UNIT 2

PARTS OF SPEECH

English Grammar I. 2021-2022

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 CATEGORY vs. FUNCTION
Category: Tree
Function: Fruity

Category: Tree
Function: Shady

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 CATEGORY vs. FUNCTION

Noun= Noun Syntactic Category

 Emma loves Mary.
Subj. ≠ Compl. Syntactic Function

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 LET’S PLAY!!

 https://webapps.towson.edu/ows/exercises/Parts_o
f_Speech_Ex1.aspx

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 2.1. Their role in syntactic analysis

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 SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS

 Parts of speech = word classes, syntactic categories,

lexical classes, lexical categories.

 The most common ones: Ns, Vs, Adjs, Advs, Ps.

 They tell us about words’ behavior and distribution in a

sentence.

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 SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS

(1) a. The man loved peanut butter cookies.

b. The puppy loved peanut butter cookies.

c. The king loved peanut butter cookies.

(2) a. *The green loved peanut butter cookies.

b. *The in loved peanut butter cookies.

c. *The sing loved peanut butter cookies.

 The part of speech a word belongs to determines its

position in a sentence to a great extent.

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 2.2. Determining part of speech in
distributional terms

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 DISTRIBUTION
 Parts of speech cannot be determined in semantic terms.

(3) The mansion will house three different families.

(4) For him to say something like that would be strange.

(5) The demolition of the old church angered some right-

wingers.

(6) Cowardice killed him.

(7) Washington is a dangerous place to raise a family.

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 DISTRIBUTION
 Word class can be identified even when not knowing the
meaning of the word:

(8) 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in
the wabe.

 Word class is determined by distributional criteria:

 Morphological distribution: derivational and

inflectional morphemes the word presents.
 Syntactic distribution: syntactic context the
word appears in.
 DISTRIBUTION

 Nouns:

 Derivational suffixes:
 Inflectional suffixes:
 Syntactic context(s):

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 DISTRIBUTION

 Verbs:

 Derivational suffixes:
 Inflectional suffixes:
 Syntactic context(s):

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 DISTRIBUTION

 Adjectives:

 Derivational suffixes:
 Inflectional suffixes:
 Syntactic context(s):

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 DISTRIBUTION

 Adverbs:

 Derivational suffixes:
 Inflectional suffixes:
 Syntactic context(s):

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 PRACTICE

 Exercises:

 General Problem Sets 1 & 2 (Carnie, 2008, pp. 56-57)

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 2.3. Classification of speech parts

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 2.3.1. Typologies

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 CLASSIFICATION

 Open vs. Closed:

 Open: they allow new members (N, V, Adj, Adv).

 Closed: they do not allow new members (D, P, Conj, C,

Infl, Neg, Pron).

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 CLASSIFICATION

 Lexical vs. Functional:

 Lexical: content words (N, Pron, V, Adj, Adv, [P]).

 Functional: words with grammatical information (D, C,

Conj, Neg, Infl, [P]).

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 2.3.2. Main closed & functional
categories of English

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 CLASSIFICATION

 [PREPOSITIONS (P)]: they appear before Noun

Phrases (NPs).

 Short list of English Ps: aboard, about, above, across,

after, against, along, amid, among, anti, around, as, at,
before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between,
beyond, but, by, concerning, considering, despite, down,
during, except, excepting, excluding, following, for, from,
in, inside, into, like, minus, near, of, off, on, onto,
opposite, outside, over, past, per, plus, regarding, round,
save, since, than, through, to, toward, towards, under,
underneath, unlike, until, up, upon, versus, via, with,
within, without.
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 CLASSIFICATION
 DETERMINERS (D): they appear at the very
beginning of NPs in English:

 Articles: the, a, an.

 Deictic articles: this, that, these, those, yon.
 Quantifiers: every, some, many, most, few, all, each, any,
less, fewer, no.
 (Cardinal) numerals: one, two, three, four…
 Possessives: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.
 Some wh-question words: which, whose.
 Some negation words: no, any. ≠ not (Neg); ≠ none (N).

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 CLASSIFICATION
 CONJUNCTIONS (Conj): they connect two or
more clauses/constituents together.

 Coordinating: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (+).

 Correlative: either...or, not only...but also, neither...nor
(or increasingly neither...or), both...and, whether...or, just
as...so.
 Subordinating: after, although, as, as far as, as if, as long
as, as soon as, as though, because, before, if, in order that,
since, so, so that, than, though, unless, until, when,
whenever, where, whereas, wherever, while.

