Lecture 3. The Theory of Grammatical Classes of Words.

Classes of words
The word classes that words fall into are called not very felicitously ‘the parts
of speech’ [Jespersen, 2006, p. 38]. Some scholars consider words as falling into two
broad categories: closed class words and open class words. The former consists of
words that are relatively stable and unchanging in the language. Closed classes of
words are pronoun /she, they/, determiner /the, a/, primary verb /be/, modal verb /can,
might/, preposition /in, of/, conjunction /and, or/ and auxiliaries /do, does/. These
words play a major part in English grammar, often corresponding to inflections in
some other languages, and they are sometimes referred to as ‘grammatical words’,
‘function words’, or ‘structure words’. They have a grammatical function as
structural markers: a determiner defines the beginning of a noun phrase, a preposition
– the beginning of a prepositional phrase, a conjunction – the beginning of a clause
[13; 41–42; 25; 32–34].
Open classes are: nouns, adjectives, full verbs, and adverbs. To these two
categories may be added: numerals /one, first/, and interjections /oh, aha/. As
openclass
words denote lexical meaning they have been called lexical or content words.
There are some words which do not fit into any of these classes: the negative particle
not and the infinite marker to.
Quirk and Greenbaum point out the ambiguity of the term word, as they are
enrolled in their classes in their ‘dictionary form’, but not as they appear in sentences
or function as constituents of phrases. When words in their grammatical forms appear
in sentences the scholars refer to them as lexical items, that are words occurring in a
dictionary, so work, works, working, worked are counted as different grammatical
forms of the word work. This distinction is necessary for certain parts of speech that
have inflections, they are nouns /book, books/, verbs /give, gives/, pronouns /he, his/,
adjectives /big, biggest/, and a few adverbs /soon, sooner/ and determiners /few,
fewer/ [18].
We assign words to their various classes according to their properties in
entering phrasal or clausal structure. For example determiners link up with nouns to
form noun phrases; pronouns can replace noun phrases. It is impossible to separate
grammatical form from semantic factors, for example compare generic /the tiger
lives/ and specific /these tigers/.
Another possible assignment is according to morphological characteristics, the
occurrence of derivational suffixes, which marks a word as a member of a particular
class. For example the suffix -ness, marks an item as a noun /friendliness/, while the
suffix -less marks an item as an adjective /helpless/. These indicators help to identify
word classes without semantic factors.
Closed-class items are ‘closed’ in the sense that they cannot normally be
extended by the creation of additional members. It is not possible for a new pronoun
to develop. So there is only a short list all the words in a closed class.
Open class items have the same grammatical properties and structural
possibilities as other members of the class (for example as other nouns or verbs), the
open class is extendible and new words can be created and tend to be rather
heterogeneous [18].
It is difficult to classify two additional classes, numerals and interjections, as
either closed or open classes. According to some scientists, numerals (the cardinal or
the ordinal), must be placed somewhere between open-class and closed-class words.
They resemble the open class as they make up infinite membership; but they
resemble the closed-class as the semantic relations among them are mutually
exclusive and defining. Interjections might be considered a closed class as they are
institutionalized in number. But they do not enter into constructions with other word
classes, and they are connected to sentences with which they may be orthographically
or phonologically associated [18].
A contrast between words is the distinction between stative and dynamic. On
the one hand nouns can be characterized naturally as ‘stative’, as they refer to entities
41
whether they are concrete /house, table/ or abstract /hope, length/. On the other hand,
verbs and adverbs can be characterized as ‘dynamic’ as verbs indicate action, activity
and temporary or changing conditions; and adverbs add a particular condition of time,
place, manner to the dynamic implication of the verb.
Verbs which may be used either dynamically or statively, for example if a verb
denotes a temporary condition, the verb phrase is dynamic, ex. ‘He’s leaving now’.
On the other hand, when we say that ‘a species of animal lives in China’, the verb is
used statively. Some verbs cannot normally be used with the progressive aspect, ex.
‘He is knowing English’ and belong to the stative category. In contrast to verbs, most
nouns and adjectives are stative as they denote a phenomena or quality that is
regarded as stable or permanent, for example ‘Jack is an engineer’. Also adjectives
can resemble verbs in referring to transitionary conditions of behavior or activity. /He
is being a nuisance – He is being naughty/.
Pronouns serve as replacements for a noun, ex. ‘The big room and the small
one’, or noun phrases, ex. ‘Their new car was damaged when it had an accident’.
There are the words that can be described as pro-forms for place, time and
other adverbials under certain circumstances, ex. ‘Jack is in London and Ben is there
too’. In formal English we find such pro-forms for adverbials, that have an important
function in modern usage to substitute with the ‘pro-verb’ do for a main verb and
whatever follows it in the clause, ex. ‘He wished they would take him seriously, but
they didn’t do so’.

