Word Classes

Syntax

Syntax is how words are put together to form sentences.

There are many theories of syntax, with lots of different terminologies. We will be using the terminology used in the Grammar Survey and in Fromkin et al.

We’ll mostly concentrate on English, although we will make reference to other languages

Syntax

• Words belong to different classes or “parts-of- speech”, like noun, verb or adjective.

Let’s look at the following three groups of words:

Group 1: woman, table, dogs, morning, gardenGroup 2: walk, see, hit, write, listenGroup 3: happy, blue, circular, big

• How do we know which word belongs in which group or word class?

Notional vs Formal definitions

What is a noun?‘a noun is a word that refers to a person,

place or thing’What is a verb?‘a verb is a doing word’ or ‘a verb is a

word that refers to an event or state’What is an adjective?'adjectives are words that refer to

properties of things’

Notional vs Formal definitions

These definitions are meaning-based and are what are called notional definitions.

There are problems with notional definitions.

Problems with notional definitions

The explosion broke all the windows The thirst was unbearable Ponting took a great catch We are expecting the train’s arrival

What sort of words are explosion, thirst,catch and arrival in these sentences?

Problems with notional definitions

o We want to say that they are nouns like the words in Group 1 (woman, table, dogs, morning, garden)

o But do they refer to ‘a person, place or thing’?

an explosion is an event, not a thing thirst is a state of being, not a thingthe arrival of the train is an eventa catch could be an event, or may be a thing

Problems with notional definitions

Nouns can refer to a wide range of concepts:physical entities (table, chair, house, stone …)people (girl, uncle, daughter, student …)attributes (brightness, clarity, sadness …)mental states (confidence, love, meditation …)abstract entities (truth, individuality, ownership…)events (disappearance, arrival, explosion …)

Notional vs Formal definitions

Rather than relying on notional definitions, linguists use formal properties to decide whether a word is in a particular word class or not

Words in the same word class behave the same (are found in the same environments, have the same grammatical features).

Syntactic features

Distributional or combinatorial features – the position that a word occupies relative to the other words it occurs with.

Example:Nouns combine with words like the, a, this and

my to form what is called a noun phrase: the dog, an explosion, this class

Adjectives combine with a following noun within a noun phrase: the clever dog, a loud explosion

Morphological features

Associated grammatical categoriesSome words have variable forms which express special types of meaning or which depend on a relationship with other elements in a phrase or sentence.

Example:English nouns can get a final ‑s to show that

there’s more than one of them (the grammatical category of ‘number’) dog/dogs, walk/walks

verbs can get a final ‑ed to show that the event happened in the past (the grammatical category of ‘tense’) walk/walked, paint/painted

Morphological features

Most English pronouns have variable forms. The choice of form depends on the relationship

between the pronoun and other words: I saw him, He saw me (*Me saw he, *Him saw I)

In Latin, most nouns have variable forms: Agricola nautam vidit. The farmer saw the sailor Nauta agricolam vidit.The sailor saw the farmer.

Formal definitions

Formal definitions are less problematic than notional ones.

If a word behaves in a particular way, it belongs in the same word class as all the other words which behave in the same way.

Note:

• Some English words with the same form and similar meanings can be in different classes.

Example:

There are two words catch in English :Good cricketers always catch the ball. Ricky Ponting took a great catch.

These words have different formal properties: they catch, they caught, they are catchinga great catch, several great catches.

Another example

The students find the work difficult find is a verb

The archaeologists made several finds find is a noun

Open word classes

We can divide words into two classes - open and closed classes.

The open word classes are ‘open’ in the sense that new words can be added into these classes.

Words in open word classes are often referred to as content words.

Nouns

• Nouns make up one of the most important word classes in English.

• This class includes words like: cat, dog, house, arrival, disappearance, John, Mary, Brisbane, linguistics, university, student

Morphological property of nouns

• In English, many nouns have different forms depending on whether they refer to just one of the items, or more than one.

Examples: cat ~ cats, dog ~ dogs, horse ~ horses child ~ children, goose ~ geese

• The subclass of nouns that vary in this way are called count nouns.

• Mass nouns (sugar, snow, chalk, rice) • Proper nouns (Peter, Brisbane, Queensland)

Syntactic properties of nouns

• Nouns can occur alone in the context: DETV ____

• DETV is the abbreviation for determinative• Determinatives include words like the, a, this, these, some

Examples: the book, an apple, those elephants, some sugar

• The nouns which can occur in this context are the common nouns (mass nouns and count nouns).