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 CLASSIFICATION

 COMPLEMENTIZERS (C, Comp, COMP) or

special subordinating conjunctions that introduce
complement/subject clauses:

 if, that, for, whether.

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 CLASSIFICATION

 INFLECTION (I, Infl): morphemes or words that

express the tense and agreement with the subject (in
English):

 Auxiliaries: have/has/had; am/is/are/was/were; do/did.

 Modals: will, would, shall, should, can, could…
 Non-finite/infinitival clause marker: to.
 Suffixes: -s, -ed.

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 CLASSIFICATION

 NEGATION (Neg): not.

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 CLASSIFICATION
 Some words belong to different categories depending on
the syntactic context:

(9) a. They left before the row. (P)

b. They left before the row started. (Conj)
c. They had never been here before. (Adv)

(10) a. I love my football team but this is going to be a tough year. (Conj)
b. I respect all football players but that one. (P)
c. I don’t want to hear any but. Just do it! (N)

(11) a. Why don’t you come over for dinner sometime? (Adv)
b. The burglar jumped over the fence. (P)

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 CLASSIFICATION
 Notice, however, that placing words in different
positions does not change the part of speech they
belong to:

(12) a. I’d like some red wine (N), please. // I need to buy
some wine (N) glasses.
b. I hate going to the dentist (N). // The engineer was
shot alongside his dentist (N) wife.
c. The rock came through the window (N). // Get me
some window (N) cleaner.

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 PRACTICE

 Exercises:

 General Problem Sets 4 & 5 (Carnie, 2008, pp. 58-59)

 UNIT 2 - PRACTICE (i)

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 2.4. Subcategories and features

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 SUBCATEGORIES and FEATURES

 Each major part of speech category may have

sub-types or subcategories.

 Subcategories are marked by the use of

FEATURES with values.

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 SUBCATEGORIES and FEATURES
 Category of INFL (or I):

 Auxiliary: I [-modal, +finite]

 Modal: I [+modal, -finite]
 to: I [-modal, -finite]
 -s, -ed: I [-modal, +finite]

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 SUBCATEGORIES and FEATURES

 NOUNS can be divided in subcategories according

to the features:

 [-/+plural, -/+count, -/+ common].

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 SUBCATEGORIES and FEATURES
 PRONOUNS and ANAPHORS: closed categories;
they do not allow determiners or adjectival
modification.

(13) a. he [+pronominal, -anaphoric]

b. himself [-pronominal, +anaphoric]
c. *the he
d. *the himself
e. *big he
f. *big himself

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 SUBCATEGORIES and FEATURES
 VERBS can be classified according to whether they
are [finite] (or [tensed]) and their argument
structure (number of arguments the predicate
takes or verb valency).

(14) She believes Mary to be innocent.

(15) Freddy will ask you to leave immediately.
(16) believes, will ask: [+finite]; (to) be, (to) leave: [-finite]

(17) John came. (1 argument)

(18) John kissed Mary. (2 arguments)
(19) John gave Mary a kiss. (3 arguments)

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 SUBCATEGORIES and FEATURES
 (20) Relationship between Transitivity and
Argument Structure (or Valency):

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 SUBCATEGORIES and FEATURES
 Verb arguments are not always NPs:

(21) believe: _____ V _____

(22) John believed the story. [NP ___ NP]
(23) John believes that Mary is smart. [NP ___CP]

(24) annoy: ______V _____

(25) John annoys me. [NP ___NP]
(26) That John is here annoys me. [CP___NP]

(27) *That John is here believed the story.

(28) *John annoys that he is here.

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 SUBCATEGORIES and FEATURES
 (29) Subcategories of verbs and their features:

Subcategory

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 SUBCATEGORIES and FEATURES
 COMPLEMENTIZERS can be classified according
to the values of the features [-/+wh, -/+finite] of
the clauses they introduce:

(30) a. I think that Paul and his wife are divorcing: C [-wh, +finite]
b. I wonder whether Paul and his wife are divorcing: C?
c. I wonder whether to try and go to Harvard: C?
d. They asked me if I’d try and go to Harvard: C?
e. I was hoping for you to give a ride to the airport: C?

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 PRACTICE

 Exercises:

 General Problem Sets 3, 6 & 7 (Carnie, 2008, pp. 57-60)

 UNIT 2 - PRACTICE (ii)

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 REFERENCES

CARNIE, A. (2008). Syntax. A Generative Introduction.

Blackwell. (pp. 37-62).
FONTANA, J. (2008). Parts of Speech, PPT (eGela).

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