Lecture 8: Word Classes PDF

8. Word classes Summary In this chapter we show that English words belong to one or another of the major or minor word classes. A word is assigned to a particular class according to its role in a phrase: nouns are the heads of noun phrases, verbs of the verb phrases, adjectives of the adjective...

8. Word classes Summary In this chapter we show that English words belong to one or another of the major or minor word classes. A word is assigned to a particular class according to its role in a phrase: nouns are the heads of noun phrases, verbs of the verb phrases, adjectives of the adjective phrases, adverbs of the adverb phrases, prepositions of prepositional phrases. Determiners (including the articles “a” and “the”) are obligatory with singular count nouns. Pronouns stand either for single nouns or whole noun phrases. Conjunctions connect phrases, clauses, sentences or even larger units, such as paragraphs. We outline criteria for distinguishing word-classes and draw the line between lexical words (the ones that carry meaning and can be defined in semantic, morphological and syntactic terms) and function words (the ones that have no inherent meaning and only serve grammatical purposes). We also explore the ways English words jump across word-class boundaries, which leads us to the notion of multiple word-class membership. We touch briefly on the notion of grammatical category, which will be explained thoroughly in the next chapter. Goals The goals of the chapter are to: show that English words cut across word-class boundaries illustrate the characteristics that define lexical words and function words provide examples of words with multiple memberships Chapter contents 8.1. Lexical and function words 8.1.1. Definitions and classification 8.1.2. Characteristics of lexical words 8.1.3. Characteristics of function words 8.1.4. Word-class ambiguities 8.2. Grammatical categories of word classes Further reading and video resources Exercises Key terms word-class, gradience, lexical words, function words, multiple word-class membership, nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, adverbs, determiners, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, adverbial particles, coordinators, subordinators All English words belong to one or another of the major or minor word classes. A word is assigned to a particular class according to its role in a phrase: nouns are the heads of noun phrases, verbs of the verb phrases, adjectives of the adjective phrases, adverbs of the adverb phrases, prepositions of prepositional phrases. Determiners (including the articles “a” and “the”) are obligatory with singular count nouns. Pronouns stand either for single nouns or whole noun phrases. Conjunctions connect phrases, clauses, sentences or even larger units, such as paragraphs. 8.1. Lexical and function words 8.1.1. Definitions and classification Most grammars organize the lexicon according to the grammatical behavior and main function of its words into lexical words and function words, but there is more than one classification of the word classes inside these two categories. This happens due to gradience1, an important principle in grammar that leads to boundary fuzziness, generated in morpho-syntax by the fact that word classes share characteristics among them. Biber, Conrad and Leech (2002, p. 16) identify inserts as a third class whose members occur mainly in spoken language and are peripheral to grammar. Inserts have the following characteristics: ✓ They are often marked off by a break in intonation in speech, or by a punctuation mark in writing: e.g. Well, we made it. ✓ They generally carry emotional and discoursal meanings, such as oh, ah, wow, used to express a speaker's emotional response to a situation, or yeah, no, okay, used to signal a response to what has just been said. ✓ Inserts are generally simple in form, though they often have an atypical pronunciation (e.g. hm, uh-huh, ugh, yeah). Example: Hm hm, very good! 8.1.2. Characteristics of lexical words According to Biber, Conrad and Leech (2002, pp. 15-6), lexical words, the main carriers of information in a text, are subdivided into the following word classes (or parts of speech): nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They share the following characteristics: ✓ Lexical words are members of open classes. ✓ Lexical words are the most numerous, and their number is growing continuously. ✓ They often have a complex internal structure and can be composed of several parts: e.g. unfriendliness = un +friend + li + ness. ✓ Lexical words can be heads of phrases. ✓ They are generally the words that are stressed most in speech. ✓ They are generally the words that remain if a sentence is compressed in a newspaper headline: e.g. Elderly care crisis warning. Nouns typically refer to concrete people and things as well as to abstract ideas and phenomena (John, teacher, book, land, peace, rain). Lexical/main verbs typically denote actions (work, write, play), processes (change, develop, increase) or states (sleep, fear, amaze). Adjectives typically describe qualities, characteristics, and properties of objects, people and phenomena expressed by nouns. (nice, difficult, easy) Adverbs specify the circumstances (place, time, manner) in which an action takes place (here, now, slowly). 1 Gradience = the absence of a clear-cut boundary between one category and another, for example between cup and mug in semantics Invalid source specified.. 