18. Parts of Speech (Grammatical Classes of Words)

The words of language, depending on various formal and semantic features, are divided into classes. The traditional grammatical classes of words are called “parts of speech”, since the word is distinguished not only by grammatical, but also by semantico-lexemic properties, some scholars also refer to parts of speech as lexico-grammatical categories (Смирницкий).

It should be noted that the term “parts of speech” is purely traditional and conventional. This name was introduced in the grammatical teaching of Ancient Greece, where no strict differenciation was drawn between the word as a vocabulary unit and the word as a functional element of the sentence.

In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of the three criteria: “semantic, formal and functional” (Щерба).

The semantic criterion presupposes (предполагать, заключать в себя) the generalized meaning, which is characteristic of all the words constituting (составлять) a given part of speech. This meaning is understood as the categorical meaning of the part of speech.

The formal criterion exposes (выставлять на показ) the specific inflexional and derivational (word-building) features of part a part of speech.

The functional criterion concerns the syntactic role of words in the sentence, typical of a part of speech.

These three factors of categorical characterization of words are referred to as 'meaning', form and function.

The three-criteria characterization of parts of speech was developed and applied to practice in Soviet linguistics. Three names are especially notable for the elaboration of these criteria: V.V. Vinogradov in connection with the study of Russian Grammar, A.I. Smirnitskyand B.A. Ilyish in connection with their study of English Grammar.

Alongside of the three-criteria principle of dividing the words into grammatical classes modern linguistics has developed another, narrower principle based on syntactic featuring of words only.

On the material of Russian, the principle of syntactic approach to the classification of word-stock were outlined in the works of A.M. Peshkovsky. The principles of syntactic classification of English words were worked out by L. Bloomfield and his followers L. Harris and especially Ch. Fries.

Here is how Ch. Fries presents his scheme of English word-classes.

For his materials he chooses tape-recorded spontaneous conversations which last 50 hours.

The three typical sentences are:

Frames:

A. The concert was good (always).

B. The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly).

C. The team went there.

As a result he divides the words into 4 classes: class I, II, III, IV, which correspond to the traditional nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.

Thus, class I includes all words which can be used in the position of the words 'concert' (frame A), clerk and tax (frame B), team (frame C), i.e. in the position of subject and object.

Class II includes the words which have the position of the words 'was', 'remembered', 'went' in the given frames, i.e. in the position of the predicate or part of the predicate.

Class III includes the words having the position of 'good', and 'new', i.e. in the position of the predicative or attribute.

And the words of class IV are used in the position of 'there' in Frame C, i.e. of an adverbial modifier.

These classes are subdivided into subtypes.

Ch. Fries sticks to the positional approach. Thus such words as man, he, the others, another belong to class I as they can take the position before the words of class II, i.e. before the finite verb.

Besides the 4 classes, Fries finds 15 groups of function words. Following the positional approach, he includes into one and the same group the words of quite different types.

Thus, group A includes all words, which can take the position of the definite article 'the', such as: no, your, their, both, few, much, John's, our, four, twenty.

But Fries admits, that some of these words may take the position of class I in other sentences.

Thus, this division is very complicated, one and the same word may be found in different classes due to its position in the sentence. So Fries' idea, though interesting, doesn't reach its aim to create a new classification of classes of words, but his material gives interesting data concerning the distribution of words and their syntactic valency.

Today many scholars believe that it is difficult to classify English parts of speech using one criterion.

Some Soviet linguists class the English parts of speech according to a number of features.

1. Lexico-grammatical meaning: (noun - substance, adjective - property, verb - action, numeral - number, etc).

2. Lexico - grammatical morphemes: (-er, -ist, -hood - noun; -fy, -ize - verb; -ful, -less - adjective, etc).

3. Grammatical categories and paradigms.

4. Syntactic functions

5. Combinability (power to combine with other words).

In accord with the described criteria, words are divided into notional and functional, which reflects their division in the earlier grammatical tradition into changeable and unchangeable.

To the notional parts of speech of the English language belong the noun, the adjective, the numeral, the pronoun, the verb, the adverb.

To the basic functional series of words in English belong the article, the preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal word, the interjection.

The difference between them may be summed up as follows:

1) Notional parts of speech express notions and function as sentence parts (subject, object, attribute, adverbial modifier).

2) Notional parts of speech have a naming function and make a sentence by themselves: Go!

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1) Functional words (or form-words) cannot be used as parts of the sentence and cannot make a sentence by themselves.

2) Functional words have no naming function but express relations.

3) Functional words have a negative combinability but a linking or specifying function. E.g. prepositions and conjunctions are used to connect words, while particles and articles - to specify them.

Each part of speech is further subseries in accord with various particular semantico-functional and formal features of the words.

Thus, nouns are subdivided into proper and common, animate and unanimate, countable and uncountable, conctrete and abstract.

E.g. Mary-girl, man-earth, can-water, stone-honesty.

This proves that the majority of English parts of speech has a field-like structure.

The theory of grammatical fields was worked out by V.G. Admoni on the material of the German language.

The essence of this theory is as follows. Every part of speech has words, which obtain all the features of this part of speech. They are its nucleus. But there are such words which don't have all the features of this part of speech, though they belong to it.

Consequently, the field includes central and peripheral elements.

Because of the rigid word-order in the English sentence and scantiness of inflected forms, English parts of speech have developed a number of grammatical meanings and an ability to be converted.

E.g. It's better to be a has-been than a never-was.

He grows old. He grows roses.

The conversation may be written one part of speech.

She took off her glasses.

Give me a glass of water.

The person in the glass was making faces.

Don't break the glass when cleaning the window.

They are called variants of one part of speech. Because of homonymy and polysemy many notional words may have the same form as functional words.

E.g. He grows roses - He grows old.

Professor Ilyish objects to the division of words into notional and functional (formal) parts of speech. He says that prepositions and conjunctions are no less notional than nouns and verbs, as they also express some relations and connections existing independently.