Parts of speech. Different classifications. Parts of speech
V.V. Vinogradov
Notional Parts of Speech |
Functional Parts of Speech |
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Henry Sweet
Declinable |
Indeclinable |
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Otto Jespersen
Substantives (including proper names)
Adjectives
Pronouns (including numerals and pronominal adverbs)
Verbs
Particles
adverbs,
prepositions
conjunctions
Interjections j.C. Nesfield
A Noun is a word used for naming some person or thing.
A Pronoun is a word used instead of a noun or noun-equivalent.
An Adjective is a word used to qualify a noun.
A Verb is a word used for saying something about some person or thing.
A Preposition is a word placed before a noun or noun-equivalent to show in what relation the person or thing denoted by the noun stands to something else.
A Conjunction is a word used to join words or phrases together, or one clause to another clause.
An Adverb is a word used to qualify any part of speech except a noun or pronoun.
An Interjection is a word or sound thrown into a sentence to express some feeling of the mind.
Noun, its categories.
The noun is the central lexical unit of language. It is the main nominative unit of speech. As any other part of speech, the noun can be characterised by three criteria: semantic (the meaning), morphological (the form and grammatical categories) and syntactical (functions, distribution).
Semantic features of the noun. The noun possesses the grammatical meaning of thingness, substantiality. According to different principles of classification, nouns fall into several subclasses:
According to the type of nomination they may be proper and common;
According to the form of existence they may be animate and inanimate. Animate nouns in their turn fall into human and non-human.
According to their quantitative structure nouns can be countable and uncountable.
This set of subclasses cannot be put together into one table because of the different principles of classification.
Morphological features of the noun. In accordance with the morphological structure of the stems all nouns can be classified into: simple, derived (stem + affix, affix + stem — thingness); compound (stem+ stem — armchair ) and composite (the Hague). The noun has morphological categories of number and case. Some scholars admit the existence of the category of gender.
Syntactic features of the noun. The noun can be used in the sentence in all syntactic functions but predicate. Speaking about noun combinability, we can say that it can go into right-hand and left-hand connections with practically all parts of speech. That is why practically all parts of speech but the verb can act as noun determiners. However, the most common noun determiners are considered to be articles, pronouns, numerals, adjectives and nouns themselves in the common and genitive case.
According to their morphological composition nouns can be divided into simple, derived, and compound.
Simple nouns consist of only one root-morpheme.
Derived nouns (derivatives) are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes (prefixes or suffixes).
Compound nouns consist of at least two stems. The meaning of a compound is not a mere sum of its elements. The main types of compound nouns are:
Noun stem + noun stem: e.g. airmail
Adjective stem + noun stem: e.g. blackbird
Verb stem + noun stem: e.g. pickpocket
Gerund + noun stem: e.g. dancing-hall
Noun stem + prepositions + noun stem: e.g. mother-in-law
Substantivised phrases: e.g. forget-me-not
Nouns fall under two classes: (A) proper nouns; (B) common nouns.
1 The name proper is from Lat. proprius ‘one’s own’. Hence a proper name means one’s own individual name, as distinct from a common name, that can be given to a class of individuals. The name common is from Lat. communis and means that which is shared by several things or individuals possessing some common characteristic.
A. Proper nouns are individual names given to separate persons or things. As regards their meaning proper nouns may be personal names (Mary, Peter, Shakespeare), geographical names (Moscow, London, the Caucasus), the names of the months and of the days of the week (February, Monday), names of ships, hotels, clubs etc.
A large number of nouns now proper were originally common nouns (Brown, Smith, Mason).
Proper nouns may change their meaning and become common nouns:
George went over to the table and took a sandwich and a glass of
champagne. (Aldington)
В. Common nouns are names that can be applied to any individual of a class of persons or things (e. g. man, dog, book), collections of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit (e. g. peasantry, family), materials (e. g. snow, iron, cotton) or abstract notions (e. g. kindness, development).
Thus there are different groups of common nouns: class nouns, collective nouns, nouns of material and abstract nouns.
Nouns may also be classified from another point of view: nouns denoting things (the word thing is used in a broad sense) that can be counted are called countable nouns; nouns denoting things that cannot be counted are called uncountable nouns.
1. Class nouns denote persons or things belonging to a class. They are countables and have two numbers: sinuglar and plural. They are generally used with an article.1
1 On the use of articles with class nouns see Chapter II, § 2, 3.
“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Parker, “I wasn’t in the shop above a great deal.”
(Mansfield)
He goes to the part of the town where the shops are. (Lessing)
2. Collective nouns denote a number or collection of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit.
Collective nouns fall under the following groups:
(a) nouns used only in the singular and denoting a number of things collected together and regarded as a single object: foliage, machinery.
