(comments on activities)
The following terms from the list have all been treated as parts of speech in one account or another:
noun, adjective, conjunction, preposition, pronoun, adverb, verb, article
Each is a word-class label, which attempts to capture something about the grammatical properties of a certain class of word.
What about the other terms?
subjunctive
phrase
passive
A form (or forms) of a verb, used to convey certain aspects of meaning attached to a verb, e.g. hypotheticality or doubt. The subjunctive is common in other European languages, but virtually non-existent in English.
A form of a noun in languages where nouns change their form depending on whether they are the subject or object of a clause, e.g. Latin. The accusative is used for the object. Not a feature of English.
A group of words acting together as a grammatical unit, e.g. the Manchester United manager was triumphant yesterday.
An arrangement of the parts of a sentence so that the subject is not the "agent". The verb is always a composite form, usually consisting of the verb be + past participle, e.g. Osaka was rocked by an earthquake yesterday.
Some of these words are easy to assign according to notional criteria. But others do not fit so well, or even if they do, they seem to belong to more than one class.
These are both fairly straightforward nouns. The only thing which makes them slightly special is that they are "uncountable" and have no plural form *oxygens, *desperations.
Birmingham
This is a noun since it clearly refers to a thing/entity. But we need a sub-category of noun since it is clear that there is a difference between identifying an individual thing/entity and referring to one or more of a class of things/entities. Names of uniquely identified individuals are known as proper nouns (the meaning of "proper" here has to do with specificness rather than reality or decency). Common nouns refer to a class of things, or an example of a class of things, and are normally written with a small letter. Proper nouns lack some of the grammatical possibilities of common nouns, precisely because they identify uniquely. For example, it is odd to say *The Birmingham, since the function of the is to identify, which is unnecessary with Birmingham. An expression such as The Birmingham of the 1920s looks like an exception, but here we are really shifting the word from being a proper noun to being a common noun, even though we retain the capital letter. Birmingham is no longer a uniquely identified thing, but merely one of a number of possible "Birminghams".
you
This is a pronoun, which is usually defined as a word which "stands in for a noun or noun phrase". This definition is not entirely satisfactory. It works in the following text: Tim's birthday party was on Sunday. It was a good occasion apparently. He was sixty, you know. Here, it can be said to "stand in for" Tim's birthday party and he for Tim. But if I add a further sentence: Such a pity we couldn't go, what does we "stand in for"? There is no obvious noun or noun phrase at all. It is probably better to think of pronouns in terms of their communicative purpose. They are items which are used when speaker and hearer share knowledge about reference. If I have just mentioned Tim, or his birthday party, or if I am talking about someone who is clearly visible, myself for example, further specification of reference is quite likely redundant. Then I can use a pronoun.
difficult, slow, early
These are all adjectives. Examples: a difficult task, a slow learner, an early breakfast.
Slow and early are also used in sentences like: You're going too slow. You'd better go early. Here slow and early are adverbs. Using notional reasoning, one can say that they "describe the action of going". Using distributional reasoning, one can point to the place in the clause where these words come. Difficult, for example, is not used in this way, nor does it have a derived form used as an adverb. We say neither: *We managed it difficult nor *We managed it difficultly (although *difficultly appears occasionally, and interestingly, in the speech of young children). Instead, if we need an adverb, we resort to a two-word substitute such as with difficulty.
The use of slow as an adverb raises some interesting questions about its relationship with slowly. Some might feel that using slow as an adverb is informal, or even incorrect. Yet the same judgement would never be made of fast (e.g. a fast learner and he learns fast.). The tendency for adjectives to be used as adverbs without changing their form seems to be on the increase in modem English, especially US English. Incidentally, the -ly ending on a word (e.g. early), while often indicative of an adverb, is clearly not always so. Friendly, for example, is never used as an adverb, only as an adjective.
beautifully
A straightforward adverb.
utterly
A more controversial adverb. It very rarely occurs as a word describing an action. Examples such as We reject utterly these clams or it failed utterly do occur, but there are very few verbs which can be accompanied by utterly in this way. The following invented examples all seem very dubious: he infuriates me utterly, she ridiculed the speaker utterly, his argument convinces me utterly, etc. Yet the word occurs quite happily in: I find him utterly infuriating, she made the speaker look utterly ridiculous, I am utterly convinced by his argument. So utterly is not typically used in the way that we have said adverbs are used. This forces us to do one of two things. Either we say utterly is not an adverb or we say that adverbs include a wider group of items than we at first allowed. Most grammars and dictionaries adopt the second course, and include especially words which modify adjectives such as utterly, very etc., but there is a strong case for arguing that words like this are not really adverbs, and need a special class to themselves.
thus
Also treated as an adverb in most reference books. In its most common use, illustrated by: Thus, death is not a result of sin, the behaviour of the word is quite different from the adverbs we looked at above. This simply shows what a capacious category "adverb" is. Sometimes words like this are known as "sentence adverbs" since they seem to say something about a whole sentence rather than just one part of it. Other examples are: actually, nevertheless, however and so on. There are a lot of these words, and they can be, and have been, broken down into many sub-categories.
disperse, resemble
These are verbs. Admittedly, resemble does not appear to involve much of an action, which is one reason why notional methods of classification are unsatisfactory. But it is still a verb.
sit
This is almost always a verb, but not quite. The following text about a horse appears in the corpus: He is a very good rider, Mark had a sit on him and everything is in place. There are also examples such as went for a sit in the park. It is likely, though, that have a sit and go for a sit account for all instances of sit as noun. In this respect, sit takes part in a more general pattern in English whereby certain verbs are used as nouns after words like have, go for and take, e.g. have a swim, go for a drive, take a walk.. There are no instances of *take a sit in the corpus, and it seems to be very marginal as a noun.
