UNIT 4- WORD CLASSES

4.1 The notion of category

4.1.1 Traditional notion of part of speech
Traditionally, it was claimed that in English there were 8 parts of speech, following the
case of Greek and Latin.

The parts of speech were defined from a national point of view, that is based on their
meaning:

- Noun: denotes a person, an animal, an object or places

- Verb: Denotes an action or a state of being
- Adjective: Describes or modifies the noun
- Adverb: Modifies verbs, adjectives and other adverbs
- Pronouns: Replaces a noun
- Prepositions: Indicates relationships between noun and pronouns (to, on)
- Conjunction: Links clauses (and, because)
- Interjection: Expresses some kind of emotion (Ouch!)

However, these definitions have some problems:

1. They derive from the false assumptions that the same definitions wil work in a
general sense and language-particular level.
2. They are national definitions based on meaning not morpho-syntactic behaviour
of words. These fail to distinguish between the different classes.
3. They are not all of the same kind: noun is defined in terms of a word’s semantic
properties (meaning), whereas the adjective is defined in relation to the noun.
a. This causes problems with the correct categorisation of words in some
cases
4. The main structural properties of the different words that might be useful for
classification are ignored.
a. The fact that nouns inflect for numbers isn’t taken into account
5. The adverb class is highly heterogenous, and it includes words that do not even
fit the broad definition.

4.1.2 Modern notion of word class category

Grammatical category: abstract class of linguistic expressions which share a common
set of properties (morphological and syntactical).

In all grammatical categories there are prototypical (central) members and marginal
members.

- Central members: Those which show all the properties of the category

- Peripheral members: Those that show only some of the characteristics.

In modern linguistics, categories (in this case word classes) are defined in terms of two
parameters:

- Inflection and Derivation (morphology- form)

- Distribution (syntax- function)

Morphological or formal characteristics:

- A prototypical noun inflects for number and genitive and marginal nouns would only
have a singular or plural form.

- Most English nouns inflect for number and genitives, some of the
derivational affixes that denote nounhood are –ment, -hood ...

- A prototypical verb shows all possible inflected forms and a marginal verb
shows only some.

Functional, distributional or syntactic characteristics:

- The words that fit in the same slots belong to the same category

- She bought the X (X: tape, lamp, coffee...)

- They want to Y (Y: read, swim, dance...)

4.1.3 The notion of paradigm

A paradigm is a set of inflected words, organized syntactically, which form a declension
or conjugation pattern.

- The complete list of inflectional forms of a word constitutes its inflectional

paradigm.

4.2 Morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of the major word classes
4.2.1 Noun
4.2.1.1 Number
Prototypical nouns inflect for number, and so have a singular form and plural form.
However, there are a series of nouns that do not inflect for number:

- Mass nouns: Flour, silver, sugar

- Proper nouns: Jhon, Manchester

- Some nouns ending in –s: news. Phonetics

Or other nouns that are only plurals

- Words morphologically marked, ending with –s: Scissors, glasses

Others have irregular plurals

- The –en plural: Children, oxen

- Zero morph: Deer, salmon

- Replacive morph: man-men, goose-geese

- Stem allomorph alternation or variation of the root: Knife-Knives, House-

Houses

- Foreign plurals: Alumnus-alumni, curriculum-curricula

4.2.1.2 Case
Case is grammatical category that indicates the function of a noun phrase in the
clause, or the relationship between a noun phrase and another.

In English, there is only the genitive case: ‘s attached to the noun.

- The most typical meaning of this construction is possession: the NP to which ‘s is

attached is the possessor, and the other NP is the thing possessed; my
mother’s car.

Genitive meaning:

▫ Possession: The phrase (X’s Y) can be phrased as X possesses, Y owns

o The teacher’s office
▫ Characterization or description: The phrase (X’s Y) can be phrased as X for Y
o Girls’ school
▫ Origin: X verb Y
o The headmaster’s letter
▫ Measure: X lasted Y
o Half an hour’s walk
▫ Subjective X Yed
o The student’s application
▫ Objective: Someone Yed X
o The car’s destruction

Different forms to express various genitive meanings:

▫ No genitive form: Juxtaposition

o Kitchen table
▫ Genitive ‘s for human beings and higher animals: related to the degree of
animacy of the possessor
o Mary’s house
o The bird’s tail /* the tail of the bird
▫ Of phrases with inanimate objects and lower animals
o The pages of the book /*the book’s pages
o The legs of the spider /* The spider’s legs
▫ Collective nouns and institutions can take either ‘s or of genitive forms:
 o The government's recent plans/ The recent plants of the government

The genitive and the plural are two only inflectional suffixes that can appear in the same
word: cat-cats-cat's-cats'

- This can be distinguished in the spelling but not the phonology

4.2.1.3 Gender
In English there is only natural gender

▫ Masculine
▫ Feminine
▫ Common or dual: referred to as he or she
▫ Neuter: referred to as it

In English, then, it is important to remember that gender is not a grammatical category;

it is not a part of the inflectional system of the language. And it can be expressed in a
number of different ways:

▫ Derivational suffixes: actor-actress, fiancé-fiancée

▫ Compounds: woman doctor, girl student
▫ Some nouns have different forms for masc. and fem.: stallion-mare, cock-hen

There are a number of nouns which are considered feminine, although it has nothing to
do with their sex:

▫ Ship
▫ Christian church

Nouns are the only ones that can be head of an NP, and can fulfil roles like pre-modifier
of another noun, can be preceded by a determiner and can be post-modified by a PP.

