6. The Modal Word

The modal word, occupying in the sentence a more pronounced or less

pronounced detached position, expresses the attitude of the speaker to the reflected

situation and its parts. Here belong the functional words of probability (probably,

perhaps, etc.), of qualitative evaluation (fortunately, unfortunately, luckily, etc.),

and also of affirmation and negation.

Modal words stand in a special relation to the sentence. They are not

sentence members, since giving an evaluation of the entire situation presented in

the sentence, they stand on the outside. For instance, in the sentence Perhaps,

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dimly, she saw the picture of a man walking up a road (Christie) the modal word

perhaps is not a sentence member, but if we remove it, the meaning of the

utterance will change – it will be just a statement of the fact.

Academician Shcherba states that there are some words that do not belong to

any part of speech. Prof. Ilyish regards the words yes, no and please as standing

outside the part of speech system. This point of view is also supported by Prof.

Smirnitsky.

8. Notional and functional words.

Traditionally, all parts of speech are subdivided on the upper level of classification into notional words and functional words. Notional words, which traditionally include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and numerals, have complete nominative meanings, are in most cases changeable and fulfill self-dependent syntactic functions in the sentence. The noun, for example, as a part of speech, is traditionally characterized by 1) the categorial meaning of substance (“thingness”), 2) a specific set of word-building affixes, the grammatical categories of number, case and article determination, prepositional connections and modification by an adjective, and 3) the substantive functions of subject, object or predicative in the sentence. In the same way, all the other notional parts of speech are described. Functional words, which include conjunctions, prepositions, articles, interjections, particles, and modal words, have incomplete nominative value, are unchangeable and fulfill mediatory, constructional syntactic functions.

In accordance with the said criteria, we can classify the words of the English

language into notional and functional. To the notional parts of speech belong the

noun, the adjective, the numeral, the verb, and the adverb. To the functional parts

of speech belong the article, the pronoun, the preposition, the conjunction, the

particle, the modal words, and the interjection. The notional parts of speech present

open classes while the functional parts of speech present closed classes, i.e. the

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number of items constituting the notional word-classes is not limited while the

number of items constituting the functional word-classes is limited and can be

given by the list.

The division of language units into notion and function words reveals the

interrelation of lexical and grammatical types of meaning. In notional words the

lexical meaning is predominant. In function words the grammatical meaning

dominates over the lexical one. However, in actual speech the border line between

notional and function words is not always clear cut. Some notional words develop

the meanings peculiar to function words - e.g. semi-notional words – to turn, to

get, etc.

Notional words constitute the bulk of the existing word stock while function

words constitute a smaller group of words. Although the number of function words

is limited (there are only about 50 of them in Modern English), they are the most

frequently used units.

It will be obvious that the system of English parts of speech as presented

here is not the only one possible. All depends on which feature we want to base

our classification. So, for instance, if the classifying criterion is the variability of a

form, we shall have to unite prepositions, conjunctions, interjections and particles

into one class (cf. H. Sweet’s and O. Jespersen’s classifications). If we classify

words in accordance with the criterion of meaning, we shall distinguish only four

word-classes: nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Besides, linguists do not agree

on the number of features needed to distinguish a part of speech. So, for instance,

besides the traditional parts of speech, some linguists distinguish the stative and

response words.