Word classes

A.K.A. parts of speech

Dr. Felipe Goulart

The Linguistic Structure of Modern English

Traditionally, eight word classes are recognized: noun, verb,

adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, and
interjection (or article). The reason for eight word classes is that
the first Greek grammarian recognized that number of word
classes in Classical Greek. Changes in the inventory of word
classes have subsequently been required to account for other
languages, but the number eight has remained constant.

(SIMONI & MASINI, 2014)

 Word classes: nature, typology and representation

It is well known in fact that, as early as in fourth

century B.C., Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and other
members of that composite community in which
philosophy and grammar intermingled so
brilliantly, debated exactly on which word classes
should be recognized, what their respective
rationale is, and why the lexicon is organized in
parts of speech instead of being composed of just
one type of word. In other words, their basic issues
were, mutatis mutandis, the same as ours.

(BRINTON & BRINTON, 2010)

The traditional word classes are identified by a mixed
combination of criteria, both notional (according to the meaning
of words) and formal (according to the form, function, or
distribution of words).

The notional criteria are particularly problematical. For example,

nouns are traditionally said to name people, places, and things,
but they also denote abstractions (e.g. truth, existence),
nonentities (e.g. void, vacuum), and events (e.g. picnic, race,
thunderstorm).

(SIMONI & MASINI, 2014)

Parts of speech as language universals and as language-
particular categories

The traditional, so-called notional analysis of parts of speech is given in (C1—3):

C. 1. Nouns denote persons, places or things.

2. Adjectives denote properties/qualities.
3. Verbs denote actions/events.

It has long been noted that the notional definition is inadequate because it is based on the semantic class
of lexical items rather than their morphosyntactic behaviour (cf. for example Radford 1988: 57). In fact,
words of any of the semantic classes in (C1-3) can be found as nouns (1a), adjectives (1b), or predicates
(1c—they can be outright verbs in other languages, as seen below in example (21) from Makah):

[…]

babaldis
white.man:iNDic. 1SG
'I'm a white man.'

(CROFT, 2000)
In fact, word classes are purely a matter of
language, not of the external world; they do not
correspond in a one-to-one way with things in
the real world. We tend to equate nouns with
things and verbs with events, but there are
other languages which make different
correspondences. Furthermore, the inventory of
word classes does not appear to be universal,
but differs from language to language
(Vietnamese has 12, Nootka has 2 word classes).

(SIMONI & MASINI, 2014)

However, one cannot fail to mention the
substantive skepticism of some scholars about the
very possibility of exploring the languages of the
world by using the same set of lexical categories.
For American native languages, Franz Boas for
instance stated as early as 1911 that “some of our
nominal categories either do not occur at all, or
occur only in very much reduced form. […] other
new categories may occur which are entirely
foreign to our European languages” (Boas 1911:
38).

(BRINTON & BRINTON, 2010)

This position, according to which specific categories could be needed for each
different language, has found considerable support in modern times. It
resounds for instance in the skeptical attitude of some contemporary scholars
such as Haspelmath (2007), who states that “pre-established categories don’t
exist” (see also Lazard 1992 and Croft 2000) and that word classes “cannot be
compared directly across languages” (Haspelmath 2012: 110).

(BRINTON & BRINTON, 2010)

Finally, the traditional analysis of parts of speech seems to
suggest that all parts of speech are of the same semantic and
functional importance. However, […] words fall into one of two
quite different categories: content words […] or function words
[…]
(SIMONI & MASINI, 2014)
Grape shock with no context:
 Content words vs. Function words

Content words:

• carry the primary communicative force of an utterance;

• are open or productive classes;
• are variable in form (inflected);
• fall into the major parts of speech, including nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, and some pronouns.

(SIMONI & MASINI, 2014)

In contrast, function words […]:

• carry less of the communicative force of an utterance;

• express grammatical meaning (by relating sentence parts);
• express the terms of grammatical categories (the meanings often
expressed by inflections);
• are closed or unproductive classes;
• are generally invariable in form (except demonstratives, modals, and
some pronouns);
• fall into the minor parts of speech, including prepositions, conjunctions,
interjections, particles, auxiliaries, articles, demonstratives, and some
adverbs and pronouns.

(SIMONI & MASINI, 2014)

 English Parts of Speech

This is a well-recognized distinction. See Svoboda and Kučera (2003) on

conjunctions:

“Conjunctions are form-words; they have no independent meaning of their

own, but serve to connect words, groups of words, and sentences or clauses.
This connection is brought about either by way of co-ordination or by way of
subordination.

Accordingly, conjunctions are classed as co-ordinative and subordinative.“

 Distributional test

Because of the problems associated with notional definitions of

the parts of speech, we need some formal means for
determining the word classes of a language.

(BRINTON & BRINTON, 2010)

 Distributional test

In a distributional test, words that fill the same syntactic slot, that is, fit into the
same syntactic position and function, are considered to belong to the same class
of words. In such a test, semantics is ignored as much as possible. For example,
the words large, green, exciting, and damaged belong to the same class because
they all fill the following test frame, while the other words do not:

The __________ book is on the shelf.

large *read *man

green *while *up
exciting *very *oh
damaged *that *him
(BRINTON & BRINTON, 2010)
 Inflectional test

In an inflectional test, all words that take a particular inflectional suffix are
considered to belong to the same class of words. This test depends, of course,
on the prior identification of the inflectional suffixes of a language. Thus, for
example, big takes the inflection -er, but hand, arrive, and, and him do not:

The _________ {-er, -est} book

bigger *hander *ander
biggest *arrivest *himest

(BRINTON & BRINTON, 2010)

 User beware!
Distributional and inflectional tests must be used in combination, because
words belonging to the same class may not meet all of the tests.

(BRINTON & BRINTON, 2010)

 Tests for nouns
We can consider three distributional tests for the category noun:

1. Det ______
2. A ______
3. Det A ______

All nouns except proper nouns can follow the sequence of

determiner and adjective (the big dog, two fierce dogs, the sticky
honey, *the beautiful Seattle).

(BRINTON & BRINTON, 2010)

Unknown words

Those zorls you splarded were malgy.

(From
https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/inf2a/slides2016/inf2a_L16_slides.pdf)

What are the word classes of zorls,

splarded and malgy?
Unknown words

Zorls is a noun: it comes after a determiner, and

its plural form is created through the addition of
{-s}, which is typical of nouns.

Splarded is a verb: it comes after a pronoun, and

it carries the past tense ending {-ed}, which is
typical of verbs.

Malgy is an adjective: it comes after a copula,

and it carries the ending {-y}, which is typical of
adjectives.
 References
BRINTON, Laurel J.; BRINTON, DONNA M. The linguistic structure of Modern English.
Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010.
CROFT, William. Parts of speech as language universals and as language-particular
categories. In: BOSSONG, Georg; COMRIE, Bernard (eds.). Approaches to the typology
of word classes. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000.
SIMONI, Raffaele; MASINI, Francesa (eds). Word classes: nature, typology and
representations. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company,
2014.
SVOBODA, Aleš; KUČERA, Karel. English Parts of Speech. An E-learning Text in English
Morphology. Opava : Filozoficko-přírodovědecká fakulta, 2003.