4.2.2 Verb
English verbs can be divided into two groups: Lexical verbs and auxiliaries.

Lexical verbs are the only verbs that can be heads of VP, in declarative, positive and
active clauses. In terms of form and use, verbs gave the following inflectional forms:

Form Uses Examples

To infinitive She wants to visit them
Base form
Bare infinitive She must visit them

Third person singular 3rd person singular She visits them every day

Simple past He visited them yesterday

 Past tense
Conditional construction Visiting him is for her gr8...

With to have to form She has already visited her

perfect forms grandmother

Past participle With to be to form passive Her grandmother was

forms visited by her doctor

Non-finite subordinate Disgusted by what he had

clauses seen, they never went
back
These forms are of two types: finite and non-finite.

- Finite forms:

▫ Those that show tense and person contrast

▫ General present, imperative, 3rd person singular and past tense

- Non-finite forms:

▫ Those that don’t show tense and person contrast

▫ To infinitive, bare infinitive, present participle and past participle.

Lexical verbs can also be classified as regular or irregular verbs.

▪ Regular rules:
o 3rd person singular: add –s to the base
o Present participle: add -ing to the base
o Past tense: add –ed to the base (morphophonemes)
o Past participle: add –ed to the base (morphemes)

A very important thing to notice in this paradigm is that there is syncretism (when two
forms are phonologically and orthographically identical), like zero morphs.

▪ Irregular rules:
o 3rd person singular: do/does, have/has, say/says
o Past tense: break/broke, put/put
o Past participle: begin/begun, rise/risen

In all these cases the relationship between the two inflectional forms of the same verb
is easily seen. There are other cases such as: go/went in which one form totally
replaces another, these are called suppletive forms.

Some verbs are said to be defective, that lack some of the forms.

▪ Beware is only used in the imperative and in the infinitive

 4.2.2.1 Tense
Tense express's location in time and it is a deictic category (it locates events in relation
to the time of speech).

In English, only the past and present are marked inflectionally, the future is expressed
in 5 different ways 4 of which are periphrastic:

▪ Will/shall+ infinitive: We will go to the cinema tomorrow

▪ Simple present: The plane leaves at two o’clock
▪ Present progressive: We’re flying to London tomorrow
▪ Be going to+ infinitive: Look at the clouds: it’s going to rain
▪ Shall/will+ progressive infinitive: When you arrive, I’ll be having dinner

4.2.2.2 Aspect
The category aspect us more clearly present in languages like Russian and Catalan.
This expresses the view taken on an event, whether it is viewed as complete, from the
outside (perfective aspect) or incomplete/ongoing, from the inside (imperfective
aspect).

▪ Vaig cantar vs cantava

In English the perfective/imperfective aspect which expresses the “current relevance”

of a past event.

▪ I have lost my keys

▪ I have visited Australia three times

4.2.2.3 Mood
Mood indicates the speaker’s attitude towards what he or she is saying whether what is
being said is a fact or a non/fact.

▫ If it is a non/fact it can be something that is possible or something that the

speaker would like to see done.

In English, mood is expressed by means of modals. We can distinguish two types of

modalities:

▫ The modality that deals with judgment about the likelihood if the proposition
o Possibility
o Probability
▫ The modality that has to do with acts
o Permission
o Obligation
 4.2.2.4 Voice
Voice is relevant to the whole clause. It is an indication of whether the subject is
performing an action of the verb or being something (active voice), or whether the
subject is being affected by the action or being acted upon (passive voice).

4.2.3 Adjective
Adjectives typically have three forms:

▪ Positive (root)-> expresses a quality

▪ Comparative (-er)-> expresses a greater degree of intensity of that quality
▪ Superlative (-est) -> expresses the greatest degree or intensity.

As far as inflection (form) is concerned, there are some difficultiess with this as a tool to
identify adjectives

1) Not all adjectives carry these inflections, for two different reasons:

a. Phonological reasons: monosyllabic forms are inflected, and also disyllabic

forms ending in –y, -er, -le, -ow and in –some.
i. However, there are some irregularities: good/better/best,
bad/worse/worst (suppletive forms).
b. Semantic reasons: adjectives that express absolute qualities are not inflected
for degree; unique, round, full, empty... These are called non-gradable
adjectives.

2) Adverbs can also carry inflection. There are aslo a number of derivational suffixes
which typically express adjectivehood: -ly, -ish, -ous, -ful.

