words and grammatical catagories
PREFACE
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INTRODUCTION
Most approaches
to word classes are based on semantic criteria like object, property or action
(e.g. Croft 1991, 2000, 2001; cf. Section 0.3.3). Sasse (1993a) makes a
distinction between “thing-like concepts” and “event-like concepts”. Langacker
(1987) is probably the most elaborate study that tries to provide a notional
description of nouns and verbs. His definition of the noun is based on the
concept of the region, i.e., “a set of interconnected entities” (langacker
1987: 62). A noun designates a region and is thus characterized as being static
and holistic. The concept of bounded is based on whether “there is a limit to
the set of participating entities” (langacker 1987: 62) and is used to
distinguish count nouns from mass nouns. Thus, “(a) count noun designates a
region that is bounded within the scope of predication in its primary domain”,
while “[a] mass noun designates a region that is not specifically bounded
within the scope of predication in its primary domain” (langacker 1987: 63).
Verbs are described as processes which are mentally analysed across their
different states through time: “a verb is ... A ‘temporal’ predication in the
sense of following a situation, state by state, as it evolves through conceived
time; its ‘dynamic’ character reflects the successive transformations which
derive each component state from its predecessor” (langacker 1987: 74). In
spite of its thoroughness, langacker’s (1987) notional approach is problematic
for at least two reasons (also cf. Sasse 1993a: 649). It does not provide a
discovery procedure for parts of speech identification. Arguments that are
exclusively based on semantics cannot show why a particular limited set of
classes is cross-linguistically universal. Finally, there is a fundamental problem
that applies to all the semantic criteria discussed so far.
As wierzbicka
(2000) pointed out, they are all too general to match word classes across
languages. Thus, one cannot just take any action-denoting lexical item for
establishing cross-linguistic word classes because the concept expressed by
that item may not be lexicalized universally. It is for that reason that the
cross-linguistic definition of word classes must be based on “genuinely
universal lexical prototypes” (wierzbicka 2000: 288). Wierzbicka (2000)
suggests the following prototypes that are based on empirical cross-linguistic
investigation within her project on natural semantic metalanguage (nsm): nouns:
people, things; verbs: do, happen (verbal prototypes) and see, hear say, move (other
lexical universals); adjectives: big and small, secondarily good and bad; etc.
For other word
classes, as will be seen, none of the approaches presented in section 0.3
reflect wierzbicka’s (2000) point. The only other approach which incorporates
the requirement of using universally lexicalized concepts is dixon (1977,
2004). He presents the following semantic types (printed in capitals) that are
always associated with nouns or verbs, respectively (for adjectives, cf.
Section 0.6):
(1) Semantic types associated with nouns and verbs
(dixon 2004: 3):
A.
Linked
with nouns: semantic types with concrete reference: humans, body and other
parts, flora, fauna, celestial, environment, and artefacts.
B.
Linked
with verbs: motion, rest, affect, giving, attention, speaking.
Each grammatical category has several "exponents", at most one of which marks a constituent of an expression: a noun or noun phrase cannot be marked for singular and plural at the same time, nor can a verb be marked for present and past at the same time.
In
traditional structural grammar, grammatical categories are semantic
distinctions; this is reflected in a morphological or syntactic paradigm. But
in generative grammar, which sees meaning as
separate from grammar, they are categories that define the distribution of
syntactic elements.[2]
For structuralists such as Roman Jakobson grammatical categories were lexemes
that were based on binary oppositions of "a single feature of meaning that
is equally present in all contexts of use". Another way to define a
grammatical category is as a category that expresses meanings from a single
conceptual domain, contrasts with other such categories, and is expressed
through formally similar expressions.[3]
Another definition distinguishes grammatical categories from lexical
categories, such that the elements in a grammatical category have a common
grammatical meaning - that is, they are part of the language's grammatical
structure
DISCUSSION
In this
chapter, we look at the grammatical properties of words. We begin by looking at
the categorial properties of words and at how we determine what grammatical
category a given word belongs to (in a given use): in the course of our
discussion we introduce some new categories which will not be familiar from
traditional grammar. We go on to show that categorial information alone is not
sufficient to describe the grammatical properties of words, ultimately
concluding that the grammatical properties of words must be characterised in
terms of sets of grammatical features. Words
are assigned to grammatical categories
in traditional grammar
on the basis of their shared semantic, morphological
and syntactic
properties. The kind of semantic criteria (sometimes called 'notional'
criteria) used to categorise words in traditional grammar are illustrated in
much-simplified form below:
- Verbs denote actions (go, destroy, buy, eat etc.)