It was not restful, that green foliage. (London)
Machinery new to the industry in Australia was introduced for preparing
land. (Agricultural Gazette)
(b) nouns which are singular in form though plural in meaning: police, poultry, cattle, people, gentry. They are usually called nouns of multitude. When the subject of the sentence is a noun of multitude the verb used as predicate is in the plural:
I had no idea the police were so devilishly prudent. (Shaw)
Unless cattle are in good condition in calving, milk production will never
reach a high level. (Agricultural Gazette)
The weather was warm and the people were sitting at their doors. (Dickens)
(c) nouns that may be both singular and plural: family, crowd, fleet, nation. We can think of a number of crowds, fleets or different nations as well as of a single crowd, fleet, etc.
A small crowd is lined up to see the guests arrive. (Shaw)
Accordingly they were soon afoot, and walking in the direction of the scene of
action, towards which crowds of people were already pouring from a variety
of quarters. (Dickens)
3. Nouns of material denote material: iron, gold, paper, tea, water. They are uncountables and are generally used without any article.1
1 On the use of articles with nouns of material see Chapter II, § 5, 6, 7.
There was a scent of honey from the lime-trees in flower. (Galsworthy)
There was coffee still in the urn. (Wells)
Nouns of material are used in the plural to denote different sorts of a given material.
...that his senior counted upon him in this enterprise, and had consigned a quantity of select wines to him... (Thackeray)
Nouns of material may turn into class nouns (thus becoming countables) when they come to express an individual object of definite shape.
C o m p a r e:
To the left were clean panes of glass. (Ch. Bronte)
“He came in here,” said the waiter looking at the light through the tumbler,
“ordered a glass of this ale.” (Dickens)
But the person in the glass made a face at her, and Miss Moss went out.
(Mansfield)
4. Abstract nouns denote some quality, state, action or idea: kindness, sadness, fight. They are usually uncountables, though some of them may be countables (e. g. idea, hour).2
2 On the use of articles with abstract nouns see Chapter II, § 8, 9, 10, 11.
Therefore when the youngsters saw that mother looked neither frightened nor
offended, they gathered new courage. (Dodge)
Accustomed to John Reed’s abuse — I never had an idea of replying to it.
(Ch. Bronte)
It’s these people with fixed ideas. (Galsworthy)
Category of number
The grammatical category of number is the linguistic representation of the objective category of quantity. The number category is realized through the opposition of two form-classes: the plural form :: the singular form.
There are different approaches to defining the category of number. Thus, some scholars believe that the category of number in English is restricted in its realization because of the dependent implicit grammatical meaning of countableness/uncountableness. The category of number is realized only within subclass of countable nouns, i.e. nouns having numeric (discrete) structure. Uncountable nouns have no category of number, for they have quantitative (indiscrete) structure. Two classes of uncountables can be distinguished: singularia tantum (only singular) and pluralia tantum (only plural). M. Blokh, however, does not exclude the singularia tantum subclass from the category of number. He calls such forms absolute singular forms comparable to the ‘common’ singular of countable nouns.
In Indo-European languages there are lots of nouns that don’t fit into the traditional definition of the category based on the notion of quantity. A word can denote one object, but it has the plural form. Or a noun can denote more than one thing, but its form is singular. There is a definition of the category of number that overcomes this inconsistency. It was worked out by prof. Isachenko. According to him, the category of number denotes marked and unmarked discreteness (not quantity). A word in a singular form denotes unmarked discreteness whether it is a book, or a sheep, or sheep. If an object is perceived as a discrete thing, it has the form of the plural number. Thus, trousers and books are perceived as discrete object whereas a flock of sheep is seen as a whole. This definition is powerful because it covers nearly all nouns while the traditional definition excludes many words.
The grammatical meaning of number may not coincide with the notional quantity: the noun in the singular does not necessarily denote one object while the plural form may be used to denote one object consisting of several parts. The singular form may denote:
oneness (individual separate object — a cat);
generalization (the meaning of the whole class — The cat is a domestic animal);
indiscreteness (HepacnneHeHHOCTb or uncountableness - money, milk).
The plural form may denote:
the existence of several objects (cats);
the inner discreteness (BHyipeHHaa pacnneHeHHOCTb, pluralia tantum,
jeans).
To sum it up, all nouns may be subdivided into three groups:
The nouns in which the opposition of explicit
discreteness/indiscreteness is expressed: cat::cats;
The nouns in which this opposition is not expressed explicitly but is
revealed by syntactical and lexical correlation in the context. There are two
groups here:
Singularia tantum. It covers different groups of nouns: proper names, abstract nouns, material nouns, collective nouns;
Pluralia tantum. It covers the names of objects consisting of several parts (jeans), names of sciences (mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.
