Match the following terms to their Ukrainian equivalents. Explain their meaning.

SEMINAR 2

LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL CLASSES OF WORDS

Theoretical comment

The notion of a part of speech as a lexico-grammatical class of words. Grammatically relevant properties of words - criteria for differentiating the classes of words: semantic, formal and functional criteria. The traditional classification of parts of speech. Notional and functional parts of speech in the traditional classification. Polydifferential and monodifferential classifications. Henry Sweet’s functional classification. Otto Jesperson’s classification. Ch. Fries’s syntactico-distributional classification. Field theory and its application to the classification of the parts of speech.

Practice

Match the following terms to their Ukrainian equivalents. Explain their meaning.

lexico-grammatical classes of words -

notional parts of speech -

functional parts of speech -

open/closed word classes -

semantic criterion (categorial meaning) -

formal criterion -

functional criterion -

homogeneous (monodifferential) classifications -

heterogeneous (polidifferential) classifications -

field theory -

формальний критерій	відкриті/закриті класи слів	повнозначні частини мови	семантичний критерій (категоріальне значення)	монодиференціальні класифікації
функціональний критерій	теорія поля	неповнозначні частини мови	лексико-граматичні розряди слів	полідиференціальні класифікації

2. Traditional grammars generally provide short definitions for each part of speech. The following are taken from the work of G. Curme “Parts of Speech and Accidence”, Boston:Heath, 1935. Read them and the answer the questions that follow:

(a) ‘A noun, or substantive, is a word used as a name of a living being or lifeless thing; Mary, John, horse, cow, dog; hat, house, tree, London, Chicago; virtue’

(b) ‘A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun’

(c) ‘A verb is that part of speech that predicates, assists in predication, asks a question, or expresses a command: The wind blows, He is blind, Did he do it? Hurry! (By ‘predication’ Curme evidently means assertion.)

(d) ‘An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or a pronoun, i.e. a word that is used with a noun or pronoun to describe or point out the living being or lifeless thing designated by the noun or pronoun: a little boy, that boy, this boy, a little house’

(e) ‘An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb’.

Are these definitions adequate as language-particular definitions, i.e. do they provide clear criteria that would enable one to assign words to the ‘correct’ class? The following questions can help you:

1. Instead of what nouns are the pronouns used in the following sentences:

The boy said he was ill; I am ill; Nobody came; everything was destroyed; What is the new teacher like? It was John who broke the window.

1. Do assertions, questions and the like involve verbs or whole sentences? Is Curme’s definition of the verb helpful in defining the verb in the following sentences:

Are you ill?(Is it the verb ‘are’ that asks a question?)

If John knows her, we’re in trouble. (Does the speaker assert in the sentence that John knows her?)

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14