Different approaches to the classification of words

All the words of a language fall into some lexico-grammatical classes traditionally called parts of speech. But in Chinese there are no parts of speech. Any monosyllable may be any part of speech. Strict word order helps to solve the problem of parts of speech.

The attitude of different linguists with regard to parts of speech and the basis for their classification varies a great deal:

I. The only criterion of their classification should be the morphological form of words.

Sweet (the author of the first scientific grammar of English) divided the parts of speech into 2 main groups:

1. declinables (noun, adjective, verb);

2. indeclinables (adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection);

But: acquittals_ - milk^ bigger, biggest, lexemic^ defended, cut_. One and the same part of speech belongs to different classes (acquittals ~ to declinables, milk — to indeclinables, etc.).

II. The classification is based upon the syntactical functioning of the words
(Sweet):

Noun-words include nouns, noun-pronouns, noun-numerals, infinitive, gerund;

Adjective-words: adjectives, adjective-pronouns, adjective-numerals, participles;

Verb-words: finite forms of the verb, verbals.

Infinitive and gerund belong both to noun-words and to verb-words. Adverbs are parts of the sentence and they are united with conjunctions, prepositions and interjections (but they are not parts of the sentence) into one group.

III. The classification is based on relations among words. Yespersen (the author
of Essentials of English Grammar. L., 1933; "The Philosophy of Grammar", L.,
1968) put forward the theory of three ranks: a furiously barking dog: "dog" - a
primary, head word; "barking" - a secondary word, immediately determining the
primary; "furiously" - a tertiary word, dependent on the secondary.

But this classification is based on the relations among words in units larger than a word, i.e. in a phrase (phrase is a syntactic unit).

IV. The system of classes is based on the position of words in the sentence
(Ch.Fries "The Structure of English"):

Group A	Class I	Class II	Class III	ClassIV
The	concert	was	good	there
Their	walking	seemed	to start	from the beginning
John's	to have breakfast		in the hall	for her
This	she/it		over
One	others		at 2 o'clock

There were 4 classes and 15 groups in his system. Different words belonging to different lexico-grammatical classes may be used in one the same position in the sentence. One and the same word may be in different classes and in different groups.

V. The classification is based on form and word order (G.Gleason, the author of "An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics, 1965):

1. With form markers (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs);

2. Without them.

According to this theory "beautiful" belongs to the second class as it has no inflexions -er, -est, and "easy" - to the first class (easier, easi est). Thus, one and

the same part of speech may belong to different lexico-grammatical classes. G.Sledd ("A Short Introduction to English Grammar", 1956) defines inflexional and positional classes (nominals, verbals, adjectivals, adverbials, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, etc.) Interrogative pronouns are united into one separate class (due to their lexical meaning). Both Gleason and Sledd draw much attention to word building suffixes as markers of parts of speech and the heterogeneity of features of some members in the lexico-grammatical class.

All attempts of establishing the classification based on one principal ended in failure.

9. Scerba's classification of words.

VI. The classification based on lexical meaning, morphological form and syntactic function (L.Scerba).

The term "parts of speech" was introduced in the grammatical teaching of ancient Greece when language and speech were not differentiated and there was no concept of sentence yet.

The semantic criterion: the generalized meaning of the words belonging to a given part of speech, i.e. the categorial meaning of the part of speech.

The formal criterion: the specific inflexional and derivational features of the words belonging to a given part of speech.

The functional criterion: the syntactic role of words in the sentence typical of a given part of speech.

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