also find this suffix in adjectives: cowardly, homely, manly. And we can sometimes convert words from one class to another even though they have suffixes that are typical of their original class: an engineer, to engineer; a negative response, a negative.» (Sidney Greenbaum and Gerald Nelson, An Introduction to English Grammar, 3rd ed. Pearson, 2009)

A Matter of Degree

«[N]ot all the members of a class will necessarily have all the identifying properties. Membership in a particular class is really a matter of degree. In this regard, grammar is not so different from the real world. There are prototypical sports like ‘football’ and not so sporty sports like ‘darts.’ There are exemplary mammals like ‘dogs’ and freakish ones like the ‘platypus.’ Similarly, there are good examples of verbs like watch and lousy examples like beware; exemplary nouns like chair that display all the features of a typical noun and some not so good ones like Kenny.» (Kersti Börjars and Kate Burridge, Introducing English Grammar, 2nd ed. Hodder, 2010)

Words are the building blocks in any sentence. They just don’t ‘mean’ something, they ‘do’ something in every sentence. Hence words are grouped into word classes based on what they do. A word class is a group of words that have certain common features. The term “word class” is analogous to the more conventional term, “part of speech.” It is also variously named grammatical category, lexical category, and syntactic category.

• Types of Word Classes
• Open and Closed Word Classes
• Open Word Classes
• Closed Word Classes
• How to identify the word classes in a sentence?
• How to classify a word class?
• What is the difference between a word class and part of speech?

Word classes can be divided into two families:

• Lexical Classes: Also known as open classes and form classes. The lexical classes include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
• Function Classes: Also known as closed classes and structure classes. Includes: pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections.

Open and Closed Word Classes

As previously mentioned some word classes are open, that is, the class can be expanded with the addition of new words. Take the example of the class of nouns, it is potentially infinite as the number of words in the class is increasing as new scientific and technological discoveries are made.

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed developments in computer technology which have in turn given rise to many new nouns like the Internet, URL website, bitmap, email, etc.

On the other hand, the word classes of prepositions, determiners, or conjunctions are known as closed word classes. Words like of, the, and but come under these. They are named closed word classes because they consist of a definite set of words. These classes never expand even though the words included in the class may change their spelling.

Open Word Classes

1) Nouns

This class includes words that you frequently use in everyday life. Nouns are most commonly understood as “naming” words, that is, it performs the function of naming “people, places or things”.

• A person – Boy, Girl, John, etc
• A thing- House, Dog, etc
• A place- China, America, etc

However, the use of nouns is not restricted to just names of people, places, or things. Nouns also denote abstract and intangible concepts such as an idea, quality, or state. Example: Danger, Happiness, Love, etc.

2) Verbs

The words that you use to describe an action are known as verbs. Hence verbs are generally known as “action” words. Have a look at the given example: Rahul rides a scooter. The verb in the above sentence denotes an action that Rahul performs which is the action of riding a scooter.

However, the idea of verbs as “action” words is somewhat restricted. Many verbs don’t stand for action at all as in the given instance: Rahul seems desperate. We cannot say that the verb ‘seems ‘ refer to an action.

3) Adverbs

In English, an adverb describes a word that alters the meaning of a verb, adjective, or another adverb. Adverbs in a sentence give you more information about the sentence. They are used to express how an action is fulfilled. Adverbs can broadly be categorized into Simple Adverbs, IInterrogative adverbs, and Relative Adverbs.

Remember:

• Most adverbs end with the common ending – ly.
• An adverb that modifies an adjective or another adverb usually goes before it.

4) Adjectives

Adjectives describe the quality of a noun. For example They stay in a beautiful house

The word beautiful indicates or refers to one of the attributes of the house that is described. Hence beautiful becomes the adjective in the above sentence.

A point to keep in mind: Some adjectives can be identified by their ending. Typical adjective endings include: able, al, ful, ic, etc.

You can even try out our other articles on How to Improve Your Vocabulary as well to expand your knowledge base.

Closed Word Classes

1) Determiners

You might have often noticed that nouns are preceded by words like the, a, or an. These words are known as Determiners. They suggest the type of reference that the noun has.

• The determiner ‘the’ is called a Definite Article. It can be placed both before singular and plural nouns. For example The Taxi, The taxis
• The determiner a or an is known as the Indefinite Article. It is used along with a singular noun. Example: A taxi

Apart from these, many other determiners express quantity. These include ‘al’, ‘both’, ‘many’ etc.

2) Conjunctions

These are used to express connections between different words.

Example: John and David are friends. And is used as a conjunction in the given sentence.
The most familiar conjunctions in English are: and, but, and or.

Conjunctions are further divided into two:

• Coordinating Conjunctions: These conjunctions connect elements of equal syntactic structure. Example: Paul and David study together.
• Subordinating Conjunctions: Connects elements of unequal syntactic structure. Example: I left early because I had an interview the next day.

3) Prepositions

Prepositions indicate the relation between different words. They occur before a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase and indicate a direction, time, place, location, and spatial relationship. Common prepositions include across, after, at, before, by, during, from, in, into, of, on, to, under, with, without, etc.

4) Pronouns

If we did not have the pronoun word families we would have to repeat a whole lot of nouns. A word that takes the position of a noun is named as a pronoun. Pronouns can be employed as a substitute for a noun.

• Pronouns are divided into 5 categories:
• Personal Pronouns: I, you, she, etc
• Demonstrative Pronouns: This, these, etc
• Possessive Pronouns: Yours, His, etc
• Interrogative Pronouns: Which, What, etc
• Reflexive Pronouns: Herself, Himself, etc.
• Reciprocal Pronouns: Each other
• Indefinite Pronouns: Few, Nobody, etc.
• Relative Pronouns: Which, Whom, etc.

5) Interjections

Short exclamations like Oh!, Ah! etc are known as Interjections. Even though they have no grammatical value, we often use them in daily speech. Interjections are primarily used to express emotions such as anger, surprise, etc. Given below are a few examples.

Well! That hurts
Hey! Don’t be so clumsy

Remember, an interjection is always followed by an exclamation mark.

Read More:

• English Idioms
• Literary Devices

FAQs on Word Classes

1. How to identify the word classes in a sentence?

A word class is a group of words that have certain common features. To find out the word classes within a sentence it is important that you familiarise yourself with the most common word classes in English. These include nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, etc.

2. How to classify a word class?

Word classes in English belong to two major categories. These are Open word classes that include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The second category is closed word classes that include: pronouns, determiners, interjections, etc.

3. What is the difference between a word class and part of speech?

The term “word class” is analogous to the more conventional term, “part of speech”. Both these terms refer to a group of words that have certain common features.

Conclusion

To understand the grammatical structures of sentences in a better way it’s best if you begin with word classes. Even though comprehending the different word classes may initially be a hectic task, once you master word classes, you will reach the exact meaning or message conveyed by a sentence.

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

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

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

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

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

History[edit]

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

India[edit]

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

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

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

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

Western tradition[edit]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Classification[edit]

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

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

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

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

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

Noun (names)

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

Pronoun (replaces or places again)

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

Adjective (describes, limits)

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

Verb (states action or being)

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

Adverb (describes, limits)

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

Preposition (relates)

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

Conjunction (connects)

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

Interjection (expresses feelings and emotions)

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

Article (describes, limits)

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

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

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

Functional classification[edit]

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

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

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

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

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

Open and closed classes[edit]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See also[edit]

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

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

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