The function of adjectives is head of the adjective phrase. AdjPs can fulfil basically two
functions.

c. Det AdjP N- attributive position. A few adjectives can only be used attributibley.
i. Principal, same, live (concert)...
d. Vlinking AdjP- predicate position. A few adjectives can only appear in this position.
i. Afraid, asleep, old/new (friend)

It is often said that adjectives can occur in predicative or in attributive position but in
fact it’s the AdjP which can appear in these two distributions:

1. Attributive, a very nice house

2. Predicative, that house is very nice
4.2.4 Adverb
The category adverb is rather difficult to differentiate. It is a very heterogeneous
category containing very different adverbs, occurring in widely differing environments.
Adverbs, the, are divided into different classes:

a) Adverbs of degree; as, how, much, pretty, quiet, very,

a. They typically modify adjectives or other adverbs
b) Adverbs of manner; beautifully, nicely, quietly
a. They usually modify VP’s but can also be found with adjectives. Adverbs
of manner are quiet freely modified by other adverbs (almost quietly)
c) Adverbs of time; late, soon, again, now...
a. They typically modify VPs
d) Adverbs of place; here, there, upstairs
a. They typically modify VPs

The function of the adverb is head of the AdvP.

Typical manner adverbs carry the derivational suffix –ly, and some take the degree
inflections (-er and –est). However, these two characteristics are also true for adjectives,
so in order to distinguish between them it is necessary to look at the distribution of their
respective phrases.

4.3 Morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of the minor word classes
4.3.1 Pronouns
The head of pronouns is head of the noun phrase.

The pronoun paradigm is one area of English where categories which are not overtly
(clearly) expressed in other categories are still present: person, number, gender and
case.

Pronouns can be:

▪ Deictic: 1st and 2nd person, sometimes 3rd person. A category that cannot be fully
interpreted unless the context of its use is known.
o The meaning of I changes depending on who utters it.
▪ Anaphoric: it makes reference to an earlier part of the text
o Jhon and Mary will be here in a few minutes.

4.3.2 Determiners
In terms of function, determiners are those elements that occur before the noun in the
noun phrase, and that specify the noun very closely.

In terms of form, there are three classes of determiners on the bases of their position
within the NP:
 ▪ Central determiners
o Articles: a, the
o Possessives: my, your, her, his, its, our and their
o Demonstratives: This/these, that/those
o Indefinite determiners: Some, any
▪ Pre-determiners
o Half, all, both
o Multipliers: double, twice...
o Fractions: one-third
▪ Post-determiners
o Cardinals: one, two
o Ordinals: first, second, third
o Quantifiers: many, few, plenty of

4.3.3 Auxiliaries
In terms of function, auxiliaries are those verbs which are depending in VP structure
(they always appear with lexical verbs).

They are derrived in two groups:

I) Primary auxiliaries
a. Be, have, do
II) Secondary auxiliaries (modals):
a. Must, can, will, shall, may

In terms of from (or distribution), all auxiliaries have the following syntactic
characteristics:

▪ Negation: To form the negative, the particle is not placed after the first auxiliary.
▪ Inversion: Sometimes the first auxiliary can appear before the subject
o 1st auxiliary + Subject+ auxiliary+ Modal verb
▪ The boy is singing
o In question form this would be
▪ Is the boy singing
▪ Emphatic affirmation: Auxiliaries can carry the nuclear stress of a sentence to
indicate that the sentence is positive rather than negative.
o You must go to school
o I am a good girl
▪ Ellipsis: Auxiliaries can be used in certain constructions to avoid repetition.
o Main construction: Can you come? Yes, I can
o So/neither/nor; either/too: Mary will come and so will Peter
 o Other coordinate constructions: He said he would go, but maybe he
won’t
o Tag questions: He’s a good student, isn’t he?

The modals and auxiliary ‘do’ are always dependent in VP structures. However, ‘be’ and
‘have’ can either be dependent or heads of the VP.

▪ ‘Be’ is dependent in passive and progressive constructions

▪ ‘Have’ is dependent in perfect constructions

Operators: verbs that have the 4 syntactic properties mentioned above (ellipsis,
inversion...)

4.3.4 Other categories

Conjunction
Word that links two different structures: words, phrases, clauses. There are two
different types of conjunctions:

▪ Coordinating: and, but

▪ Subordinating: because if

Prepositions
To, at, between...

Phrasal and prepositional verbs both consist of lexical verb and a particle.

Phrasal verbs can be transitive or intransitive.

▪ She turned on the light

▪ They gave in

Prepositional verbs are always followed by a prepositional phrase and often used with
verbs such as ‘look at, depend on, listen to’.

▪ It depends on your decision

Differences between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs”

▪ Phonological: The particle of the phrasal verb is always stressed, whereas the
preposition in the prepositional verb is unstressed
▪ Distributional or syntactic: The particle of the phrasal verb can occur before or
after the object, whereas the preposition of the prepositional verb always occurs
before the object

Interjection
Words that express feelings, courses or emotions.

▪ Ouch/ Darn/ Hi
They do not enter into syntactic relations with any other words belonging on the various
word classes. They occur in isolation or at the beginning of a sentence.

4.4 Fuzzy area

There is an area in the classification of words in word classes that is somewhat fuzzy,
and it is the distinction between: preposition, conjunction and adverb.