8.1.3. Characteristics of function words Function words have little or no lexical meaning. The same Biber, Conrad and Leech (2002, p. 16) note that there are seven classes of function words: determiners, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, adverbial particles, coordinators, and subordinators. Prepositions, coordinators, auxiliary verbs, and pronouns form the major classes in this category. Their main role is to indicate meaning relationships and to facilitate the interpretation of units containing lexical words, by showing how the units are related to each other. They share the following characteristics: ✓ Function words belong to closed classes, which have a very limited and fixed membership. For example, English has only four coordinators: and, or, but and (rarely) nor. ✓ Individual function words tend to occur frequently, and in almost any type of text. Function words can be conveniently grouped according to the unit to which they are associated: grammatical unit function words clause subordinators, wh-words, the negator not, the infinitive marker to clause/ phrase coordinators verb phrase auxiliaries, modals, adverbial particles noun phrase determiners, pronouns, numerals, prepositions 8.1.4. Word-class ambiguities In English there are many words with multiple memberships, that is, they belong to more than one class. For instance, without a context, we cannot know whether progress is a noun (the rate of progress) or a verb (her ambition to progress). Other examples are presented in the table below. form n vb adj adv prep sub examples before She had never asked him that before. He was there before her. They'd started leaving before I arrived. early Steele kicked an early penalty goal. He has also kicked a penalty goal early in the match. fight There was a hell of a fight. They're too big to fight. narrow He plans to narrow his focus to certain markets. Current review programs are too narrow. as This was the beginning of his life as a cultivator. As they watched, a flash of fire appeared. outside You can open the outside window. He's gone outside. It's sitting outside your house. Under the same circumstances, only can be:  ✓ adverb: I only ate the egg on the plate. ✓ adjective: She was an only child. ✓ conjunction: I’d like to, only I’m not sure how you feel about it. That is an extreme example, as it can belong to five different classes. It can be ✓ determiner (preceding a noun): I know that girl. ✓ demonstrative pronoun: Who gave you that? ✓ conjunction (connecting two clauses): She claimed that she was innocent. ✓ relative pronoun (functioning as the subject, object, or complement of a relative clause): It's a book that I used to read once. ✓ adverb (before an adjective or adverb): I’m not that desperate. Unlike such words, homonyms share the same form, but they are not related in meaning at all. Biber, Conrad and Leech (2002, p. 35) enumerate the word classes which are not easily classified or which cut across other categories: wh-words, existential there, the negator not, the infinitive marker to, and numerals. 8.2. Grammatical categories of word classes A grammatical category is defined in English linguistics as a property of items within the grammar of a language. Examples of frequently encountered grammatical categories include tense (which may take values such as present and past), number (with values such as singular and plural), and gender (with values such as masculine, feminine and neuter) (Anon., n.d.). Grammatical categories are expressed by inflectional/grammatical morphemes that may be either free morphemes (function words) or bound affixes (inflectional suffixes). Brinton and Brinton note that the grammatical category is a linguistic, not a real-world category, and that there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between the two types of categories, though they are usually closely related. They illustrate this observation with “tense” - which is a linguistic category, versus “time” – which is a category of the world (2010, p. 114). In The Linguistic Structure of Modern English, Brinton and Brinton group the grammatical categories into two classes: number, gender, person, case, degree and definiteness are recognized as nominal categories, while tense, aspect, mood and voice are verbal categories (2010, pp. 115-32). They also note the different word classes each of the grammatical categories is relevant to: nouns: number, gender, case, (person), and definiteness; pronouns: number, gender, case, and person; adjectives and degree; some adverbs: verbs: number, person, tense, aspect, mood, and voice. prepositions and no grammatical categories are relevant to prepositions and conjunctions: conjunctions, which are invariable. Further reading and video resources Macari, Ileana Oana, English Morpho-syntax – A view from Romanian, Casa Editoriala Demiurg Plus, Iași, 2021 Parts of Speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEjtWEHXb-0 Exercises 8.1. Convert the following words into nouns by adding noun suffixes and making any other consequent changes. Some words may take more than one noun suffix. 1. perform performance 2. able ability 3. conceive conceivement 4. speak speech 5. construct construction 8.2. Construct two sentences for each of the following nouns. Use the noun in the (a) sentence as a count noun and the noun in the (b) sentence as a non-count noun. 1. beer (a) He wants to drink five beers. (b) We drank five pints of beer. 2. beauty (a) The king's daughters are true beauties. (b) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 3. sound (a) The sounds of the orchestra are making the walls shake. (b) Sound is a complex concept. 4. sugar (a) You need to watch the sugars. (b) We've seen an increase in his blood sugar. 5. paper (a) The papers have already been filed. (b) I don't have enough paper for this essay. 8.3. Supply the plural form for each of the singular nouns listed below. 1. analysis analyses 2. thief thieves 3. criterion criteria 4. deer deer 5. stimulus stimuli 8.4. Convert the following words into verbs by adding verb suffixes and making any consequent changes. Some words may take more than one verb suffix. 1. real to realize 2. hyphen to hyphenate 3. ripe to ripen 4. margin to marginalize 8.5. Convert the following words into adjectives by adding adjective suffixes and making any consequent changes. Some words may have more than one adjective suffix. 