The nouns with homogenous number forms. The number opposition here is not expressed formally but is revealed only lexically and syntactically in the context: e.g. Look! A sheep is eating grass. Look! The sheep are eating grass
The category of case.
Case expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or sentence (my sister’s coat). The category of case correlates with the objective category of possession. The case category in English is realized through the opposition: The Common Case :: The Possessive Case (sister :: sister’s). However, in modern linguistics the term “genitive case” is used instead of the “possessive case” because the meanings rendered by the “`s” sign are not only those of possession. The scope of meanings rendered by the Genitive Case is the following :
Possessive Genitive : Mary’s father – Mary has a father,
Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived,
Objective Genitive : The man’s release – The man was released,
Adverbial Genitive : Two hour’s work – X worked for two hours,
Equation Genitive : a mile’s distance – the distance is a mile,
Genitive of destination: children’s books – books for children,
Mixed Group: yesterday’s paper
Nick’s school cannot be reduced to one nucleus
John’s word
To avoid confusion with the plural, the marker of the genitive case is represented in written form with an apostrophe. This fact makes possible disengagement of –`s form from the noun to which it properly belongs. E.g.: The man I saw yesterday’s son, where -`s is appended to the whole group (the so-called group genitive). It may even follow a word which normally does not possess such a formant, as in somebody else’s book.
There is no universal point of view as to the case system in English. Different scholars stick to a different number of cases.
There are two cases. The Common one and The Genitive;
There are no cases at all, the form `s is optional because the same relations may be expressed by the ‘of-phrase’: the doctor’s arrival – the arrival of the doctor;
There are three cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Objective due to the existence of objective pronouns me, him, whom;
Case Grammar. Ch.Fillmore introduced syntactic-semantic classification of cases. They show relations in the so-called deep structure of the sentence. According to him, verbs may stand to different relations to nouns. There are 6 cases:
Agentive Case (A) John opened the door;
Instrumental case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the door;
Dative Case (D) John believed that he would win (the case of the animate being affected by the state of action identified by the verb);
Factitive Case (F) The key was damaged ( the result of the action or state identified by the verb);
Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy;
Objective case (O) John stole the book.
The Problem of Gender in English
In Indo-European languages the category of gender is presented with flexions. It is not based on sex distinction, but it is purely grammatical.
According to some language analysts (B.Ilyish, F.Palmer, and E.Morokhovskaya), nouns have no category of gender in Modern English. Prof. Ilyish states that not a single word in Modern English shows any peculiarities in its morphology due to its denoting male or female being. Thus, the words husband and wife do not show any difference in their forms due to peculiarities of their lexical meaning. The difference between such nouns as actor and actress is a purely lexical one. In other words, the category of sex should not be confused with the category of gender, because sex is an objective biological category. It correlates with gender only when sex differences of living beings are manifested in the language grammatically (e.g. tiger - tigress).
Gender distinctions in English are marked for a limited number of nouns. In present-day English there are some morphemes which present differences between masculine and feminine (waiter — waitress, widow — widower). This distinction is not grammatically universal. It is not characterized by a wide range of occurrences and by a grammatical level of abstraction. Only a limited number of words are marked as belonging to masculine, feminine or neuter. The morpheme on which the distinction between masculine and feminine is based in English is a word- building morpheme, not form-building.
Still, other scholars (M.Blokh, John Lyons) admit the existence of the category of gender. Prof. Blokh states that the existence of the category of gender in Modern English can be proved by the correlation of nouns with personal pronouns of the third person (he, she, it). Accordingly, there are three genders in English: the neuter (non-person) gender, the masculine gender, the feminine gender.
1) The theory of positional cases (J.C. Nesfield, M. Deutschbein, M. Bryant) CASES: nominative, genitive, vocative, dative and accusative, and only the genitive case is an inflexional one.
The Nominative case (subject to a verb) Rain falls.
The Genitive case. I saw John’s father.
The Vocative case (address) Are you coming, my friend?
The Dative case (indirect object to a verb) I gave John a penny.
The accusative case (direct object, and also object to a preposition) The man killed a rat.
2) The theory of prepositional cases (G. Curme)
Cases: dative case (to + noun, for + noun) and genitive case (of + noun)
3) The limited case theory (H. Sweet, O. Jespersen, A.I. Smirnitsky, L.S. Barkhudarov) Cases: nominative case (weak member) and possessive (strong member of the opposition)
4) The theory of the possessive postposition or postpositional theory (G.N. Vorontsova) According to G.N. Vorontsova, there are no cases at all and ‘s is the postpositional element, which can be transformed: somebody else’s daughter – the daughter of someone else.