The parts of speech system

Interjection

Conjunction

Verb Preposition

Adverb Pronoun

Adjective Demonstrative

R. Quirk’s approach to the problem in his

“Grammar of Contemporary English”

Another quite a significant grammar book was published in 1972. It’s A Grammar of Contemporary English compiled by four authors – Randolph Quirk, Sydney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, Jan Svartvik (Great Britain). In their classification of parts of speech they do not reject the traditional terminology and distinguish the following parts of speech:

A. Noun B. Article

Set B comprises “closed-system” items, i.e. “the sets of items are closed in the sense that they cannot normally be extended by the creation of additional members” [Quirk et al 1982: 26]. By contrast, set A comprises “open classes”. “Items belong to a class in that they have all the same grammatical properties and structural possibilities as other members of the class (that is, as other nouns or verbs or adjectives or adverbs respectively), but the class is ‘open’ in the sense that it is indefinitely extendable” [Quirk et al 1982: 27]. New items are constantly being created and no one could make an inventory of all the nouns in English (for example) and be confident that it was complete. On the other hand, grammarians warn, “the distinction between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ parts of speech must be treated cautiously” [Quirk et al 1982: 27].

6. Modern grammars of contemporary English

and the problem of parts of speech classification

The latest grammar book is Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English compiled by an international team of linguists including Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, Edward Finegan. This is an innovative comprehensive grammar published in 1999 (copyright 1999). The authors of the book divide the word stock into three major word classes according to their main functions and syntactic behaviour:

I. Lexical words are the main carriers of meaning in a text. In speech they are generally stressed. They usually remain in the information-dense language of telegrams, headlines, lecture notes, etc.:

E.g. Arriving tomorrow. Family killed in fire.

Lexical words are numerous and are members of open classes. There are 4 main classes of lexical words:

1. nouns,

2. verbs, or lexical verbs (NB! primary verbs: do, have, be behave both like lexical verbs and auxiliaries),

3. adjectives,

4. adverbs (are more heterogeneous, the borderline between adverbs and other classes is unclear).

All lexical words have morphological, syntactic and semantic characteristics.

II. Function words unlike lexical words that are the main building blocks of texts provide the mortar which binds the text together. Function words often have a wide range of meanings and serve two major roles: indicating relationships between lexical words or larger units, or indicating the way in which a lexical word or larger unit is to be interpreted.

Function words are members of closed systems. They are characteristically short and lack internal structure. In speech they are generally unstressed. They are frequent and occur in any text.

Function words are grouped according to the units they are most closely related to:

Noun phrase: determiners (this/that, a/the, my, some, many), pronouns (I, these, yours, everything, somebody), numerals, prepositions (free and bound)

Verb phrase: primary auxiliaries, modal auxiliaries, adverbial particles

Phrase / clause: coordinators, or coordinating conjunctions (and, but, nor)

Clause: subordinators, WH-words, the negator NOT, existential THERE, the infinitive marker TO.

Table 2. Typical differences between lexical words and function words (according to Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English).

FEATURES	LEXICAL WORDS	FUNCTION WORDS
1. frequency	Low	High
2. head of phrase	√	X
3. length	Long	Short
4. lexical meaning	Yes	No
5. morphology	Variable	Invariable
6. openness	Open	Closed
7. number	Large	Small
9. stress	Strong	Weak

The authors of the book set up grammatical classes as well as semantic classes and syntactic roles. They note, “the flexibility and complexity of language defy our neat classification systems”. They refer to the famous American linguist Edward Sapir who once said, “All grammars leak”. They enlarge on this image and continue in the same vein, “We must be prepared to look for similarities in terms of more-or-less rather than either-or”. Thus, they themselves admit overlap of some classes: prepositions / conjunctions (as, before, following, opposite, outside, than), prepositions / infinitive marker, adverbial particle / prepositions (up, down: They staggered up), coordinator / adverb (Nobody knew that but me), ing-forms.

III. Inserts are a relatively newly recognized category of words. They do not form an integral part of a syntactic structure, but are inserted rather freely in the text. They are often marked off by intonation, pauses, or by punctuation marks in writing. They characteristically carry emotional and interactional meanings and are especially frequent in spoken texts:

E.g. Hm, hm, very good. Cheers, man. Yeah, I will. Bye.