- Nouns denote entities (car, cat, hill, John etc.)
- Adjectives denote states (ill, happy, rich etc.)
- Adverbs denote manner (badly, slowly, painfully, cynically etc.)
- Prepositions denote location (under, over, outside, in, on etc.)
A. Grammatical
Category
Words are
traditionally assigned to grammatical categories on the basis of their shared
morphological and syntactic properties. The morphological criteria for categorising words concern their inflectional and derivational properties. Inflectional
properties relate to different forms of the same word (e.g. the plural form of
a noun like cat is formed by
adding the plural inflection -s to
give the form cats);
derivational properties relate to the processes by which a word can be used to
form a different kind of word by the addition of an affix of some kind (e.g. by adding the suffix -ness to the adjective sad we can form the noun sadness). Although English has a
highly impoverished system of inflectional morphology, there are nonetheless
two major categories of word which have distinctive inflectional properties –
namely nouns and verbs. We can identify the class of
nouns in terms of the fact that they generally inflect for number, and thus have distinct singular and plural forms – cf. pairs such as dog/dogs, man/men, ox/oxen, etc. Accordingly, we can
differentiate a noun like fool from
an adjective like foolish by
virtue of the fact that only (regular) nouns like fool – not adjectives like foolish – can carry the noun plural inflection -s: cf.
1)
They
are fools (noun) / *foolishes (adjective)
There are
several complications which should be pointed out, however. One is the
existence of irregular nouns like sheep
which are invariable and hence have a common singular/plural form (cf. one sheep, two sheep). A second is that some nouns are intrinsically
singular (and so have no plural form) by virtue of their meaning: only those
nouns (called count nouns) which
denote entities which can be counted have a plural form (e.g. chair – cf. one chair, two chairs);
some nouns denote an uncountable mass and for this reason are called mass nouns or non-count nouns, and so cannot be pluralised (e.g. furniture – hence the
ungrammaticality of *one furniture,
*two furnitures). A third is
that some nouns (e.g. scissors and
trousers) have a plural form
but no countable singular form. A fourth complication is posed by noun
expressions which contain more than one noun; only the head noun in such expressions can be pluralised, not any preceding
noun used as a modifier of the
head noun: thus, in expressions such as car
doors, policy decisions,
skate boards, horse boxes, trouser presses, coat
hangers, etc. the second noun is the head noun and can be pluralised,
whereas the first noun is a modifier some kind and cannot be pluralised. In much
the same way, we can identify verbs by
their inflectional morphology in English. In addition to their uninflected base form (= the citation form under
which they are listed in dictionaries), verbs typically have up to four
different inflected forms, formed by adding one of four inflections to the
appropriate stem form: the relevant inflections are the perfect/passive
participle suffix -n, the past
tense suffix -d, the third
person singular present tense suffix -s,
and the progressive participle/gerund suffix -ing. Like most morphological criteria, however, this one is
complicated by the irregular and impoverished nature of English inflectional
morphology; for example, many verbs have irregular past or perfect forms, and
in some cases either or both of these forms may not in fact be distinct from
the (uninflected) base form, so that a single form may serve two or three
functions (thereby neutralising or
syncretising the relevant
distinctions), as the table in (2) below illustrates:
2)
Table of verb forms
|
BASE
|
PERFECT
|
PAST
|
PRESENT
|
PROGRESSIVE
|
|
show
|
shown
|
showed
|
shows
|
showing
|
|
go
|
gone
|
went
|
goes
|
going
|
|
speak
|
spoken
|
spoke
|
speaks
|
speaking
|
|
see
|
seen
|
saw
|
sees
|
seeing
|
|
come
|
came
|
comes
|
coming
|
|
|
wait
|
waited
|
waits
|
waiting
|
|
|
meet
|
met
|
meets
|
meeting
|
|
|
cut
|
cuts
|
cutting
|
||
(The largest classes of verbs in English are regular
verbs which have the morphological characteristics of wait, and so have past, perfect and passive forms ending in the
suffix -d.) The picture becomes
even more complicated if we take into account the verb be, which has eight distinct forms (viz. the base form be, the perfect form been, the progressive form being, the past forms was/were, and the present forms am/are/is). The most regular verb suffix in
English is -ing, which can be
attached to the base form of almost any verb (though a handful of defective
verbs like beware are
exceptions).