1. The study of grammatical classes of words.

The words of language, depending on various formal andsemantic features, are
divided into grammatically relevant sets or classes. The traditional grammatical
classes of words are called―parts of speech‖. Since the word is distinguished not
only bygrammatical, but also by semantico- lexemic properties, some scholars (V.
Smirnitsky) refer to parts of speech as ―lexicogrammatical‖ series of words, or as
“lexico-grammaticalcategories” [12, p. 100].
Prof. M. Blokh introduced the term
“grammatical classes‖. He starts from the assumption that what
is traditionally called a part of speech is a type of word, which
grammatically differs from other types of words. [2, p. 68]
It should be noted that the traditional term ―parts of speech‖ was developed in
Ancient Greek linguistics and reflects the fact that at that time there was no
distinction between language as a system and speech, between the word as a part of
an utterance and the word as a part of lexis.
The term ―parts of speech is accepted by modern linguistics as a conventional, or
―nonexplanatory term (―name-term) to denote the lexicogrammatical
classes of words correlating with each other in the general system of language on the
basis of their grammatically relevant properties.
The system of parts of speech is historically changeable, e.g. articles, modal verbs,
statives were not recognized as separate parts of speech in Old English, though they
are recognized as such in Modern English. As a matter of fact one should recognize
that language vocabulary is not a chaotic mass of words, grammar organizes these
words into grammatical classes of words and every new lexeme, appearing in the
language, should join one of the existing classes and share the features of other
lexemes of the same class.
The theory of parts of speech is problematic and controversial, since many aspects of
it have not been agreed upon.
The most disputable issues are: 1) the principles of word discrimination; 2) the
number of parts of speech in a certain language; 3) the qualitative division of parts of
speech.

2. Contemporary criteria for classifying words into parts of speech.

The problem of word classification into parts of speech still remains one of the most
controversial problems in modern linguistics. The attitude of grammarians with
regard to parts of speech and the basis of their classification varied a good deal at
different times. Only in English grammarians have been vacillating between 3 and 13
parts of speech.
There are four approaches to the problem:
Classical (logical-inflectional)
Functional
Distributional
Complex
The classical parts of speech theory goes back to ancient times. It is based on Latin
grammar. According to the Latin classification of the parts of speech all words were
divided dichotomically into declinable and indeclinable parts of speech.
This system was reproduced in the earliest English grammars.
The first of these groups, declinable words, included nouns, pronouns,verbs and
participles, the second – indeclinable words – adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and
interjections.
The logical inflectional classification is quite successful for Latin or other languages
with developed morphology and synthetic paradigms but it cannot be applied to the
English language because the principle of declinability/indeclinability is not relevant
for analytical languages.
A new approach to the problem was introduced in the XIX
century by Henry Sweet [23, p. 77].
This approach may be defined as functional. He resorted to the functional features of
words and singled out nominative units and particles. To nominative parts of speech
belonged noun-words (noun, noun-pronoun, noun-numeral, infinitive, gerund),
adjective-words (adjective, adjective-pronoun, adjective-numeral, participles), verb
(finite verb, verbals – gerund, infinitive, participles), while adverb, preposition,
conjunction and interjection belonged to the group of particles. However, though the
criterion for classification was functional, Henry Sweet failed to break the tradition
and classified words into those having morphological forms and lacking
morphological forms, in other words, declinable and indeclinable.
A distributional approach to the parts of speech classification can be illustrated by
the classification introduced by Charles Fries. He wanted to avoid the traditional
terminology and establish a classification of words based on distributive analysis,
that is, the ability of words to combine with other words of different types. Within
this approach, the part of speech is a functioning pattern and a word belonging to the
same class should be the same only in one aspect – occupy the same position and
perform the same syntactic function in speech utterances. Charles Fries introduced
this classification. He used the method of frames (пiдстановки) e.g.:
Frame A
The concert was good.
Frame B
The clerk remembered the tax.
Frame C
The team went there.
Words that can substitute the word ―concert‖, ―clerk‖,
―team‖, ―the tax‖ (e.g. woman, food, coffee, etc.) are Class 1
words.
Class 2 words are ―was‖, ―remembered‖ and ―went‖.

