Word Class 4

Ministry of Higher Education and
Scientific Research
University of Kerbala
College of Education
English of Department
Word class
Prepared by:
Fatima Hassan
Supervised by:
Asst. Prof. Dr. Muayyad Omran
2022
Parts of speech (word class)
Every word belongs to a WORD CLASS, such as noun, verb, adjective,
article, conjunction, etc. Other names for word class are „category‟ or „part
of speech‟. (Nigel, 2005:11)
In traditional grammar, word classes are called “parts of speech.”Every
language has at least two major word classes – nouns and verbs. Two other
major classes adjective and adverb and also has smaller, or “minor” word
classes such as conjunctions, particles, and adpositions (Thomas E.
Payne:93).
Parts of speech tell us how a word is going to function in the sentence. We
can substitute various words that are of the type noun for the second word in
the sentence:
a) The man loved peanut butter cookies.
b) The puppy loved peanut butter cookies.
c) The king loved peanut butter cookies.
However, we cannot substitute words that aren‟t nouns:
a) *The green loved peanut butter cookies.
b) *The in loved peanut butter cookies.
c) *The sing loved peanut butter cookies.
IDENTIFYING WORD CLASSES
How can we tell that words belong to different classes?
It is easy to demonstrate that words in a language fall into different classes.
For example, only certain single words can fill the gap in (1) to complete the
sentence:
(1) Kim wanted to ____ .
The gap can be filled as in (2), but not as in (3):
(2) Kim wanted to leave/browse/relax/sleep.
(3) a. *Kim wanted to departure/browser/relaxation.
b. *Kim wanted to underneath/overhead.
c. *Kim wanted to energetic/thoughtful/green/sad.
The words that can fill the gap are all verbs. Verbs appear in a variety of
other positions too, but if we have to find one word to complete (1), it must
be a verb. So the words that are impossible in (3) are not verbs: they must
belong to other word classes. (Tallerman,2011:32)
DETERMINING PART OF SPEECH
According to Paul R. Kroeger (2005:33), discusses that, traditional
definitions for parts of speech are based on “notional” (i.e. semantic)
properties such as the following:
-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.
On the other hand Carnie Andrew (2013, pp.45-6) agues this definition
by two criteria:
1. The Problem of Traditional Definitions
If you were taught any grammar in school, you may have been told that a
noun is a “person, place, or thing”, or that a verb is “an action, state, or state
of being”. Alas, this is a very over-simplistic way to characterize various
parts of speech. It also isn‟t terribly scientific or accurate.
The first thing to notice about definitions like this is that they are based on
semantic criteria. It doesn‟t take much effort to find counterexamples to
these semantic definitions. Consider the following:
1)The destruction of the city bothered the Mongols.
The meaning of destruction is not a “person, place, or thing”. It is an action.
By semantic criteria, this word should be a verb. But in fact, native speakers
unanimously identify it as a noun. Similar cases are seen in 2):
a) Sincerity is an important quality.
b) the assassination of the president
c) Tucson is a great place to live.
Sincerity is an attribute, a property normally associated with adjectives.
Yet in (2a), sincerity is a noun. Similarly in (2b) assassination, an action,
is functioning as a noun. (2c) is more subtle. The semantic property of
identifying a location is usually attributed to a preposition; in (2c) however,
the noun Tucson refers to a location, but isn‟t itself a preposition. It thus
seems difficult (if not impossible) to rigorously define the parts of speech
based solely on semantic criteria. This is made even clearer when we see
that a word can change its part of speech depending upon where it appears
in a sentence 3) :
a) Gabrielle‟s mother is an axe-murderer. (N)
b) Anteaters mother attractive offspring. (V)
c) Wendy‟s mother country is Iceland. (Adj)
To sum up it is the part of speech of a word is determined by its place in the
sentence and by its morphology, not by its meaning.
2. Distributional Criteria
The criteria we use for determining part of speech then aren‟t based on
the meanings of the word, but on its distribution. We will use two kinds of
distributional tests for determining part of speech: morphological
distribution and syntactic distribution.
First we look at morphological distribution; this refers to the kinds of
affixes (prefixes and suffixes) and other morphology that appear on a word.
Let‟s consider two different types of affixes. First, we have affixes that make
words out of other words. We call these affixes derivational morphemes.
These suffixes usually result in a different part of speech from the word they
attach to. For example, if we take the word distribute we can add the
derivational suffix -(t)ion and we get the noun distribution. The -(t)ion affix
thus creates nouns. Any word ending in -(t)ion is a noun. If we take
distribution, and add -al to it, we get the adjective distributional. The -al
ending is a test for being an adjective. Derivational affixes make a word a
particular category.
By contrast inflectional morphemes don‟t make a word into a particular
category, but instead only attach to certain categories. For example the
superlative suffix -est. This affix only attaches to words that are already
adjectives: big, biggest (cf. dog, *doggest). Because they are sensitive to
what category they attach to, inflectional suffixes can also serve as a test for
determining part of speech category.
The other kind of test we use for determining part of speech uses syntactic
distribution. Syntactic distribution refers to what other words appear near
the word. For example, nouns typically appear after determiners (articles)
such as the, although they need not do so to be nouns. We can thus take
appearance after the to be a test for noun-hood.
The grammatical criteria used to identify word classes should be thought of
as diagnostic features or “symptoms,” rather than definitions.
CRITERIA FOR ESTABLISHING PARTS OF SPEECH
The label for a part of speech expresses a number of properties shared by
the specific group of words. Many specific structural relations can be
derived from the categorial status of a given word. Therefore from the
beginning of the theoretical study of language in ancient Greece, words were
grouped into several categories according to various criteria.
1. SEMANTIC - notional - based on the meaning of the word and/or its
function
2. MORPHOLOGICAL - based on the inner word-structure, some
morphology is typical for each category:
(a) derivational morpheme(s)
(b) inflectional morpheme(s)
3. SYNTACTIC
(a) based on distribution in a sentence
(b) co-occurrence restrictions (includes modification)
4. PHONETIC - complementary criterion mentioning e.g. an particular
stress pattern or some specific phoneme. E.g. in Classical Greek Nouns had
variable stress, while Verbs and Adjectives had a fixed rule for penult/final
stress placement. In Igbo (Nigeria), Verbs begin with consonants while
Nouns typically begin with vowels (Veselovska,2009:60).
REFERENCES
Carnie Andrew. (2007). Syntax: a generative introduction. Second edition.

Blackwell Publishing.
Fabb Nigel. (2005), Sentence structure. London: Routledge.
Kroeger Paul. (2005). Analyzing grammar: an introduction. Cambridge
University Press
Payne Thomas. (2006). Exploring Language structure: a Student's Guide.
Cambridge University Press.
Tallerman Maggie. (2015). Understanding syntax. Fourth Edition.
Abingdon: Routledge.
Veselovská Ludmila (2009). A course in English morpho-syntax : syllabi
for the lectures : examples and exercises. Palacký University Olomouc.

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Carnie Andrew. (2007). Syntax: a generative introduction. Second edition.

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