The obvious implication of our discussion of nouns
and verbs here is that it would not be possible to provide a systematic account
of English inflectional morphology unless we were to posit that words belong to
grammatical categories, and that a specific type of inflection attaches only to
a specific category of word. The same is also true if we wish to provide an
adequate account of derivational
morphology in English (i.e. the processes by which words are derived
from other words): this is because particular derivational affixes can only be
attached to words belonging to particular categories. For example, the negative
prefixes un- and in- can be attached to adjectives to
form a corresponding negative adjective (cf. pairs such as happy/unhappy and flexible/inflexible) but not to nouns (so that
a noun like fear has no negative
counterpart *unfear), nor to
prepositions (so that a preposition like inside
has no negative antonym *uninside).
Similarly, the adverbialising (i.e. adverb-forming) suffix -ly in English can be attached only
to adjectives (giving rise to adjective/adverb pairs such as sad/sadly) and cannot be attached to a noun like computer, or to a verb like accept, or to a preposition like with. Likewise, the nominalising (i.e.
noun-forming) suffix -ness can
be attached only to adjective stems (so giving rise to adjective/noun pairs
such as coarse/coarseness), not to nouns, verbs or
prepositions (Hence we don’t find –ness
derivatives for a noun like boy,
or a verb like resemble, or a
preposition like down). In much
the same way, the comparative suffix -er
can be attached to adjectives (cf. tall/taller) and some adverbs (cf. soon/sooner) but not to other types of word (cf. woman/*womanner); and the superlative
suffix -est can attach to
adjectives (cf. tall/tallest)
but not other types of word (cf. e.g. down/*downest;
donkey/*donkiest, enjoy/*enjoyest). There is no point
in multiplying examples here: it is clear that derivational affixes have categorial
properties, and any account of derivational morphology will clearly have to
recognise this fact (See e.g. Aronoff 1976, and Fabb 1988). As we noted
earlier, there is also syntactic evidence
for assigning words to categories: this essentially relates to the fact that
different categories of words have different distributions (i.e. occupy a different range of positions within
phrases or sentences). For example, if we want to complete the four-word sentence
in (3) below by inserting a single word at the end of the sentence in the ---
position:
(3)
They have no ---
We can use an (appropriate kind of) noun, but not a
verb, preposition, adjective, or adverb, as we see from:
(4)
(a) They have no car / conscience / friends / ideas (nouns)
(b) They have no went (verb) / for (preposition)
/ older (adjective) / conscientiously (adverb)
So, using the relevant syntactic criterion, we can
define the class of nouns as the set of words which can terminate a sentence in
the position marked --- in (3). Using the same type of syntactic evidence, we
could argue that only a verb (in its infinitive/base form) can occur in the
position marked --- in (5) below to form a complete (non-elliptical) sentence:
(5)
They/it can ---
Support for this claim comes from the contrasts in
(6) below:
(6) (a) They can stay/leave/hide/die/starve/cry (verb)
(b) *They can gorgeous (adjective) / happily
(adverb) / down (preposition)
/door (noun)
And the only category of word which can occur after very (in the sense of extremely) is an adjective or adverb,
as we see from (7) below:
(7) (a) He is very slow (very+adjective)
(b) He walks very slowly (very+adverb)
(c) *Very fools waste
time (very+noun)
(d) *He very adores her (very+verb)
(e) *It happened very after the
party (very+preposition)
But note that very
can only be used to modify adjectives/adverbs which by virtue of their
meaning are gradable and so can
be qualified by words like very/rather/somewhat etc; adjectives/adverbs which denote an absolute state
are ungradable by virtue of
their meaning, and so cannot be qualified in the same way – hence the oddity of
!Fifteen students were very present,
and five were very absent, where ! marks semantic anomaly.) Moreover, we
can differentiate adjectives from adverbs in syntactic terms. For example, only
adverbs can be used to end sentences such as He treats her ---, She
behaved ---, He worded the
statement ---: cf.