Words that can take the position of ―good‖ are Class 3 words.

Words that can fill the position of ―there‖ are called Class 4
words. [19, p. 108]
It turned out that his four classes of words were practically the same as traditional
nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Whatis really valuable in Charles Fries‘
classification is his investigation of 15 groups of function words (form-
classes)because he was the first linguist to pay attention to some of their peculiarities.
The drawback of this classification is that morphological and semantic properties are
completely neglected, because words of different nature are treated as items of the
same class and vice a versa.
In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on
the basis of the three criteria: ―semantic‖, ―formal‖, and
―functional‖.
The semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of the
generalized meaning, which is characteristic of all the subset of
words constituting a given part of speech. This meaning is
understood as the ―categorial meaning of the part of speech‖. The
formal criterion provides for the exposition of the specific
46
inflexional and derivational (word-building) features of all the
lexemic subsets of a part of speech. The functional criterion
concerns the syntactic role of words in the sentence typical of a
part of speech. The said three factors of categorial characterization
of words are conventionally referred to as, respectively,
―meaning‖, ―form‖, and ―function‖.

3. A comprehensive approach to the discrimination of

parts of speech.
The complex approach to the problem of parts of speech
classification was introduced by academician L. V. Shcherba, who
proposed to discriminate parts of speech on the basis of three
criteria: semantic, formal and functional. By the semantic
criterion he understood the generalized meaning or general
grammatical meaning, which is characteristic of all the words,
constituting a given part of speech, i.e. categorial meaning of parts
of speech (e.g. the general grammatical meaning of nouns is
substance; verbs – verbiality, i.e. the ability to express actions,
processes or states; adverbs – adverbiality, i.e. the ability to
express qualities or properties of actions, processes or states;
adjectives – qualitiativeness, i.e. the ability to express qualities or
properties of substances).
Taken separately, the semantic criterion cannot be
sufficient for word class discrimination, as there are lexemes of a
part of speech, which acquire the general meaning of the other
part of speech (e.g. action – a noun, which expresses verbiality,
sleep – a noun, which expresses process, blackness – a noun,
which expresses quality). Thus, the general grammatical
categorial meaning is important for part of speech classification, it
is the intrinsic quality of a part of speech, it predetermines some
outward properties of its lexemes but it cannot play the role of a n
absolute criterion of word classification.
47
The formal criterion provides for the exposition of the
specific inflexional and derivational (word-building) features of
words of a part of speech and deals with the morphological
properties of words, which include: 1) the system of inflexional
morphemes of words, typical of a certain part of speech; 2) the
system of derivational lexico-grammatical morphemes,
characteristic of a part of speech.
Each part of speech is characterized by its grammatical
categories, manifested in the paradigms of lexemes (e.g. nouns –
have the categories of number and case; verbs – have the
categories of mood, tense, aspect, voice, person, number;
adjectives – have the category of degrees of comparison). Thus,
the paradigms of words, belonging to different parts of speech are
different and these paradigms show to what part of speech the
word belongs.
As words of different classes are also characterized by a
specific system of derivational morphemes, the presence of a
certain lexico-grammatical morpheme in the word signals its part
of speech reference. Many of these derivational morphemes are
regularly used to form the words of a part of speech, other stembuilding
elements are of little significance as distinctive features
of a part of speech because they are not systematic and may be
found within separate lexemes of a class (e.g. : food – feed;
blood-bleed; full – fill). Thus, the morphological composition or
stem- structure is one of the criteria employed for part of speech
classification but it cannot function separately in order to
classify words. Many English words of different classes consist
only of roots and have no derivational morphemes in their
structure.
The functional criterion concerns the syntactic properties
of a part of speech, which are of two kinds: combinability and
syntactic functions in the sentence. The combinability is the ability of words of a
given part of speech to be in syntactic connection
with other words in the sentence. A word has different syntactic
connections.
These connections are not equally significant for parts of
