CATEGORIES

Andrew Radford

CATEGORIES AND FEATURES

Each one of the lexical items of a natural language is a composite element built up of grammatical features.
A category is a class of lexical items sharing a common set of grammatical properties. That is to say, the
lexical items which make up a category share the same value for a given set of grammatical features. These
grammatical features are observable as morphosyntactic evidence. The morphosyntactic evidence
characterises the different lexical categories:
1) Morphological evidence
i- Inflectional properties  different forms of the same word
ii- Derivational properties  formation of different words by addition of derivational morphemes
The derivational affixes have categorial properties: in- / un-  adjectives or verbs; -ly  adverbs
English NOUNS inflect for number and (genitive) case, but they rarely inflect for gender.
However, some NOUNS may have an irregular morphological behaviour:
 sheep (the same form expresses both singular and plural number)
 furniture (uncountable noun with no plural form)
 baby-sitter (compound noun)

VERBS 3rd person singular number past tense past participle present participle / gerund
inflect for -s -d -n -ing
However, most verbs are irregular: their past form is the same as their past participle form
Sometimes inflection is irregular, and some derivational affixes have limited productivity
2) Syntactic evidence: different categories of words have different distribution within the sentence structure
Substitution is the method used for testing the category of a lexical item on the basis of its syntactic behaviour
NOUNS share the same distributional properties, for instance they may follow a determiner or a quantifier:
She has no + noun (money, beauty, information, friends, etc.)
VERBS share the same distributional properties, for instance they may follow an auxiliary:
She can + verb (think, dance, hear, cook, etc.)

Distinction between lexical and functional categories:

 contentive words have idiosyncratic descriptive content or sense properties
noun, verb, adjective, adverb, prepositions (they have antonyms: lose / gain; in / out )
 functors are carriers of grammatical information:
auxiliaries, determiners, pronouns, complementisers, particle

Determiners
1. articles a – an – the
2. demonstratives this – that – these – those
3. indefinite determiners some – any – no – every – either – neither
4. possessive my – your – his – her – its – our – your – their
5. noun in genitive case Tom’s – the girl’s
6. quantifiers some – any – no – many – few – little ...
7. cardinals one – two – three – etc.
8. Interrogative/relative what – which – whose
pronouns

They determine quantity or definiteness. They modify the noun expression which follows them, but they
are not adjectives.
 Determiners do not allow recursiveness, adjectives do  a tall, dark, handsome man / *a both that her
man
 Determiners are not interchangeable with adjectives  What do you want? A chair / *Comfortable chair
 Determiners have specific countability properties  a nice chair / some nice chairs / nice furniture
 Determiners have no gradability features, unlike adjectives  a thoughtful friend / ?cat / ??fish / !problem
(semantic / pragmatic anomaly)
Pronouns
The personal pronouns inflect for person – number – gender – case
Some pronouns are polycategorial words Both children were ill. / Both were ill.
Some people say that… / Some say that…
Auxiliaries
perfective: have
progressive: be
passive: be
dummy: do
modal: can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should, must, need, ought, dare, etc
semi-auxiliaries: happen to, be able to ...
 Auxiliaries take a verbal complement
 Auxiliaries mark tense – aspect – mood / modality – voice
 Auxiliaries undergo inversion / negation / question tags
 Auxiliaries allow ellipsis of the complement
Infinitive particle TO
 takes an infinitive verb as complement
 allows ellipsis of its complement
The infinitive particle should be distinguished from the preposition to: DP as complement, content “as far as”
The similarities between AUX and TO show thay they are in fact the same category: INFL (inflection)
Complementisers
complemetiser that  determiner that ( intonation, substitution by other determiner)
if  interrogative adverb when/where/whether (finite and non-finite clauses, complement of P)
complementiser for  preposition for (NP as compl, intensified, stranded)
 complementisers introduce complement clauses
 complementisers indicate either finite (that, if) or infinitival complement (for)
 complementisers mark the illocutionary force of the clauses they introduce
yes-no question: if / declarative, non-interrogative: that / for
Advantage of feature-based analysis
 adequate account of subcategorial properties
 adequate account of cross-categorial properties
He shows [+V, – PPLE, –PAST, + 3SG] They show [+V, –PPLE, –PAST, –3SG]
He is showing [+V, +PPLE, –PAST] He has shown [+V, +PPLE, +PAST]
He showed [+V, –PPLE, +PAST]

V [+V, -N, -F] INFL [+V, -N, +F]

N [-V, +N, -F] PRON [-V, +N, +F]
ADJ [+V, +N, -F] DET [+V, +N, +F]
PREP [-V, -N, -F] COMP [-V, -N, +F]