(8)
(a) He treats her badly [adverb]/*kind (adjective)/*shame (noun)/*under (preposition)
(b) She behaved abominably (adverb)/*appalling
(adjective)/*disgrace (noun)/*down
(preposition)
(c) He worded the statement carefully (adverb) /*good (adjective)/*tact (noun)/*in
(preposition)
And since adjectives (but not adverbs) can serve as
the complement of the verb be (i.e.
can be used after be), we can
delimit the class of (gradable) adjectives uniquely by saying that only
adjectives can be used to complete a four-word sentence of the form They are very ---: cf.
(9)
(a) They are very tall/pretty/kind/nice (adjective)
(b) *They are very slowly (adverb)/gentlemen
(noun)/astonish (verb)/outside (preposition)
Another way of differentiating between an adjective
like real and an adverb like really is that adjectives are used to
modify nouns, whereas adverbs are used to modify other types of expression: cf.
(10)
(a) There is a real crisis (real+noun)
(b) He is really nice (really+adjective)
(c) He walks really slowly (really+adverb)
(d) He is really down (really+preposition)
(e) He must really squirm (really+verb)
Adjectives used to modify a following noun (like real in There is a real crisis) are traditionally said to be attributive in function, whereas those
which do not modify a following noun (like real in the crisis is real)
are said to be predicative in
function. As for the syntactic properties of prepositions, they alone can be
intensified by right in the
sense of ‘completely’, or by straight in
the sense of ‘directly’:
(11)
(a) Go right up the ladder
(b) He went right inside
(c) He walked straight into a
wall
(d) He fell straight down
By
contrast, other categories cannot be intensified by right/straight (in
Standard English): cf.
(12)
(a) *He right/straight despaired (right/straight+verb)
(b) *She is right/straight pretty (right/straight+adjective)
(c) *She looked at him right/straight strangely (right/straight+adverb)
(d) *They are right/straight fools (right/straight+noun)
It should be noted, however, that since right/straight serve to intensify the meaning of a preposition, they can
only be combined with those (uses of) prepositions which express the kind of
meaning which can be intensified in the appropriate way (so that He made right/straight for the exit is
OK, but *He bought a present
right/straight for Mary is not). A further syntactic property of some
prepositions (namely those which take a following noun or pronoun expression as
their complement – traditionally called transitive
prepositions) which they share in common with (transitive) verbs is the
fact that they permit an immediately following accusative pronoun as their complement (i.e. a pronoun in its
accusative form, like me/us/him/them):
cf.
(13)(a)
She was against him (transitive preposition+accusative
pronoun)
(b) She was watching him (transitive verb+accusative pronoun)
(c) *She is fond him (adjective+accusative pronoun)
(d) *She works independently him (adverb+accusative pronoun)
(e) *She showed me a photo him (noun+accusative pronoun)
Even though a preposition like with does not express the kind of
meaning which allows it to be intensified by right or straight,
we know it is a (transitive) preposition because it is invariable (so not e.g.
a verb) and permits an accusative pronoun as its complement, e.g. in sentences
such as He argued with me/us/him/them.
(For obvious reasons, this test can’t be used with prepositions used
intransitively without any complement, like those in 11b/11d above.)
Grammatical categories
The term
grammatical category broadly refers to a set of syntactic features that is
conceptually similar and applies systematically to a linguistic expression.