speech reference. But the connection of the noun with the verb is
less significant than its connection with the adjective. Owning to
the lexico-grammatical meaning of nouns (substance) and
prepositions (relation to substance) these two parts of speech often
form up word combinations. The article is characterized by
unilateral right-hand connections with different classes of words.
Thus, the combinability of a word, its connections in speech help
to show to what part of speech it belongs. Parts of speech perform
certain syntactic functions in the sentence: nouns – of the subject
and object, verbs – of predicates; adjectives – attributes) but the
subject may be expressed not only by nouns and nouns can
perform practically all syntactic functions. Thus, due to the little
significance of the syntactic function of a word in identifying its
class reference, this criterion is the least helpful.
None of the above mentioned criteria is sufficient to be an
absolute principle of word discrimination. Only all of them taken
together give a fully satisfactory basis for part of speech
classification. Thus, a part of speech is a set of words
characterized by identical properties: 1) general grammatical
meaning; 2) lexico-grammatical morphemes (derivational or stembuilding);
3) grammatical categories; 4) combinability; 5)
functions in the sentence. As the dominant criteria in parts of
speech classification are grammatical, it is reasonable to refer to
word classes, traditionally called ―parts of speech‖ as grammatical
word classes.
4. The notional and functional parts of speech.
In accord with the described criteria, words on the upper
level of classification 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.
The features of the noun within the identificational triad
―meaning – form – function‖ are, correspondingly, the following:
1) the categorial meaning of substance (―thingness‖); 2) the
changeable forms of number and case; the specific suffixal forms
of derivation (prefixes in English do not discriminate parts of
speech as such); 3) the substantive functions in the sentence
(subject, object, substantival predicative); prepositional
connections; modification by an adjective.
The features of the adjective: 1) the categorial meaning of
property (qualitative and relative); 2) the forms of the degrees of
comparison (for qualitative adjectives); the specific suffixal forms
of derivation; 3) adjectival functions in the sentence (attribute to a
noun, adjectival predicative).
The features of the numeral: 1) the categorial meaning of
number (cardinal and ordinal); 2) the narrow set of simple
numerals; the specific forms of composition for compound
numerals; the specific suffixal forms of derivation for ordinal
numerals; 3) the functions of numerical attribute and numerical
substantive.
The features of the pronoun: 1) the categorial meaning of
indication (deixis); 2) the narrow sets of various status with the
corresponding formal properties of categorial changeability and
word-building; 3) the substantival and adjectival functions for
different sets.
50
The features of the verb: 1) the categorial meaning of
process (presented in the two upper series of forms, respectively,
as finite process and non-finite process); 2) the forms of the verbal
categories of person, number, tense, aspect, voice, mood; the
opposition of the finite and non- finite forms; 3) the function of the
finite predicate for the finite verb; the mixed verbal – other than
verbal functions for the non-finite verb.
The features of the adverb: 1) the categorial meaning of
the secondary property, i.e. the property of process or another
property; 2) the forms of the degrees of comparison for qualitative
adverbs; the specific suffixal forms of derivation; 3) the functions
of various adverbial modifiers.
Contrasted against the notional parts of speech are words
of incomplete nominative meaning and non-self-dependent,
mediatory functions in the sentence. These are functional parts of
speech.
On the principle of ―generalised form‖ only unchangeable
words are traditionally treated under the heading of functional
parts of speech. As for their individual forms as such, they are
simply presented by the list, since the number of these words is
limited, so that they needn't be identified on any general,
operational scheme.
To the basic functional series of words in English belong
the article, the preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal
word, the interjection.
The article expresses the specific limitation of the
substantive functions.
The preposition expresses the dependencies and
interdependences of substantive referents.
The conjunction expresses connections of phenomena.
The particle unites the functional words of specifying and
limiting meaning. To this series, alongside of other specifying
51
words, should be referred verbal postpositions as functional
modifiers of verbs, etc.
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.
The interjection, occupying a detached position in the
sentence, is a signal of emotions.

