Self-study - 3

Bohdana Boiaryn
PhEb2-16

Task 1:
Provide a short report about contribution into linguistics made by Ch.
Fries, O.Jespersen, H. Sweet, V.V. Vinogradov
 «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
(Smirnitsky).»

 «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”
(Shcherba).»

 «The semantic criterion presupposes the generalized meaning, which is

characteristic of all the words constituting (compose) a given part of
speech. This meaning is understood as the categorical meaning of the
part of speech.
The formal criterion exposes (exhibit) 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
Task 2: Fill in the chart:

Part of Categorica Grammatical examples

speech l meaning categories
Noun Substantivi Number: People(Bill),thing(Chicago),quality(size),action(
ty | (singular and massage
thingness plural) ,idea(democracy)
Gender
(disputable)-
Masculine ,
Feminine
Case
(disputable-
genitive case,
common case)
gender,
number, case,
article
determination.
Pronou Separate  Numb Personal pronouns (e.g., he, they)
n part of er: (singular  Demonstrative pronouns (e.g., this, these)
speech and plural)
 Interrogative pronouns (e.g., which, who)
category of
case  Indefinite pronouns (e.g., none, several)
 Possessive pronouns (e.g., his, your)
 Reciprocal pronouns (e.g., each other, one
another)
category of case (he
 — him, somebody — somebody'

Adjecti Express Invariable long, longer, longest.

ve property Degrees of
comparison
Adverb A part of degrees of indicate time or place of an action (yesterday,
speech comparison here)
indicate adverbial degrees of
time place modifier, comparison (fast, faster, fastest)
and actions attribute
Article word- two articles -
morpheme the and a/an.
separate (number:sing
part of and plural)
speech No
grammatical
category
Verb Dynamical Tense( 16  Walk.
ly tenses are  Laugh.
Part of distinguished
 Cough.
 speech in Modern  Play.
expresses a English: 4  Run.
process Indefinite, 4 children play
Continuous, 4 The category of person.
Perfect and 4 1. The category of number.
Perfect 2. The category of tense.
Continuous.), 3. The category of aspect.
aspect, voice, 4. The category of temporal correlation.
mood,
correlation,
posteriority,
person,
number
 finite form or
non-finite
(Indefinite,
Gerund,
Participle
 objective and
subjective
 terminative
and non-
terminative, 
Numera (number:singu  attributive, as in two dogs, or pronominal, as in I
l lar and plural) saw two (of them).
Countable and
Uncountable
 attributive,
or pronominal