More concretely, grammatical categories that are salient in English are
- tense
- aspect
- person
- number
- gender
- case
- voice
- mood/modality
Tense
Tense allows
speakers to express information about temporal relations, typically by marking
the verb. In strictly morphosyntactic terms, English has only two tenses:
present and past tense. Futurity is expressed in English analytically via will
or going to auxiliaries. Note that what is generally considered the
English tense system in school books is more precisely the combination of
present, past and future tense with simple, progressive, perfect and
perfect-progressive aspect.
|
Tense
|
Simple Aspect
|
Progressive Aspect
|
Perfect Aspect
|
Perfect Progressive Aspect
|
|
Present
|
take/s
|
am/is/are
taking
|
have/has
taken
|
have/has
been taking
|
|
Past
|
took
|
was/were
taking
|
had taken
|
had been
taking
|
|
Future
|
will/shall
take
|
will be
taking
|
will have
taken
|
will have
been taking
|
Aspect
In English,
the category of aspect allows speakers to mark actions expressed by verbs as
completed, ongoing, recurrent or habitual. Note that aspect concerns the action
expressed by the verb as a process and not its temporal location in the past,
present or future. While many school grammars treat the present perfect as a
sort of past tense, an utterance such as I have eaten strictly only
implies that this action has occurred and that it was completed, not when
it took place. Temporal relations are expressed by tense, leaving aspect to add
information about the status of something as ongoing or completed.
Person
The
participant role of an individual in discourse is signaled via grammatical
person, in English specifically via the personal pronouns of the first, second
and third person (see also pronouns – personal pronouns). English lacks certain
marked distinctions in the pronominal system made by many other languages, for
example the distinction between a formal and a more familiar second person (vous
– tu, Sie – Du) and between singular and plural on the second
person.
|
Singular
|
Plural
|
||||||||
|
Subjective
|
Objective
|
Possessive
|
Reflexive
|
Subjective
|
Objective
|
Possessive
|
Reflexive
|
||
|
First
|
I
|
me
|
mine
|
myself
|
we
|
us
|
ours
|
ourselves
|
|
|
Second
|
you
|
you
|
yours
|
yourself
|
you
|
you
|
yours
|
yourselves
|
|
|
Third
|
Masculine
|
he
|
him
|
his
|
himself
|
they
|
them
|
theirs
|
themselves
|
|
Feminine
|
she
|
her
|
hers
|
herself
|
|||||
|
Neuter
|
it
|
it
|
its
|
itself
|
|||||
Note that
the paradigm reproduced above represents standard Modern English – the
pronominal system shows considerable dialectal variation.
Number
The
grammatical category of number describes count information (one, more than one,
in some languages additional cases) that is encoded via inflection. In English,
nouns, pronouns and verbs can indicate number. Due to its mixed vocabulary,
English nouns of Latin and Greek origin form irregular plurals (alumnus –
alumni), while some nouns are marked with a zero (deer – deer, sheep
– sheep) or via umlaut (foot – feet, woman – women).
Gender
Grammatical
gender is a form of noun classification that is common in many Indoeuropean
languages. Some languages encode two genders (French), others three (German,
Latin), but in other language families even wider systems of classification
exist (for example, see the four-way distinction made in Dyirbal, spoken in Australia). Gender
marking, which was relatively similar to German during the Old English period,
has been lost to a large extent in Modern English. Exceptions are: personal
pronouns (he – she – it), possessive determiners (her car, his
shirt), relative pronouns (who/whom – which) and gendered nouns (prince
– princess, heir – heiress, actor – actress). In those relatively few cases
where English retains gender marking, grammatical and biological gender
coincide relatively closely, whereas in languages with full grammatical gender
the choice is often more idiosyncratic (e.g. German: der Junge – das
Mädchen).
Voice
Voice is a
category that describes the relationship of verb arguments to one another.
English distinguishes between active and passive voice and uses a
periphrastic construction (be + past participle) to realize the passive.