5. Parts of speech subcategorisation.

Each part of speech after its identification is further
subdivided into subseries in accord with various particular
semantico- functional and formal features of the constituent words.
This subdivision is sometimes called ―subcategorisation‖ of parts
of speech.
Thus, nouns are subcategorised into proper and common,
animate and inanimate, countable and uncountable, concrete and
abstract, etc. E.g.:
Mary, Robinson, London, the Mississippi, Lake Erie – girl,
person, city, river, lake;
man, scholar, leopard, butterfly – earth, field, rose, machine;
coin/coins, floor/floors, kind/kinds – news, growth, water,
furniture;
stone, grain, mist, leaf – honesty, love, slavery, darkness.
Verbs are subcategorised into fully predicative and
partially predicative, transitive and intransitive, actional and statal,
factive and evaluative, etc. E.g.:
walk, sail, prepare, shine, blow – can, may, shall, be,
become;
52
take, put, speak, listen, see, give – live, float, stay, ache,
ripen, rain;
write, play, strike, boil, receive, ride – exist, sleep, rest,
thrive, revel, suffer;
roll, tire, begin, ensnare, build, tremble – consider,
approve, mind, desire, hate, incline.
Adjectives are subcategorised into qualitative and relative,
of constant feature and temporary feature (the latter are referred to
as ―statives‖ and identified by some scholars as a separate part of
speech under the heading of "category of state"), factive and
evaluative, etc. E.g.:
long, red, lovely, noble, comfortable – wooden, rural,
daily, subterranean, orthographical;
healthy, sickly, joyful, grievous, wry, blazing – well, ill,
glad, sorry, awry, ablaze;
tall, heavy, smooth, mental, native – kind, brave,
wonderful, wise, stupid.
The adverb, the numeral, aw
Alongside of the three-criteria principle of dividing the
words into grammatical (lexico-grammatical) classes modern
linguistics has developed another, narrower principle of wordclass
identification based on syntactic featuring of words only.
The fact is, that the three-criteria principle faces a special
difficulty in determining the part of speech status of such lexemes
as have morphological characteristics of notional words, but are
essentially distinguished from notional words by their playing the
role of grammatical mediators in phrases and sentences. Here
belong, for instance, modal verbs together with their equivalents –
suppletive fillers, auxiliary verbs, aspective verbs, intensifying
adverbs, determiner pronouns. This difficulty, consisting in the
intersection of heterogeneous properties in the established word53
classes, can evidently be overcome by recognising only one
criterion of the three as decisive.

Questions for Reflection:

1. Can the term ―parts of speech‖ be considered a suitable
one?
2. What are the existing approaches to the parts of speech
problem?
3. What does the classical approach consist in? What
principle served as the basis of classification?
4. What syntactic properties of a part of speech does the
functional criterion concerns?
5. What principle was H. Sweet‘s classification based on?
6. What methods does the structural approach rely on?
7. What principle lay in the basis of Ch. Fries‘s
classification? What were the substitution patterns? How many
classes did Ch. Fries single out? How many groups of functional
words?
8. What criteria are used by the adherents of the complex
approach? What parts of speech are traditionally singled out?
9. What are the merits and demerits of the traditional
classification of words into parts of speech?
10. What is the difference between notional classes and
function words?
11. What results of the four approaches to the parts of
speech problem coincide and what results differ?