• Proper nouns in English do not (usually) occur with articles a/the (*the Samantha, *a/the Brisbane)

Syntactic properties of nouns

All nouns can occur alone in the context:(DETV) ____ VERB

o The parentheses mean that what it contains is optional.

Examples: The cat smells, John smokes, Water freezes,

Doors open

Lexical verbs

• Lexical verbs make up a large open class

• There are many lexical verbs in English (which we’ll discuss in detail in week 4).

• Lexical verbs include words like go, come, take, run, walk, read, write, think, cook, eat, understand, and arrive.

Morphological property of lexical verbs

Lexical verbs have an ‑ing form, an ‑s form,

and a past tense form (at least).

Example:

the verb eat has forms eating, eats and ate

Many lexical verbs (but not all) have a form in ‑ed

(as in walked) or a form in ‑en (as in eaten).

Syntactic property of lexical verbs

Lexical verbs can occur alone in the context:MODAL NP ____

where MODAL is a type of auxiliary verb (which will be discussed shortly) like can, must, will;

and NP stands for noun phrase (which we will look at in Week 2) e.g., the book, John, some sugar, cats, a big elephant.

Syntactic property of lexical verbs

MODAL NP ____ ?

Examples: Must you go? Can he stay? Should we hyphenate? Will the horses eat? Should the students leave?

Adjectives

• Adjectives include words like big, small, large, heavy, interesting, expensive and fast

Example: a fast car, the expensive coat

Morphological properties of adjectives

• Many adjectives inflect for grade. • Most adjectives with only one or two syllables

can take the suffixes ‑er and ‑est to form the comparative (‘more’) and superlative (‘most’).

Examples: great ~ greater ~ greatest happy ~ happier ~ happiest

NOTE: Many adverbs also have this property

Morphological properties of adjectives

• Most adjectives can take the suffix ‑ly to form an adverb.

Examples: quick ~ quickly, ready ~ readily, beautiful ~ beautifully, unconstitutional

~ unconstitutionally

• The first member of these pairs is an adjective • The second is an adverb.

NOTE:• This -ly must not be confused with the -ly that forms

adjectives from nouns: man ~ manly, cost ~ costly, friend ~ friendly, love ~ lovely

Syntactic property of adjectives

Adjectives can occur alone in the context: (DETV) NOUN is ____

Nearly all adjectives (and mass nouns) can occur in this position

Examples: This car is green Peter is hungry A lion is dangerous My neighbour is happy

Syntactic property of adjectives

Most adjectives can occur in the context DETV ____ NOUN

Examples: the big elephant, a fast car, a dangerous lion

However, some nouns can also occur in this position.

Examples: the police car, the kitchen floor

A syntactic test which does distinguish adjectives from nouns is:

DETV ADJ NOUN* DETV NOUN ADJ

Examples: a beautiful baby (*a baby beautiful) the fantastic film (*the film fantastic) this yummy meal (*this meal yummy)

A noun can precede or follow another noun

DETV NOUN NOUN

Examples: A corporation law A law corporation A prayer meeting A morning prayer

Adverbs

• Adverbs are words like quickly, slowly, fortunately and fast (e.g., She ran fast).

• Degree adverbs form a subclass of adverbs which combine with adjectives or other adverbs

Examples: very, rather, extremely and quite.very nice, rather handsome, quite slowly

Morphological property of adverbs

Many adverbs have the form adjective +ly, as in happily, quickly, beautifully, amazingly

Not all words ending in -ly are adverbs; when added to a noun, -ly forms an adjective, as in costly, heavenly, manly, womanly, friendly…

Some adverbs have no distinctive ending (and no related adjective),e.g., soon, just, very, less, well, worse.

Don’t rely on the traditional formal definition that “adverbs end in –ly”,this is not always the case.

Syntactic property of adverbs

• Most adverbs can appear alone in the context:

NP VERB NP ____

Examples: The boys finished the job quickly She did the job badly/well.

OPEN WORD CLASSES

nounlexical verbadjectiveadverb

Closed word classes

Closed word classes are ‘closed’ in that they do not easily accept new members, and most of them are quite small, so that it is possible to exhaustively list all the members of the class.

Unlike with the open word classes, there is often variation in the terms and classifications used in talking about closed word classes, and different languages have different closed word classes.

Closed class words:

Pronouns Determinatives/determinerPrepositionsAuxiliary Verbs Coordinators / conjunctionsSubordinators / complementisers

Pronouns

We will talk about three different types of pronouns:personal pronouns interrogative pronounsrelative pronouns.