Inserts are generally simple in form, though often have a deviant phonological structure (e.g. hm, uhhuh, ugh, yeah).

Inserts are more marginal than lexical or function words. It can indeed be debated whether some of the forms in our conversation passage should be recognized as words. But there is no doubt that they play an important role in conversation, especially in spoken language. Inserts include:

· Interjections (Ouch, oh dear)

· Greetings, farewells (hi, bye)

· Discourse markers (right, well)

· Attention signals (hey, hey look)

· Response elicitors (OK, alright)

· Responses (Yeah, Alright)

· Hesitators (erm)

· Thanks (thank you, thanks)

· The politeness marker PLEASE

· Apologies (excuse me, sorry, pardon me)

· Expletives[49] (Oh Jesus).

Chart 3. The distribution of lexical words, function words and inserts [Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English 2000]

.

	Conversation	News
Lexical words	41 %	63 %
Function words	44 %	37 %
Inserts	15 %	-

It is of interest to mention the approach taken by the authors of Cambridge Grammar of English (2007) to the classification of words into parts of speech. It is noteworthy that Ronald Carter and Michael McCarthy make use of their predecessors’ terminological and methodological legacy. They tend to use the term word class [50] instead of the traditional part of speech. They claim that there are major and minor word classes. Major word classes include noun, determiner, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction. Interestingly, determiners include articles, pronouns and numerals. All the word classes are discussed within the framework of their respective phrases (noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, adverb phrase, prepositional phrase, determiners are studied within noun phrase). The authors also mention minor word classes such as interjections. They operate outside of the clause and the sentence structure. On the whole, words can be divided into lexical and grammatical, whereas word classes are lexical (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) and function (pronouns, determiners, modal verbs, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions and prepositions), open and closed [Cambridge Grammar 2007: 296-297, 353, 894, 929]. Since the book is designed as a guide (though comprehensive) to spoken and written English, grammar and usage combined, some of the terms the authors use lack detail or even definitions.

***

All these approaches to the classification of words into parts of speech and attempts to find the only criterion testify to the fact that the key issue of grammatical theory is still waiting for its final solution as neither the list of parts of speech nor the criteria have been worked out[51]. Nevertheless, in modern understanding the prevailing view is that a part of speech in English grammar is a syntactic category since it is mostly a syntactic position that enables us to assign this or that word to a certain part of speech. All the other criteria add to it. Since not all the words belonging to the same part of speech have all the typical grammatical categories it is expedient to single out prototypical members of the class, i.e. words that exhibit all the defining grammatical properties associated with this class [Kroeger 2006: 34-35].

Ø Recommended literature:

1. Блох М.Я. Практикум по теоретической грамматике английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 2004. – С. 86-107.

2. Иванова И.П., Бурлакова В.В., Почепцов Г.Г. Теоретическая грамматика современного английского языка. - М.: Высшая школа, 1981. – С. 14-19.

3. Иофик Л.Л., Чахоян Л.П., Поспелова А. Г. Хрестоматия по теоретической грамматике английского языка. – Л.: Просвещение, 1981. – 41-57.

4. Biber D., Johansson S., Leech G., Conrad S., Finegan E. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. – Longman: Pearson Education Limited, 2000. – P. 55-94.

5. Quirk R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Svartvik J. A University Grammar of English / ed. and abbreviated by I.P. Verkhovskaya. – M.: Vysšaja škola, 1982. – P. 25-28.

6. Valeika L., Buitkiené J. An Introduction Course in Theoretical English Grammar. – Vilnius: Vilnius Pedagogical University, 2003. – P. 36-41.

Ø Supplementary literature:

1. Иртеньева Н.Ф., Барсова О.М., Блох М.Я., Шапкин А.П. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка (Синтаксис). – М.: Высшая школа, 1969. – С. 56-57.

2. Хлебникова И.Б. Основы английской морфологии. – М.: «ЧеРо», 2001. – С. 23-27.

3. Biber D., Johansson S., Leech G., Conrad S., Finegan E. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. – Longman: Pearson Education Limited, 2000.

4. Carter R., McCarthy M.Cambridge Grammar of English. A Comprehensive Guide. Spoken and Written English. Grammar and Usage. – Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007.

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