In a passive construction, the direct object becomes the subject of the verb
while the former subject is either omitted or moved into an adverbial:
John likes
pie (active
voice)
Pie is liked
by John (passive
voice)
Mood/Modality
Grammatical
mood describes certainty, world-knowledge and the intent of speakers regarding
what they express. In English, mood and modality, which is the expression of
inference (epistemic modality) or conviction that something should be
done (deontic modality), are largely identical, but other languages
encode other semantic information through this category.
Sally is a
teacher
(indicative)
Sally must
be a teacher (potential)
Semantically,
the example illustrates the inference encoded in the second sentence: the
speaker is assuming that Sally is a teacher. As with other categories, the
stricter definition of mood assumes morphosyntactic encoding, as it exists in
the German subjunctive:
Er ist müde (indicative)
Es sagt,
dass er müde sei
(subjunctive)
However,
there is a strong tendency in German to avoid this kind of usage and it is rare
in spoken language:
Er sagt,
dass er müde ist (‘implied’
subjunctive)
B. Categorising
Words
Given that different categories have different
morphological and syntactic properties, it follows that we can use the
morphological and syntactic properties of a word to determine its
categorisation (i.e. what category it belongs to). The morphological properties
of a given word provide an initial rough guide to its categorial status: in
order to determine the categorial status of an individual word, we can ask
whether it has the inflectional and derivational properties of a particular
category of word. For example, we can tell that happy is an adjective by virtue of the fact that it has the
derivational properties of typical adjectives: it can take the negative prefix un- (giving rise to the negative
adjective unhappy), the
comparative/superlative suffixes -er/-est (giving rise to the forms happier/happiest), the adverbialising suffix -ly (giving rise to the adverb happily), and the nominalising suffix -ness (giving rise to the noun happiness). However, we cannot always rely entirely on
morphological clues, owing to the fact that morphology is sometimes irregular,
sometimes subject to idiosyncratic restrictions, and sometimes of limited
productivity. For example, although regular adverbs (like quickly, slowly, painfully etc.)
generally end in the derivational suffix –ly,
this is not true of irregular adverbs like fast (e.g. in He walks
fast); moreover, when they have the comparative suffix –er added to them, regular adverbs
lose their –ly suffix because
English is a monosuffixal language (in the sense of Aronoff and Fuhrhop 2002),
so that the comparative form of the adverb quickly is quicker not
*quicklier. What all of this
means is that a word belonging to a given class may have only some of the relevant morphological
properties. For example, although the adjective fat has comparative/superlative forms in -er/-est (cf. fat/fatter/fattest),
it has no negative uncounterpart
(cf. *unfat), and no adverb
counterpart in -ly (cf. *fatly). So, given the potential
problems which arise with morphological criteria, it is unwise to rely solely
on morphological evidence in determining categorial status: rather, we should
use morphological criteria in conjunction with syntactic criteria (i.e.
criteria relating to the range of positions that words can occupy within
phrases and sentences). One syntactic test which can be used to determine the
category that a particular word belongs to is that of substitution – i.e. seeing whether (in a given sentence), the word
in question can be substituted by a regular noun, verb, preposition, adjective,
or adverb etc. We can use the substitution technique to differentiate between
comparative adjectives and adverbs ending in -er, since they have identical forms. For example, in the case
of sentences like:
(14)
(a) He is better at French than
you
(b) He speaks French better than you
We find that better
can be replaced by a more+adjective
expression like more fluent in
(14a) but not (14b), and conversely that better
can be replaced by a more+adverb
expression like more fluently in
(14b) but not in (14a): cf.
(15)
(a) He is more fluent/*more fluently at French than you
(b) He speaks French more fluently/*more fluent than you
Thus, the substitution test provides us with
syntactic evidence that better is
an adjective in (14a), but an adverb in (14b). The overall conclusion to be
drawn from our discussion is that morphological evidence may sometimes be
inconclusive, and has to be checked against syntactic evidence. A useful
syntactic test which can be employed is that of substitution: e.g. if a morphologically indeterminate word can be
substituted by a regular noun wherever it occurs, then the relevant word has
the same categorial status as the substitute word which can replace it, and so
is a noun.
