Notional and functional parts of speech

Parts of speech may be divided into notional (fully lexical, self-dependent functions in the sentence): Noun, Adjective, Numeral, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb; and functional (incomplete nominative meaning, non-self-dependent functions in the sentence): Article, Preposition, Conjunction, Particle, Modal Word, Interjection.

Why is it so difficult to classify parts of speech? Each part of speech has some typical characteristics - the highly organized nucleus, but there may be some peripheral features different from the typical ones. Sledd and Gleason pointed to rather complex relations between the words of one part of speech. Admony of Leningrad puts forward the theory of grammatical field (1974). Every part of speech has the nucleus and the periphery.

The theory of semantic fields has been worked out by Trier, Vicegerber and some other linguists; and the theory of lexico-grammatical field - by the Soviet grammarians Guliga, Shendels, Bondarko, Guhman.

The boundaries between different parts of speech are not clear out:

notional - I have a ticket to the theatre, have

auxiliary - I have quitted my studies.

The most typical features of the part of speech are introduced by the categorial meaning, form, function, combinability with other parts of speech:

Noun - the catagorial meaning of substance or thingness (lawyer, milk)\

- the changeable forms of number and case;

- specific derivational suffixes;

- the substantive functions in the sentence: the subject, an object, a
substantival predicative;

- prepositional connections;

- modified by an adjective;

- determined by an article;

- combinability with a verb.

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