lecture 1 words and word classes

English Majors and Minors, year II, autumn 2009-2010

Lecture 1

1 Words and word classes

In grammar, we first need to identify the types of grammatical units, such as

words and phrases, before describing the internal structure of these units, and how

they combine to form larger units. Grammatical units are meaningful elements which

combine with each other in a structural pattern. Essentially, grammar is the system

which organizes and controls these form - meaning relationships.

The types of grammatical units can be graded according to size of unit, as

shown below:

(discourse)

1. sentence: If I wash up all this stuff somebody else can dry it.

2. clauses: If I wash up all this stuff / somebody else can dry it.

3. phrases: if / I / wash up / all this stuff / somebody else / can dry it.

4. words: If / I / wash / up / all / this / stuff / somebody / else / can / dry / it.

5. morphemes: If / I / wash / up / all / this / stuff / some / body / else / can / dry /

it.

In the simplest cases, a unit consists of one or more elements on the level

below:

• A clause consists of one or more phrases.

• A phrase consists of one or more words.

• A word consists of one or more morphemes.

Morphemes are parts of words, i.e. stems, prefixes, and suffixes. For

example, un + friend + ly contains three morphemes: a prefix un-, a stem friend and a

suffix -ly. The part of grammar dealing with morphemes is morphology. The part of

grammar dealing with the other types of grammatical units shown above (i.e. words,

phrases, clauses, and sentences) is known as syntax.

Grammatical units can be combined to form longer written texts or spoken

interaction, which is known as discourse. At the other extreme, language can be

analyzed in terms of its phonemes (the individual sounds which make up the language)

and graphemes (the written symbols we use to communicate in language). These

are the smallest units of speech and writing, respectively.

Anca Cehan autumn 2009 1

In this course of lectures we focus mainly on the three central types of unit:

word, phrase, and clause. (Note: in some grammars, the word 'sentence' is used in

a sense close to 'clause' in this course.)

In general, grammatical units are described in terms of four factors: their

structure, their syntactic role, their meaning, and the way they are used in discourse.

A Structure

Units can be described in terms of their internal structure: e.g. words in terms of

bases and affixes, phrases in terms of heads and modifiers, and clauses in terms of

clause elements.

B Role

Units can be described in terms of their syntactic role. For example, a phrase can

have the syntactic role of object in a clause:

In November, Susie won those tickets.

In this example, Susie is the subject, in November is an adverbial.

C Meaning

Units can be described in terms of meaning. For example, adverbs (a class of

words) can express information about time, place, and manner.

D Use (or discourse function)

Units can be further described in terms of how they behave in discourse. This can

include their use in different registers, their frequency in those registers, and the factors

which influence their use in speech or in written texts. For example, pronouns like it

and they are often used to refer back to things mentioned earlier in the same

discourse:

Isn't Cindy coming? Did she call you?

Such pronouns are more common in speech than in written texts.

1.1 What are words?

Words are generally considered to be the basic elements of language. They clearly

show up in writing, and they are the items defined in dictionaries. Yet the definition of

'word' is not simple.

Words are relatively fixed in their internal form, but they are independent in their

role in larger units. For example, insertions can usually be made between words but not

within words:

There were two bikes against the wall. There were two (large new) bikes (standing) against the (side) wall.


Notice how, in the above example, it is possible to insert words between other

words to form a longer sentence without losing clarity of meaning. On the other hand,

we could not easily interrupt a word, by inserting another word or morpheme inside

it, as in *pedal-(new)-bins.

1.2 Different senses of the word 'word'

The notion of 'word' is complex, and so it is useful to identify a number of

slightly different senses of 'word’:

• Orthographic words: These are the words that we are familiar within

written language, where they are separated by spaces. For example, They wrote us a

letter contains five distinct orthographic words.

• Grammatical words: A word falls into one grammatical word class (or 'part

of speech') or another. Thus the orthographic word leaves can be either of two

grammatical words: a verb (the present tense -s form of leave) or a noun (the plural of

leaf). This is the basic sense of 'word' for grammatical purposes.

• Lexemes: This is a set of grammatical words which share the same

basic meaning, similar forms, and the same word class. For example, leave, leaves, left,

and leaving are all members of the verb lexeme leave. This is the meaning of 'word' that is

employed in dictionaries.

Each occurrence of a word in a written or spoken text is a separate token. For

example, in the following line of conversation there are ten separate word tokens:

The birds and the deer and who knows what else.

In contrast to word tokens, word types are the different vocabulary items that

occur in a text (such as you would look up in a wordlist). Thus, in the sentence above,

there are only eight word types (the, birds, and, deer, who, knows, what, and else),

since and and the occur twice. Notice the token/ type distinction applies equally to

orthographic words, grammatical words, and lexemes.