Word classes
One of the
oldest fundamentals of grammatical description (well over 2,000 years old, in
fact) is the division of words into groups according to their meaning and
function. These groups are called word classes, lexical categories, lexical
classes, or, in traditional grammar, parts of speech. The
traditional repertoire used to describe Indoeuropean languages like German an
English includes eight, sometimes nine word classes:
- verbs
- nouns
- pronouns
- adjectives
- adverbs
- prepositions
- conjunctions
- determiners
- interjections
A basic
division frequently made when looking at these categories is between content
words and function words (also sometimes described as lexical vs.
grammatical word classes). The distinction can be explained by examining the
meaning of words such as girl (a noun), run (a verb) and happy
(an adjective) vs. but (a conjunction) and the (an article).
While girl, run and happy point to something in the world
(a kind of person, a kind of activity, a state) but and the do
not point to anything – their meaning is purely language-internal (=
grammatical). This difference is also noticeable when looking at what new words
enter a language. Speakers come up with new nouns, verbs, adjectives and
adverbs quite frequently, but when was the last time you heard that a new
article or conjunction had been coined? Although new function words are also
introduced into languages, this does not happen as often and usually takes much
more time than the introduction of new content words. For this reason,
linguists sometimes call content words an open set, whereas function
words are considered a closed set.
Verbs
Verbs, along
with nouns, form the most basic building blocks of the world’s languages and
are generally considered to exist universally, though their form varies from
one language to another. Verbs come in two basic varieties, transitive
and intransitive, depending on the arguments they require (for
more on verb arguments, see the summary for Session 9).
John saw
Mary (see
needs an object – transitive)
John slept (sleep does not accept an
object – intransitive)
Depending on
the kind of semantic information they convey, verbs can be classified as stative
(which describe states, perceptions or cognitions) or dynamic (which
describe processes, actions or activities).
Sue plays
tennis (dynamic)
The
wildfires destroyed the forest (dynamic)
Mike likes
apple pie (stative)
It seems
like yesterday that I took this class (stative)
Stative
verbs can generally not be marked for progressive aspect (*Mike is liking
apple pie, *It is seeming like yesterday).
In English,
the main verb is inflected for past tense (typically via the -ed suffix),
progressive aspect (via the present participle, formed with the -ing
suffix) and perfect aspect (via the past participle). On the third person, verb
inflection also marks the combination of singular number and present tense (John
likes Mary).
Auxiliary
verbs play an
important role in English grammar. Be + full verb is used to indicate
passive voice (The authorities were notified by Sue) and
progressive aspect (Sue is notifying the authorities), while have
+ full verb is used to indicate perfect aspect (We have lived in this
house for over ten years). Another type of auxiliary are the modal verbs can,
could, may, might, shall, should, will, would and must which express
the speaker’s intent and different degrees of certainty about the future. They
are classified as auxiliaries because they can never act as the main verb of a
sentence.
Nouns
Often
defined as a word that describes ‘a person, place or thing’, nouns are the
quintessential content word class. English nouns as a lexical category can be
subdivided into proper nouns and common nouns, the former
pointing to specific and distinct people, places or institutions (George W.
Bush, Copenhagen, Greenpeace, The Queen of England)
while the latter describes generic entities (car, boy, word,
boredom). Those common nouns that can be grammatically marked for plural
via an allomorph of the plural morpheme (such as -s, -en, -Ø)
are called count nouns, whereas nouns which cannot be marked in this
fashion are known as mass nouns. Mass nouns lack the ability to take a
numeral article (compare five cars with *five informations) and
are usually quantified with much and less instead of many
and fewer. They should not be confused with count nouns that are
plural-marked with a zero (Ø) such as five sheep, where sheep
is clearly a countable entity.
