1

Theoretical English Grammar

Credit - 2
 Lecture 5

Theme: The Parts of Speech

SUBTHEMES:
5.1 THE PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION AS USED BY
PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMARIANS
5.2 THE PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION AS USED BY NON-
STRUCTURAL DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMARIANS
5.3 THE PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION AS USED BY
STRUCTURAL DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMARIANS
5.4 THE CLASSIFICATION OF WORDS IN POST-STRUCTURAL
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR
 Competences:

 1. Theoretical – worldview competence:

-subject – methodological

 2. Intercultural –communicative competence:

- linguaculturological
-conceptual communicative

 3. Professional orienting competence:

- cognitive-conceptual
-informational-accumulating
-reflexive –developing

 4. Professional-specializing competence:
- notion-concept
-creative-research
- Metalanguage (terminology connected with the topic of the lecture)
Problems to be discussed
- brief history of grouping words to parts of speech
- contemporary criteria for classifying words to parts
of speech

- structural approach to the classification of words

(the doctrine of American descriptive School)

- notional and functional parts of speech

 What approaches consider the problem of the Parts of
Speech?

Classical, or
logical- Functional, Distributional,
inflectional, worked out by worked out by Complex
worked out by descriptivists structuralists
prescriptivists
 The Principles of Classification as Used by
Prescriptive Grammarians
 Prescriptive grammarians, who treated Latin as an ideal
language, described English in terms of Latin forms and Latin
grammatical constraints.

 Similar to Latin, words in English were divided into declinables

(nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, participles) and indeclinables
(adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, articles).

 The number of parts of speech varied from author to author: in

early grammars nouns and adjectives formed one part of speech;
later they came to be treated as two different parts of speech.
 The Principles of Classification as Used by Non-
Structural Descriptive Grammarians

Non-structural descriptive grammarians

adopted the system of parts of speech worked
out by prescriptivists and elaborated it further.
 The Principles of Classification as Used by Non-
Structural Descriptive Grammarians

Henry Sweet (1892), similar to his

Henry Sweet (15 September
1845 – 30 April 1912) was an
English philologist,
phonetician and grammarian
predecessors, divided words into declinable
and indeclinable.
To declinables he attributed:
noun-words (noun, noun-pronoun, noun-
numeral, infinitive, gerund),
adjective-words (adjective, adjective-
pronoun, adjective numeral, participle),
verb (finite verb),
verbals (infinitive, gerund, participle).
To indeclinables: he attributed (particles),
adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection
 The Principles of Classification as Used by Non-
Structural Descriptive Grammarians

Henry Sweet speaks of three principles of

classification: form, meaning, and function.

The division of the parts of speech into

declinable and indeclinable is a division
based on form.
Henry Sweet (15 September
1845 – 30 April 1912) was an Only within the class can we see the
English philologist,
phonetician and grammarian
operation of the principle of function.
 The Principles of Classification as Used by Non-
Structural Descriptive Grammarians

“In my opinion everything should be

kept in view, form, function and
meaning...” (O Jespersen, 1935:91).
On the basis of the three criteria, the
scholar distinguishes the following
parts of speech: substantives,
adjectives, pronouns, verbs, and
Jens Otto Harry particles (adverbs, prepositions,
Jespersen or Otto
Jespersen (1860-1943) conjunctions, interjections).
was a Danish linguist Otto Jespersen’s system is a further
who specialized in the
grammar of the English
elaboration of Henry Sweet’s system.
language
 The Principles of Classification as Used by
Structural Descriptive Grammarians

One of the noted representatives of

American structuralism, Charles Fries
(1956), rejected the traditional
principle of classification of words
into parts of speech replacing it with
the methods of distributional analysis
and substitution.
Jens Otto Harry
Jespersen or Otto The distribution of a word is the
Charles Carpenter Fries position of a word in the sentence.
(1887-1967) is an
American linguist, born in
Reading, Pennsylvania,
USA.
 The Principles of Classification as Used by
Structural Descriptive Grammarians

To classify the words of English,

Charles Fries used three sentences
called substitution frames.

Frame A
The concert was good
Jens Otto Harry
Frame B
Jespersen or Otto The clerk remembered the tax.
Charles Carpenter Fries Frame C
(1887-1967) is an
American linguist, born in The team went there.
Reading, Pennsylvania,
USA.
 The Principles of Classification as Used by
Structural Descriptive Grammarians
Class 1 words (clerk, team and tax)
Class 2words (was, remembered and
went)
Class 3 words ( good)
Class 4 words (there)
According to the scholar, these four
parts of speech contain about 67 % of
the total instances of the vocabulary.
Jens Otto Harry
Jespersen or Otto He also distinguishes 15 groups of
Charles Carpenter Fries function words set up by the same
(1887-1967) is an
American linguist, born in
process of substitution but on different
Reading, Pennsylvania, patterns.
USA.
 The Principles of Classification as Used by
Structural Descriptive Grammarians
Group A words (determiners);

Group B (modal verbs);

Group C (the negative particle “not”);

Group D (adverbs of degree);

Jens Otto Harry Group E (coordinating conjunctions);

Jespersen or Otto
Charles Carpenter Fries
Group F (prepositions);
(1887-1967) is an Group G (the auxiliary verb “to”);
American linguist, born in
Reading, Pennsylvania,
USA.
 The Principles of Classification as Used by
Structural Descriptive Grammarians

Group G (the auxiliary verb “to”);