(Traditional grammar also talks about demonstrative

pronouns and indefinite pronouns, but we will not use

these terms.)

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns have different forms for:person (first, second, third): I, you, he/shenumber (singular, plural): I, wecase (nominative, accusative, dependent

genitive, independent genitive and reflexive): I, me, my, mine, myself

o The forms of the personal pronouns in standard English are listed on page 5 of your lecture notes 1B.

Interrogative pronouns

• Interrogative pronouns:• who, whose, whom for humans • what for non-humans

• We use these forms to ask about someone or something:

Who said that? What happened? Whose book?

Relative pronouns

• Relative pronouns are used within a noun phrase in constructions like:

the woman who took the car the woman whose book you borrowed the man whom you interviewed the tree which fell a pub where we met that time when you fainted one reason why they left

Determinatives/determiners

Determinatives usually indicate whether the speaker has a particular individual in mind or whether they assume that the addressee can – or cannot – identify what is being referred to:

the, this, each, every, a, some, any …

• The most important members of the class of determinatives are the (definite article) and a/an (indefinite article).

Syntactic property of Determinatives

• Determinatives occur as the first word in a noun phrase:

the happy boy those new books a dirty face some fast cars many new books several unhappy people various brave and hearty students

Types of Determinatives

• There are quite a few determinatives, and they can be sub-classified according to the kinds of meanings they express.

• The major determinatives are:

o Article: the, a, an The student came to class.

o Demonstrative: this, these, that, those That student came to class.

More Determinatives

Universal: all, both Both students came to class.Distributive: each, every Every student came to class.Existential: some, any Some students came to class.Cardinal numerals: one, two, three, etc. Three students came to class.

Determinatives

Disjunctive: either, neither Neither student came to class.Negative: no No student came to class.Additive: another Another student came to class.Degree: many, more, few, little Few students came to class.Sufficiency: enough, sufficient Enough students came to class.

Prepositions

Traditionally, the notional definition of prepositions has to do with space and time, and the traditional formal definition is that it occurs before a noun phrase:

in the box, on the sofa, at 3 o’clock, before dawn

Prepositions in English are morphologically invariable (that is, they do not change form). This means we’ll have to concentrate on their syntactic properties to define them.

Syntactic Properties of Prepositions

• ____ NP

He was standing outside the house The horse jumped over the fence He ran from the burning building. Joseph came after the party.

• Some prepositions can stand alone without a following NP

He was standing outside The horse jumped over Joseph came after * He ran from

Syntactic Properties of Prepositions

Some prepositions precede other prepositions:

____ P + NP

He crawled out from behind the sofa He looked over from the house She took it off of the table. (American English) She threw it out of the window. She stole it from under his nose.

Syntactic Properties of Prepositions

Most prepositions can be modified by right

Examples: He was standing RIGHT outside the house The horse jumped RIGHT over the fence He ran RIGHT from the burning building. Joseph came RIGHT after the party.

Prepositions

Prepositions can occur in a variety of contexts:

before noun phrases: I went to the shops

on their own: I went outside

before another preposition: I went out through the window

NOTE:

The Grammar Survey also classifies as preposition words which are preposed to a clause (or sentence-like element):

He arrived before/after the train had left.

Auxiliary Verbs

• Auxiliary verbs (often just called auxiliaries) occur in a sentence in addition to a lexical verb. We use them to indicate various grammatical categories, such as aspect, mood and voice. We will talk about them much more in future lectures, but they can be sub-classified as:

Modal verbs: will, would, can, could, shall, should, may, might, must Perfect auxiliary: have Progressive auxiliary: be Passive auxiliary: be Do-support auxiliary: do

Note that the verbs have and do are both auxiliaries and also lexicalverbs, depending on their use.

Coordinators

In English, we have three main coordinators:and, but and or.

These usually coordinate elements that are

grammatically alike — clauses (John got up but

he didn’t leave), noun phrases (the man or

his dog), verb phrases (he came in and sat down),

nouns (the knives and forks) ….

Subordinators/ Complementisers

• Another class of invariant words: that, for, whether, to, if.

___ CLAUSE

Examples: I know that he is here I wonder whether he knows the answer I asked Mary if she had eaten her lunch I arranged for John to stay

Further reading:

Grammar survey pp1-3.

(Chapters 3 and 5 are also relevant, but youmay not be able to understand thosechapters fully until later in the course, soyou may want to wait until then to readthem.)