Pronouns
The name
‘pronoun’ suggests any word that can take the place of noun in a sentence, but
the differences between pronoun subtypes are so pronounced that they are
sometimes classified as separate word classes. Types of pronouns include:
- personal pronouns
- demonstrative pronouns
- interrogative pronouns
- relative pronouns
- indefinite pronouns
Personal
pronouns such as I,
you, he, she, it and they are marked for the
grammatical category of person (see below), in other words they
identify who is speaking (first person), who is being addressed (second person)
and who is being spoken about (third person). They are also marked for gender (he
– she, him – her), number (I – we, he/she – they) and
case (I – me, he/she – him/her, John’s).
Demonstrative
pronouns refer to
things which are close by (this, these) or far away (that,
those), in relative proximal distance to the speaker. This distance must
not necessarily be literal, but can also mark the speaker’s perception or
attitude.
Interrogative
pronouns are used to
ask questions such as who, what, why, when and where
(and how, which is also considered a ‘wh-word’ in this context).
Relative
pronouns such as who,
that and which signal relative clauses (see summary for Session
9). Who and which lead dual existences as both interrogative
pronouns and relative pronouns:
Who saw him? (interrogative pronoun)
Those who
saw him waved (relative
pronoun)
Indefinite
pronouns stand for
unclear or semantically ‘empty’ referents. Examples for indefinite pronouns are
anyone, everyone, no one, anybody, nobody, somebody, something and nothing.
Note that
pronouns stand by themselves and do not modify nouns. In the utterance Whose
is this? whose and this are both pronouns, but in Whose
t-shirt is this black one? they are determiners.
Adjectives
Adjectives
describe nouns and can occur either attributively or predicatively,
depending on whether they come before or after the noun they modify (the tall
girl vs. the girl was tall). They may be gradable (big
– bigger – biggest) or non-gradable (beautiful – *beautifuller
– *beautifullest) and can usually themselves be modified with very
or too. Finally, only adjectives can be used in constructions such as It
seems ___ or He/she seems ___ .
Adverbs
Adverbs are
a very heterogeneous word class and while many of its members can be identified
via the suffix -ly (as is loudly, quickly etc) this isn’t always
a reliable indicator of adverb-hood. Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives and
other adverbs and frequently indicate when, where, or to what degree something
happens.
He quickly
opened the door (adverb
modifying verb)
John read
the unbelievably exciting novel (adverb modifying adjective)
Very soon, we will be out of marshmallows (adverb modifying adverb)
Prepositions
Prepositions
typically provide semantic information about the spatial or temporal relation
of something to something else. In English, they normally precede the noun they
modify, while in other words they follow it (postpositions), which is why the
more general name for this word class is adposition. Prepositions are
invariant in form (compare with adjectives) and constitute a relatively small
category.
Conjunctions
Conjunctions
are used to tie together clauses, either by coordination (John went
to the movies and Mary came along) or subordination (Mary
came along because she wanted to see the movie). Coordinating
conjunctions tie together elements that are categorically similar (bread
and butter, left or right, tired but happy)
while subordinating conjunctions express conditions (If you do
well on the test, let me know how you prepared for it), cause and effect (We
didn’t see the show since we didn’t go to Boston) or temporal
contrast (He took off his shoes before he entered the apartment).
Determiners
Determiners
precede nouns and in English they provide restrictive information about
possession and definiteness. Like pronouns, they can be divided into
subclasses:
- definite and indefinite articles (the, a, an)
- demonstratives (this, that, these, those)
- possessives (my, our, your, her, his, its their)
- interrogatives (which, what, whose)
Interjections
Interjections
are expressions such as hey, wow, ouch, umm, yeah and hmm which
are a vital part of every-day spoken language, but have no strictly semantic
content. They are often excluded from grammatical classification because they
primarily serve an emotive function and are in no immediate relation to the
surrounding elements. One reason why they are often overlooked is their fairly
low frequency in traditional written language, though they are popular in
instant messaging and SMS.
REFERENCES
-
Journal of Forensic Identification, Vol. 58, No. 1, January/February. 2008, pp. 6-13.
-
Schrampfer
Azar, Betty. 1989. Understanding and Using English Grammar. New Jersey.
Prentice Hall Regents, Inc.
-
Wehmeir,
Sally. 2000. Oxfords Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Unit Kingdome (UK). Oxfords University Press.
-
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/
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