CLASSIFICATION OF PARTS OF SPEECH

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1062.

I. PARTS OF SPEECH

UNIT IV

What features: common or differential are oppositions based on? Why?

What is the origin of the oppositional theory?

9. Establish a grammatical category.

10. What member: strong or weak is used in a wider range of context? Why?

11. Can you prove by means of an example that any opposition can be represented as a privative one? What demand should such an opposition meet?

12. Find examples of the oppositional reduction. State whether it is stylistically conditioned. Is it a case of neutralization or transposition?

13. What can we call grammatically idiomatic?

1. Classification of parts of speech.

2. Basic criteria.

Linguists have been studying parts of speech for more than 2000 years, still they hesitate on the point of the criteria used for classifying words into parts of speech. The difficulty lies in the fact that though languages differ there should be worked out such a system that could embrace all classes of words of different languages having different characteristics.

Traditionally they single out 7 classes of words. This system goes back to Latin and Greek. The traditional classification is based exclusively upon the lexical criteria. But the principles of the traditional approach were severely criticized.

Charles Fries puts forward the following arguments. From the traditional point of view nouns are described as names of things or persons, but adjectives also denote names of different inherent and non-inherent qualities of things, and verbs – names of actions. The fact is that any word performs its naming function.

Cf. "Unfortunately we cannot use as the starting point of our examination the traditional definitions of the parts of speech. What is a "noun," for example? The usual definition is that "a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing." But blue is the "name" of a color, as is yellow or red, and yet, in the expressions a blue tie, a yellow rose, a red dress we do not call blue and yellow and red "nouns." We do call red a noun in the sentence this red is the shade I want. Run is the "name" of an action, as is jump or arrive. Up is the " name" of a direction, as is down or across" [9, 163].

R.W. Langacker writes: "The classification of words into 'parts of speech' must be based on structurally relevant morphological criteria, and any recourse to logic or extralinguistic notions is more or less futile" [17, 315]. If we take for granted the fact that "nouns are names of matter, adjectives – words expressing permanent qualities, and verbs are words that express transient qualities" we shall fail to classify such words as теплота, доброта (Rus.) because they are nouns expressing a quality which may even be measured. The word бег (Rus.), for example, expresses an action. We speak of the height of a building or the fall of an apple quite as though these ideas were parallel to the roof of a building or the skin of an apple [19].

Besides, the basis for classification of words into parts of speech should be constituted by similar criteria.

Cf. "A large part of the difficulty here lies in the fact that the two definitions – the definition of the noumn and the definition of the adjective – are not parallel. The one for the noun, that "a noun is a name," attempts to classify the words according to their lexical meanings; the one for the adjective, that "an adjective is a word that modifies a noun or a pronoun," attempts to classify the words according to their function in a particular sentence. The basis of definition slides from meaning to function. For the purposes of adequate classification, the definitions of the various classes must consider the same kind of criteria" [9, 163].

Modern linguistics takes into account only formal characteristics of words. Henry Sweet, the author of the first scientific Grammar of the English language, differentiates between: declinable and indeclinable words. Thus, the basis for such division is morphological properties of words.

Declinable words were called parts of speech and, in their turn, were subdivided into noun-words, verb-words and adjective-words. Such words as numerals were distributed among parts of speech.

e. g. three – a noun-numeral; the third – an adjective-numeral; I – noun-pronoun, my – adjective-pronoun.

Verbals did not constitute a special group and belonged to both classes: nouns and verbs.

Indeclinable words H. Sweet called particles of speech. Here belonged adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections. The difference between parts and particles of speech does not lie in the sphere of meaning, it consists in their syntactic function. Only parts of speech can function independently. Particles of speech do not derive new words. Usually they are not stressed.

The difference between parts and particles of speech can be described as the difference between notional and semi-notional (functional) words. Y.A. Krutikov shows that notional words usually have substitutes – other words that have more general meaning and are used to replace them in some cases. Thus, pronouns are usually used to substitute nouns, adjectives, numerals and adverbs.

Later Ch. Fries examined the problem anew. He considered classes of words as functioning patterns taking into account the position of a word in a sentence, so his new classification is syntactico-distributional. Thus, he found out four notional classes of words traditionally called nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. According to this classification, for example, class 1 is built by all the words that can occupy the position of the words concert and tax in the following sentences:

e. g. Theconcert was good. The clerk remembered thetax.

Ch. Fries wanted to show that the meaning of words is not important to single out parts of speech. Words can be organized into classes if they have regular grammatical forms and positions.