Group H (the introductory “there”);
Group I (interrogative pronouns and
adverbs);
Group J (subordinating conjunctions);
Group K (interjections);
Group L (the words “yes” and “no”);
Jens Otto Harry Group M (the so-called attention-
Jespersen or Otto giving signals: look, say, listen);
Charles Carpenter Fries
(1887-1967) is an
Group N (the word “please”);
American linguist, born in Group O (the forms “let us”, “lets” in
Reading, Pennsylvania, request sentences).
USA.
 The Principles of Classification as Used by
Structural Descriptive Grammarians

It is obvious that in classifying words

into word-classes Charles Fries in
fact used the principle of function, or
combinability (the position of a word
Jens Otto Harry in the sentence is the syntactic function
Jespersen or Otto
Charles Carpenter Fries of word).
(1887-1967) is an
American linguist, born in
Reading, Pennsylvania,
USA.
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

In modern linguistics, parts of speech are

discriminated according to three criteria:
semantic, formal and functional.
This approach may be defined as complex.
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

The semantic criterion presupposes the grammatical meaning of

the whole class of words (general grammatical meaning).

The formal criterion reveals paradigmatic properties: relevant

grammatical categories, the form of the words, their specific
inflectional and derivational features.

The functional criterion concerns the syntactic function of words in

the sentence and their combinability.
Thus, when characterizing any part of speech we are to describe:
a) its semantics; b) its morphological features; c) its syntactic
peculiarities.
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

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 Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

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.
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

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.
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

Russian grammarians in classifying words into parts of

speech keep to different concepts;

A.I. Smirnitsky identifies three criteria.

The most important of them is the syntactic function next

comes meaning and then morphological forms of words.
In his opinion stem-building elements are of no use.
His word-groups are: Notional words
Function words
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

Notional words Function words

1. Nouns link - verbs
2. Adjectives prepositions
3. Numerals conjunctions
modifying function words
4. Pronouns (article, particle)
5. Adverbs only, even, not
6. Verbs
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

R. Khaimovich and Rogovskaya identify five criteria

1. Lexico - grammatical meaning of words
2. Lexico - grammatical morphemes (stem -
building elements)
3. Grammatical categories of words.
4. Their combinability (unilateral, bilateral)
5. Their function in a sentence.
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

R. Khaimovich and Rogovskaya’s Classification

1. Nouns 8. Modal words
2. Adjectives 9. Prepositions
3. Pronouns 10. Conjunctions
4. Numerals 11. Particles (just, yet, else, alone)

5. Verbs 12. Interjections

6. Adverbs 13. Articles
7. Adlinks (the cat. of state) 14. Response words (yes, no)
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

B. A. Ilyish distinguishes three criteria:

1. meaning; 2. form, 3. function.
The third criteria is subdivided into two:
a) the method of combining the word with other ones (it
has to deal with phrases)
b) the function in the sentence (it has to deal with sentence
structure)
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

B. A. Ilyish considers the theory of parts of speech as

essentially a part of morphology.
1. Nouns 7. Adverbs
2. Adjective 8. Prepositions
3. Pronoun 9. Conjunctions
4. Numerals 10. Particles
5. Statives (asleep, afraid) 11. Modal words
6. Verbs 12. Interjections
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

L. Barkhudarov and D. Steling classify words on the

basis of four principles.
But the important and characteristic feature of their
classification is that they do not make use of syntactic
function of words in sentences:
meaning, grammatical forms, combinability with other
words and the types of word - building (which are studied
not by grammar, but by lexicology).
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

L. Barkhudarov and D. Steling classify words on the

basis of four principles.
1. Nouns 7. Verbs
2. Articles 8. Prepositions
3. Pronouns 9. Conjunctions
4. Adjectives 10. Particles
5. Adverbs 11. Modal words
6. Numerals 12. Interjections
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

All the words are divided into two main

classes: notional words and function - words:
connectives, determinatives.
Function words are those which do not have full
lexical meaning and cannot be used as an
independent part of sentences.
According to their function these words, as has
been mentioned, are subdivided into connectives
and determinatives:
 The Classification of Words in Post-Structural
Traditional Grammar

According to their function these words, as has been

mentioned, are subdivided into connectives and
determinatives:
1. connectives form phrases as to believe in something or
as in the hall. To connectives authors refer: prepositions,
conjunctions, modal and link verbs;
2. determinatives are words which define the lexical
meaning of notional words (they either limit them, or
make them more concrete). These words include
articles and particles.
 Conclusion

The consideration of conceptions of different

grammarians shows that the problem of parts of
speech is not yet solved.
There's one point which is generally accepted:
in Modern English there are two classes of words-
notional and functional - which are rather distinct.
 Reference
1. H. Sweet. A New English Grammar. Logical and Historical. Oxford.
2. O. Jesperson. Essentials of English Grammar. Lnd., 2003
3. O. Jesperson. The Philosophy of Grammar. Lnd., 2005
4. G. Gurme. A Gramar of the English Language. N.Y., 2004
5. B. Ilyish. The Structure of Modern English. М.-Л., 2001
6. Ch. Fries. American English Grammar. N.Y., 2008
7. Ch. Fries. The Structure of English. N.Y., 2003
8. W. Francis. The Structure of American English. N.Y., 2004
9. A. Hill. Introduction to Linguistic Structures: from Sound to Sentence
in English. N. Y., 2007
10. Л. Бархударов, Д. Штелинг. Грамматика английского языка. М.,
2005
11. P. Byrd. Writing Grammar Textbooks: Theory and Practice. Lnd., 2006
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