Word Classes. Syntax Syntax is how words are put together to form sentences. There are many...
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Transcript of Word Classes. Syntax Syntax is how words are put together to form sentences. There are many...
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.)