1. style stylistic 2. cycle cyclical 3. wish wishful 4. allergy allergic 5. care careful 8.6. Convert the following words into adverbs by adding - ly or - ically and making any consequent changes. 1. genetic genetically 2. realistic realistically 3. lazy lazily 4. specific specifically *8.7. Examine the sentences below. Then explain the differences in the uses of the coordinators (and and or) and the subordinator when result of the first action 1. The election was held last month, and the government was decisively defeated. 2. The election will be held in June or in July. moment in time when the action is being held 3. I intend to travel where I like and when I like. introducing adverbial phrases 8.8. Indicate whether the underlined words are subordinators or prepositions by putting ‘S’ or ‘P’ in the brackets that follow each word. While (P) he developed the theory of special relativity in (S) about 1905, Albert Einstein lived with (S) a fellow student of physics who became his first wife. Some researchers believe that (P) his wife Mileva should get at least some of the credit for (S) the theory, since (P) there are letters from (S) Einstein to her that refer to ‘our work’ and ‘our theory’. 8.9. At the end of each sentence you will find a label for a word class. Underline all the words in the sentence that belong to that word class. 1. It is remarkably difficult to define what literature is. – main verb 2. Some definitions of literature say that it is language used for making fiction. – noun 3. Other definitions say that it is language used for the purpose of pleasing aesthetically. – preposition 4. However, some critics have shown convincingly that the two definitions are necessarily connected. – adverb 8.10. English words can belong to multiple word-classes. Always remember that it is its function that determines its word-class, not its form or meaning-based definition. Assign each of the words in italics an appropriate classification in terms of function 1. They wandered about wearing small hats and waistcoats. grammatical 2. I want her to tell me everything she knows about prepositions. grammatical 3. The sky is above. lexical 4. Words are above morphemes in the hierarchy of grammatical constituents. lexical 5. Paraphrase the above sentence. lexical 6. Your blessings come from above. lexical 7. This is not a better plan. lexical 8. She always knows better. lexical 9. She is not the one to speak ill of her betters. lexical 10. I think you should better the writing style a little. lexical 11. It is but right to admit that you are in the wrong. grammatical 12. None but the smart entered the competition. lexical 13. We did our best, but we still failed. grammatical 14. She takes the down train each morning. 15. Everyone has ups and downs of life. 16. The car came rushing down the street. 17. I think you can take either of them. 18. Either dress is appropriate. 19. We must either quit or go strong. 20. She knows me well enough after so many years. 21. Their transition was even and slow. 22. Does he even know who you are? 23. Let’s even the score. 24. I will wait for him as long as it takes. 25. Give her your thanks for she is the one who helped us out. 26. I don’t like eating pasta. 27. She knows my likes and dislikes. 28. They are men of like build and stature. 29. I do not want to be like that. 30. This does not make much sense. 31. Much of it is nonsense. 32. We argue too much. 33. The great event nears. 34. I always sit near her. 35. The near side headlight is missing. 36. Draw near and watch his every move. 37. The girl next door throws a party once in a while. 38. What next? 39. I will tell you everything about my experience in my next. 40. She was pretty once. 41. Help me, at least for once. 42. I could not read it over even if I wanted to. 43. He took all the tickets in one over. 44. I’m afraid he fell over the cliff’s edge. 45. Some boy argued that we should trust our intuition more often. 46. Some say it is the end of the world as we know it. 47. Some twenty pens were sold. 48. Leave well alone. 49. She is well now. 50. Well, could I be any more specific than that? 51. Well done means almost complete. 52. Why, I thought you would wait for me! 53. Why did she come back? 54. She went into the whys and wherefores of the agency's procedures. 55. The best is yet to come. 56. He is smart, yet lazy 8.11. The sentences listed below need some adjustments. Find the missing/ extra/ items or word- order issues in: 1. Like I said, this is not a popular option among students. 2. She is considered as reliable. 3. I am really fascinated but afraid of German Shepards. 4. I look forward to see you soon. 5. I am usually prone to forget what I say. 6. Gale either writes stories at home or on the road. 7. I don’t want a banana nor an orange. 8. The reason why I am late is because I stopped to get lunch. 8.12. Determine the word-class of the following italicized items: a. An energy lull can be devastating. b. How did you accomplish so much in such little time? c. Don’t be afraid to shift the focus of the conversation. d. Ask for metrics to substantiate her claim. e. Gently interrupt and assure them that they can do it later. f. Shoot them a glance when their time is almost up. g. Condense your answers when they are too lengthy. h. The topic has been covered enough. i. We are used to talking extensively about this. j. If you let him run over, you penalize everyone else. k. Firmly but politely ask them to leave the meeting. l. The lovely lady in the bright red jacket must be your sister. m. He always uses flattering words. n. This method has the delight of a generous give-and-take. o. Share any resources available to the attendees. p. Within 24 hours after the session, make a list of dos and don’ts for the next time. q. It’s not over yet. r. You made them look like heroes and delivered on the promise. s. Feelings of dislike and disdain are of no use. t. The very word causes most of you to groan because it brings up unpleasant memories.