1.3 Three major families of words

Words can be grouped into three families, according to their main function and

their grammatical behavior: lexical words, function words, and inserts.

A Lexical words

• Lexical words are the main carriers of information in a text or speech

act.


• They can be subdivided into the following word classes (or parts of

speech): nouns, lexical verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

• Of all the word families, lexical words are the most numerous, and

their number is growing all the time. In other words, they are members of open

classes.

• They often have a complex internal structure and can be composed of

several parts: e.g. unfriendliness = un + friend + li + ness.

• Lexical words can be heads of phrases: e.g. the noun completion is the

head (or main word) of the noun phrase [the completion of the task].

• They are generally the words that are stressed most in speech.

• They are generally the words that remain if a sentence is compressed

in a newspaper headline: e.g. Elderly care crisis warning.

B Function words

• Function words can be categorized in terms of word classes such as

prepositions, coordinators, auxiliary verbs, and pronouns.

• They usually indicate meaning relationships and help us to interpret

units containing lexical words, by showing how the units are related to each other.

• Function words belong to closed classes, which have a very limited and

fixed membership. For example, English has only four coordinators: and, or, but and

(rarely) nor.

• Individual function words tend to occur frequently, and in almost any type

of text.

C Inserts

• Inserts are found mainly in spoken language.

• Inserts do not form an integral part of a syntactic structure, but tend to

be inserted freely in a text.

• They are often marked off by a break in intonation in speech, or

by a punctuation mark in writing: e.g. Well, we made it.

• They generally carry emotional and discoursal meanings, such as oh, ah,

wow, used to express a speaker's emotional response to a situation, or yeah, no, okay,

used to signal a response to what has just been said.

• Inserts are generally simple in form, though they often have an

atypical pronunciation (e.g. hm, uh-huh, ugh, yeah). Examples are: Hm hm, very

good, Yeah, I will. Bye, Cheers man.


Inserts are peripheral to grammar.

1.4 Closed classes and open classes

A closed class contains a limited number of members, and new members cannot

be easily added. For example, it is not easy to create a new coordinator or a new

pronoun, as those word classes have a fairly fixed set of members.

The membership of open classes is indefinitely large, and can be readily extended

by users of the language. Lexical classes such as nouns and adjectival are open

classes. For example, we can easily form new nouns with the suffix –ee, adjectives with

-ish, verbs with -ize, and adverbs with -wise:

gossipee, franchisee, internee, retiree birdish, broadish, coquettish, heathenish bureaucratize, mythologize, periodize, solubilize crabwise, fanwise, frogwise, starwise.

In practice, the difference between open classes and closed classes is not

always clear-cut. For example, new prepositions develop out of other word classes

(e.g. regarding), and sequences of orthographic words can gradually become fixed as

a single preposition (e.g. on account of). As a result, 'closed classes' are not

completely closed, but they are extended only slowly, over centuries. In contrast, new

nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs - the open classes - are always being created.

1.5 Multi-word units, collocations, and lexical bundles

• A multi-word unit is a sequence of orthographic words which functions

like single grammatical unit: e.g. the preposition on top of or the adverb of course.

• An idiom is a multi-word unit with a meaning that cannot be

predicted from the meanings of its constituent words(e.g. fall in love or make up

(one's) mind).

However, the boundary between idioms and freely chosen combinations not

always clear.

• A collocation is the relationship between two or more independent

words which commonly appear together (or co-occur). The adjectives broad and

wide, for example, are similar in meaning, but occur in very different

collocations:

broad accent, broad agreement, broad daylight, broad grin, broad shoulders,

etc.;

wide appeal, wide area, wide experience, wide interests, wide margin, etc.


• The term lexical bundle, is used for a sequence of words which co-occur

very frequently, especially when the sequence consists of more than two words: e.g., I

don't think ..., Would you mind ... etc.

2. Lexical word classes

Lexical words

As already noted, there are four main classes of lexical words: nouns, lexical

verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. To decide what class a word belongs to, it is useful to

apply tests of three kinds:

• Morphological: what forms does a word consist of (stems and affixes)?

• Syntactic: what syntactic roles does a word play in phrases or other

higher units?

• Semantic: what type(s) of meaning does a word convey?

2.1 Nouns

Words such as book, girl, gold, information are common nouns. Words such

Sarah, Oslo, and Microsoft (names) are proper nouns. Nouns have the following

characteristics:

A Morphological characteristics

Nouns have inflectional suffixes for plural number, and for genitive case:

a book → two books; Sarah's book. Many nouns, however, are uncountable, and

cannot have a plural form (e.g. gold, information).

