Medieval Literature
1. Elements of Literature: Literature of Britain (Sixth Course).– USA: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1993.– P. 68–73, 84–86, 89–107.
2. Чосер Дж. Кентерберийские рассказы. – М.: ОГИЗ, 1946.–510с.
SEMINAR 2
LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL CLASSES OF WORDS
Theoretical comment
The notion of a part of speech as a lexico-grammatical class of words. Grammatically relevant properties of words - criteria for differentiating the classes of words: semantic, formal and functional criteria. The traditional classification of parts of speech. Notional and functional parts of speech in the traditional classification. Polydifferential and monodifferential classifications. Henry Sweet’s functional classification. Otto Jesperson’s classification. Ch. Fries’s syntactico-distributional classification. Field theory and its application to the classification of the parts of speech.
Practice
Match the following terms to their Ukrainian equivalents. Explain their meaning.
| lexico-grammatical classes of words -
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| notional parts of speech -
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| functional parts of speech -
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| open/closed word classes -
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| semantic criterion (categorial meaning) -
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| formal criterion -
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| functional criterion -
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| homogeneous (monodifferential) classifications -
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| heterogeneous (polidifferential) classifications -
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| field theory -
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| формальний критерій
| відкриті/закриті класи слів
| повнозначні частини мови
| семантичний критерій (категоріальне значення)
| монодиференціальні класифікації
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| функціональний критерій
| теорія поля
| неповнозначні частини мови
| лексико-граматичні розряди слів
| полідиференціальні класифікації
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2. Traditional grammars generally provide short definitions for each part of speech. The following are taken from the work of G. Curme “Parts of Speech and Accidence”, Boston:Heath, 1935. Read them and the answer the questions that follow:
(a) ‘A noun, or substantive, is a word used as a name of a living being or lifeless thing; Mary, John, horse, cow, dog; hat, house, tree, London, Chicago; virtue’
(b) ‘A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun’
(c) ‘A verb is that part of speech that predicates, assists in predication, asks a question, or expresses a command: The wind blows, He is blind, Did he do it? Hurry! (By ‘predication’ Curme evidently means assertion.)
(d) ‘An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or a pronoun, i.e. a word that is used with a noun or pronoun to describe or point out the living being or lifeless thing designated by the noun or pronoun: a little boy, that boy, this boy, a little house’
(e) ‘An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb’.
Are these definitions adequate as language-particular definitions, i.e. do they provide clear criteria that would enable one to assign words to the ‘correct’ class? The following questions can help you:
- Instead of what nouns are the pronouns used in the following sentences:
The boy said he was ill; I am ill; Nobody came; everything was destroyed; What is the new teacher like? It was John who broke the window.
- Do assertions, questions and the like involve verbs or whole sentences? Is Curme’s definition of the verb helpful in defining the verb in the following sentences:
Are you ill?(Is it the verb ‘are’ that asks a question?)
If John knows her, we’re in trouble. (Does the speaker assert in the sentence that John knows her?)
They destroyed the residue unnecessarily.
Their destruction of residue was unnecessary.
Is there anything in the definition of the verb as a word denoting an action or state that will enable us to include the ‘destroyed’ into the class of verbs and to exclude the ‘destruction’?
4. How is ‘state of being’ to be interpreted in such a way as to include verbs like ‘know’ or ‘love’ while excluding adjectives like ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘fond’?
5. If an adjective is a word that ‘describes’ what is designated by a noun or pronoun, why is it that in ‘they are fools’ the word ‘fools’ is a noun, not an adjective (like the ‘foolish’ in ‘they are foolish’).
- Let us see what Curme says about a few examples. (1) John’s book – John’s is not an adjective: it has the ‘force’ of an adjective but is ‘formally’ the genitive of the noun; (2) the great Mississippi flood (Cf. the boy actor) – Mississippi (and presumably boy) are not true adjectives but nouns used as adjectives; (3) a Shakespearian scholar – Shakespearian is a true adjective.
Is the adjective defined by Curme a a class or as a function? Does the strong association between the modifier and the adjective facilitate the confusion between the two concepts?
1. Fill in the table with the missing information from the resource box:
| APPROACHES TO CLASSIFICATIONS
| MAIN RESULTS
| CONS
| PROS
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| Traditional (polydifferential)
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| Consistent application of all the three criteria ensures the most scientifically reliable results.
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| Functional (Henry Sweet)
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| For the first time in English grammar an attempt was made to take polydifferential approach (in opposition to Latin grammars).
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| Syntactic-distributional (Charles Fries)
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| Complex (M. Blokh)
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| There are still intermediary phenomena left outside.
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Resource box:
| a) Two groups – nominative and particles. Among nominative: noun-words (noun, noun-pronoun, noun-numeral, infinitive, gerund), adjective-words (adjective, adjective-pronoun, adjective-numeral, participles), verb (finite verb, verbals – gerund, infinitive, participles). Among particles: adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection.
| b) Although the syntactic basis is consistent, the division is very complicated and confusing (the same words appear in different classes). The criteria for singling out form-classes are vague; sometimes (in description of form-classes) semantic criterion is used.
| c) The meaning of words is ignored. The position and combinability in sentences are enough to classify them into word-classes. No traditional terminology. 4 classes of words (whose functions coincide with those of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in traditional classification) and 15 form-classes. Three test frames formed the basis for analysis.
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| d) For the first time, some peculiarities of functional words were observed and described. The frequency characteristics of notional and functional classes and their proportion in the language were determined.
| e) No consistency. Although functional criterion was claimed as basic, the primary division is fulfilled on the formal principle (the ability to decline). Formal principle doesn’t work for analytical languages.
| f) Wisely combines the findings of traditional and structural approaches to achieve a better result.
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| g) Two groups – notional and functional. Notional (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and numerals) have complete nominative value, changeable, fulfill self-dependent syntactic function. Functional (conjunctions, prepositions, articles, interjections, particles, modal words) have incomplete nominative value, unchangeable, fulfill mediatory, constructional syntactic functions.
| h) The three criteria are relevant only for the subdivision of notional words, but not functional. The status of the pronouns and numerals is questionable, since they do not have any syntactic functions of their own. It is very difficult to draw rigorous borderlines between different classes of words: there are always phenomena that are indistinguishable in their status.
| i) 3 layers (supra-classes) are distinguished as to the role of words in the process of nomination. 1) “Names” (substance names = nouns, process names = verbs, primary / secondary property names = adjectives / adverbs) – open class, possess full nominative value. 2) “Pro-names” (pro-nouns, pro-adjectives, etc., broad meaning notional words) – closed set, substitutional function. 3) “Specifiers of names” – closed, functional words.
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