Word-level (lexical) categories
المؤلف:
PAUL R. KROEGER
المصدر:
Analyzing Grammar An Introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
P33-C3
2025-12-08
20
Word-level (lexical) categories
Traditional definitions for parts of speech are based on “notional” (i.e. semantic) properties such as the following:
(17) A NOUN is a word that names a person, place, or thing.
A VERB is a word that names an action or event.
AN ADJECTIVE is a word that describes a state.
However, these characterizations fail to identify nouns like destruction, theft, beauty, heaviness. They cannot distinguish between the verb love and the adjective fond (of), or between the noun fool and the adjective foolish. Note that there is very little semantic difference between the two sentences in (18).
(18) They are fools.
They are foolish.
In discussing the poem “Jabberwocky”, we found that we could identify the part of speech of most, if not all, of the nonsense words. Obviously, this identification could not be based on semantic factors, since those “words” actually have no meaning. Rather, we used the grammatical features of each word, specifically (i) its position in the sentence and (ii) its morphology, to guess its part of speech.
The task of assigning words to syntactic categories involves two problems, which need to be addressed separately. First, we must ask the question, “Which words belong together in the same class?” This question must be answered in terms of specific grammatical properties which may be different for each particular language. Only then can we ask the second question: “What name (or label) should we assign to a given word class?” This second question is generally answered on the basis of semantic properties which are relevant in a very large number of languages.1
Let us work through the process in more detail. First, words that share a number of grammatical characteristics are assumed to belong to the same class, while words that have distinct grammatical characteristics are assigned to different classes. For example, the noun fool and the adjective foolish can be distinguished by properties like the following:
(19) a Modification by degree adverb vs. adjective:
They are utter fools. *They are very fools.
*They are utter foolish. They are very foolish.
b Inflection for number
fool fools
foolish *foolishes
c Comparative forms
fool *fooler/*more fool
foolish more foolish
d Occurrence as subject of a clause
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
*Foolish rush in where angels fear to tread.
Thus, fool belongs to the class of words which can be modified by adjectives and inflected for number, have no comparative form, and can occur as subjects.2 Other words which share these properties, and so belong to the same class, include man, house, and tree. But foolish belongs to the class of words which can be modified by adverbs of degree (or INTENSIFIERS), do have a comparative form, cannot be inflected for number, and cannot occur as subjects. Other words which share these properties include big, green, and angry.
Once the word classes in a particular language have been defined in this way, they can be assigned a label (Noun, Verb, etc.) based on universal notional patterns. Words that exhibit all of the defining grammatical properties associated with a particular class are said to be prototypical members of that class. If there is a class whose PROTOTYPICAL members include most of the basic terms for concrete objects, e.g. dog, man, house, tree, etc., we would give that class the label NOUN. If there is a class whose prototypical members include most of the basic terms for volitional actions, e.g. run, dance, eat, cut, etc., we would give that class the label VERB.
The grammatical criteria used to identify word classes should be thought of as diagnostic features or “symptoms,” rather than definitions. A prototypical member of a given category will normally exhibit most if not all of the properties listed for that category, but we also find examples of words which exhibit only some of these features. For example, adjectives can be identified by the ability to take comparative and superlative suffixes (big, bigger, biggest; fat, fatter, fattest). But some adjectives (including those more than two syllables long) cannot be inflected in this way (beautiful, *beautifuller,*beautifullest; cf. more beautiful, most beautiful).
To summarize, the number of categories and the identifying properties of each category must be determined separately for each individual language. The labels for each category are assigned based on universal semantic criteria. Almost all languages 3 have the lexical categories Noun and Verb, but beyond that there is a significant range of difference among languages. A list of the most commonly used category labels will be given in Phrases and phrasal categories.
1. This approach to defining lexical categories was proposed by Lyons (1966).
2. It is slightly inaccurate to say that a noun can function as the subject or direct object of a verb, or as the object of a preposition. These are functions (or positions) which must be filled by a noun phrase. The identifying property of nouns is the ability to appear as the head of a phrase in these positions.
3. The Salish and Wakashan languages are often cited as exceptions to this generalization.
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