Nouns quite often contain more than one morpheme:

compound nouns: bomb + shell, bridge + head, clothes + line

nouns with derivational suffixes: sing+er, bright + ness, friend + ship

B Syntactic characteristics

Nouns can occur as the head of a noun phrase: [a new book about the cold war],

[the ugliest person you've ever seen]. As these examples show, common nouns such as

book and person can be modified by many kinds of words both before and after them.

Proper nouns like Sarah, on the other hand, rarely have any modifiers.

C Semantic characteristics

Nouns commonly refer to concrete, physical entities (people, objects,

substances): e.g. book, friend, iron. They can also denote abstract entities, such as

qualities and states: e.g. freedom, wish, friendship.


2.2 Lexical verbs

Words such as admit, build, choose, write are lexical verbs. They are distinct from

auxiliary verbs like can and will, which we treat as function words. The primary verbs be,

have, and do (the most common verbs in English) occur as both lexical verbs and

auxiliaries. Lexical verbs are identified as follows:


Lexical verbs have different forms signaling tense (present and past), aspect

(perfect, progressive), and voice (active and passive). Note the five forms of the verb

lexeme write in these examples:

example form

They write about their family. baseHe writes page after page about tiny details . third person present ( -s

form)They wrote about Venus being a jungle paradise . past tenseHe has written to an old journalist friend. ed-participle (or past

participle)/ wonder if you are writing any more songs? ing-participle (or present

participle)

Verb lexemes quite often have a complex form with more than one

morpheme. The following are examples of multi-word verbs and derived verbs: bring up,

rely on, look forward to, hyphenate, itemize, soften.


Lexical verbs most frequently occur on their own, as a single-word verb phrase

acting as the central part of the clause:

He [writes] page after page about tiny details.

They also occur in the final or main verb position of verb phrases: [has written] a

letter; [will be writing] tomorrow.


Lexical verbs denote actions, processes, and states of affairs that happen or exist

in time. They also define the role of human and non-human participants in actions,

processes, or states:

[You] [ate] [Chinese food].

In this example, ate expresses the action performed by you on the Chinese

food.


2.3 Adjectives

Words such as dark, heavy, eager, and guilty are adjectives. Adjectives are

identified as follows:


Many adjectives can take the inflectional suffixes -er (comparative) and -est

(superlative): dark → darker → darkest. Adjectives can be complex in morphology:

• derived adjectives (with suffixes in bold): acceptable, forgetful, influential

• compound adjectives: colour-blind, home-made, ice-cold.


Adjectives can occur as the head of an adjective phrase: [very dark], [eager to

help], [guilty of a serious crime]. Adjectives and adjective phrases are most commonly

used as modifiers preceding the head of a noun phrase, or as predicatives following

the verb in clauses:

modifier: Tomorrow could be [a sunny day]. predicative: It's nice and warm in here. It’s sunny.


Adjectives describe the qualities of people, things, and abstractions: a heavy box,

he is guilty, the situation is serious. Many adjectives are gradable. That is, they can be

compared and modified for the degree or level of the quality: heavier, very heavy,

extremely serious.

2.4 Adverbs

Words such as now, there, usually, and finally are adverbs. Adverbs are a varied

word class, with the following characteristics:


Many adverbs are formed from adjectives by adding the suffix -ly: clearly, eagerly.

Others have no such ending: however, just. A few adverbs allow comparative and superlative

forms like those for adjectives: soon→ sooner → soonest; fast→ faster → fastest.


Adverbs occur as head of adverb phrases: [very noisily], [more slowly than I had

expected]. Adverbs, with or without their own modifiers, are often used as modifiers

of an adjective or another adverb: really old, very soon. Otherwise, they can act as

adverbials in the clause: I’ll see you again soon.



As modifiers, adverbs most often express the degree of a following adjective or

adverb: totally wrong, right now. As elements of clauses (adverbials), adverbs and adverb

phrases have a wide range of meanings:

• They can modify an action, process, or state, by expressing such notions

as time, place, and manner:

So I learned German quite quickly.She was here earlier today.

• They can convey the speaker's or writer's attitude towards the information in

the rest of the clause:

Surely that child's not mine?

• They can express a connection with what was said earlier:

It must be beautiful, though.

2.5 Comparing lexical word classes in use

There are interesting similarities and contrasts in the use of the lexical word classes

across the registers. Registers can be described in terms of their style by comparing their

use of the lexical classes.

• Noun

s and verbs are clearly the most common types of word overall.

• Conversation has a high density of verbs, unlike informative writing such as

news and academic prose, which has a high density of nouns.

• Adjectives are linked to nouns, because they most frequently modify nouns.

So informative writing, which has the highest density of nouns, also has the highest

density of adjectives.

• Adverbs are linked to verbs. They typically describe circumstances

relating to actions, processes, and states that are denoted by verbs. So conversation

and fiction writing, which have the highest density of verbs, also have the highest density

of adverbs.

2.6 Borderline cases in classifying words

The categories people operate with in the real world are not clear-cut. The

category of 'furniture’, for example, includes clear cases, like tables and chairs, but also

less clear or borderline cases, such as television sets, cookers, and electric heaters.

The same is true of word classes in grammar. For example, nouns can be more

or less 'nouny'. A typical noun (e.g. boy, car) has singular, plural, and genitive forms


(e.g. boy, boys, boy's). It can be preceded by a or the, and it refers to a class of

people, things, or other entities. Yet in the class of nouns we find many words which

have only some of these 'nouny' features: e.g. research, which has no plural or genitive,

cannot be preceded by a, and refers to something abstract and intangible.

As some words may be more 'borderline' than others within a word class, it is

not surprising that the boundaries between two word classes may also be unclear.

The words ending with -ing are an example of borderline cases in lexical word

classes. Almost all of these words have a verb base, so it is easy to assume that alll

words ending in -ing are verbs. In fact, these words can belong to any of three different

classes: verb (sometimes called the ing-participle), noun, or adjective (sometimes called

participial adjective). Normally the following tests can be applied to determine the word

class:

• Verbs ending in -ing can act as the main verb of a verb phrase, and

may be followed by a noun or an adjective: e.g. is eating lunch ; becoming misty

overnight.

• Nouns ending in -ing can sometimes have a plural form (e.g. paintings),

and can usually be a head noun after a, the, or some other determiner: e.g. [the

banning of some chemicals], [her dancing]

• Adjectives ending in -ing can appear before a noun, and can also occur

after verbs such as be and become: e.g. the travelling public; it was (very) confusing.

They are very often gradable, and can be preceded by degree adverbs such as very,

so, and too: very forgiving, so interesting, too boring.

But these criteria cannot always be clearly applied. Typical borderline case

include the following:

A Nouns and verbs

The biggest problem here is the so-called naked ing-form occurring after a verb,

as in:

The matter needed checking.

In this example the final word checking could be a verb. If one added an adverb, it

would be a verb:

The matter needed checking carefully.

In other similar cases, this form could be functioning as a noun. If it were

preceded by a modifying adjective, it would clearly be a noun:

The matter needed careful checking.


Since neither of these clues is present in the original example, the word class

of checking is left unclear.

B Nouns and adjectives

The biggest problem here is where the ing-form modifies a following noun.

Compare:

noun + noun adjective + noun

living standards living creatures, dancing classes, the dancing children

working conditions a working mother

Both nouns and adjectives can modify a noun, so the only way to tell the

difference here is to apply a 'paraphrase test': i.e. to try to express the same idea in

different ways.

If a paraphrase can be found where the ing-form clearly has a noun-like

character, the construction consists of noun + noun. For example, if a

paraphrase which uses a prepositional phrase is appropriate, the construction must

consist of an ing-noun + noun: living standards = standards of living; dancing classes =

classes for dancing. In contrast, a paraphrase with a relative clause (using that, which,

or who) shows that the construction consists of ing-adjective + noun: living creatures =

creatures which are (still) living; dancing children = children who are dancing.

C Verbs and adjectives

Borderline cases between these categories occur where the ing-form follows the

verb be without other modifiers. Consider, for example:

It was embarrassing.

If the ing-word can take an object (i.e. a following noun phrase), then it is a verb:

It was embarrassing (me).

In contrast, if the ing-word is gradable and can be modified by very, it is an

adjective:

It was (very) embarrassing.

In some cases (like this one with embarrassing), both tests apply, and there is

no single correct analysis. But the second analysis (adjective) is more likely.

Word classes, like virtually all grammatical categories, have uncertain

boundaries; but this does not undermine their value as categories. Rather,

grammar needs flexibility in its categories to enable people to communicate flexibly.

In the large majority of actual instances, however, there is little ambiguity.


Bibliography:

Biber D., Conrad S., Leech G. (2002) Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English, Longman

Downing A (2006) English Grammar. A University Course, RoutledgeGreenbaum S., Quirk R. (1990) A Student’s Grammar of the English Language, LongmanHuddleston R., Pullum G., et al. (2002) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, CUP, Leech G. (1989) An A – Z of English Grammar and Usage, Nelson, Quirk, R., Greenbaum S., Leech G., Svartvik J. (1972) A Grammar of Contemporary English,

Longman Celce-Murcia M., Larsen-Freeman D. (1999) The Grammar Book, Heinle and HeinleVereş G., Cehan A., Andriescu I. (1998) A Dictionary of English Grammar, Polirom


lecture 1 words and word classes

Documents