chair
This is clearly both noun and verb, since you can chair a meeting. This meaning, though, only came into use in the 1920s, so the noun predates this by several hundred years. You should check this in the OED, where you will find other uses of chair as a verb..
seat
Similar to chair. You can seat a visitor in your best armchair (from 17th century). A room can seat 100 people (from 19th century). The connection between sit and seat is complex, and rooted in the Germanic history of English. Consult the OED for more information.
stool
Most people would naturally put this down as a noun only. Reference to the OED shows several meanings as a verb, but most of them seem quite outdated now, including the meaning of to excrete.
bench
Once again the OED surprises us with a verb meaning "to furnish with benches", which you will undoubtedly agree is a most useful addition to your vocabulary.
drawer
At last we have a word which is never a verb - only a noun.
shelves
This is clearly a plural noun. But there is also a verb to shelve, especially of library books, projects etc. There are no instances in our corpus of shelves as a verb, as in this fictitious newspaper headline: Blair shelves university salary review. Yet there is no reason why such an instance could not occur.
bracket
A noun and a verb.
fix
A verb and a noun. But which came first?
pigeon-hole
A noun and a verb, the latter being surprisingly common.
No comments on this Activity.
both |
attrib. only |
pred. only | |
able |
X |
||
asleep |
X | ||
easy |
X |
||
fond |
X |
||
green |
X |
||
marital |
X |
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prospective |
X |
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tantamount |
X | ||
umbilical |
X |
||
woollen |
X |
You may not agree with this suggestion and one needs to add more information to make the table a sensible comment on these particular words. For example, fond occurs attributively in examples like fond memories and a range of other nouns. On the other hand, about two thirds of all uses of fend are in the expression fond of, which always occurs predicatively, and only refers back to animate subjects. We say fond memories, fond regards, fond kisses etc., but not: His memories were fond etc. So although this word is "both" it is not free to occur in both positions irrespective of meaning.
On the matter of which of these are less adjectival, tantamount is clearly the most marginal as an adjective, since it is not only restricted to the predicative position, but is also necessarily followed by the word to + further words. One could argue that tantamount to is an indissoluble unit, the function of which is less adjectival than prepositional. In this way tantamount differs from an ordinary predicative adjective such as asleep.
1. Verb
2. Noun
3. Noun.
It is worth considering example 3 in a little more detail. We argued in the Unit that words which are normally nouns, but which are used in front of another noun to modify it, e.g. state education, do not become adjectives just because they are used in that position. Yet we have also argued that the basic principle for word class allocation should be functional or distributional, and we have seen, too, that many words can be either noun or verb depending on how they are used. This may look like a contradiction of principles, but it is not really. We need to introduce the concept of "productivity" in language.
Take the case of words which can be either noun or verb. This certainly applies to a great many nouns and verbs. However, it is not completely open-ended, or, to use a jargon expression, completely "productive". As speakers, we are free to take any noun and arbitrarily use it as a verb, but if we do this we run the risk of not being understood, or at least ridiculed. The example of "Have you gravied?" worked in a specific context, but there are severe limitations. It is true that one can think up an infinite number of idiosyncratic conversions of this kind: "Have you food-mixered?" (i.e. repaired the food-mixer), "are you wallflowering?" (i.e. planting wallflowers), but they would almost certainly be one-off events, entirely bound by context. It is also true that nouns in certain semantic areas (e.g. communications) almost inevitably spawn a verb: fax, email etc. Yet this process too is not fully productive, since new coinages are often resisted or have a temporary life. To message now appears to have gained a foothold as a verb, but it is too soon to tell whether it will last.
By contrast, the use of nouns as modifiers is a fully productive process. Any noun can be pressed into service as a modifier before another noun. Given this fact, it defeats the purpose of trying to establish word classes if we then say that any noun is also an adjective.
4. Adjective (used predicatively in this example).
5. Verb.
6. film: Verb
view: Noun
7. view: Verb
film: Noun
8. Adverb
9. Adjective
Examples 8 and 9 relate to the discussion of adjectives and adverbs in Activity 2. In 8, the speaker has reclassified great as an adverb. Other adjectives to which this has happened, particularly in a sporting context, are bad, good, excellent, fantastic, brilliant. All of these appear regularly in utterances such as: "She played brilliant". It is interesting to speculate on the reasons. It may be a US trend originally, but that is not an explanation. It is worth noting that German neutralises the distinction between adjectives and adverbs: Ein guter Spieler, er spielte gut.
10. Adjective?
This example again raises the issue of the relationship between word class and instance. Normally dead is an adjective, as in a dead mouse (attributive) or this mouse is dead (predicative). In this case, the verb is play. Does dead describe the manner of her playing or does it describe her, with the verb having much the same function as the verb be? Here, the second interpretation has been selected, so dead is an adjective. In the first interpretation one would say that dead was an adverb.
S |
V |
0 |
C |
A | |
1. |
She |
's |
a great player |
||
2. |
You |
should state |
your aims |
more clearly | |
3. |
Cricket |
is |
boring |
||
4. |
He |
batted |
1. beautifully 2. all day | ||
5. |
Mind |
the step |
|||
6. |
the ancient Patagonians |
Were |
aliens |
||
7. |
the best things in life |
are |
free |
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8. |
Villa |
Did ... win |
last night | ||
9. |
Ferdinand de Saussure |
is |
the father of modern linguistics |
||
10. |
Pooh |
rubbed |
his nose |
with his paw | |
11. |
She |
placed |
dead |
||
12. |
I |
have ... heard |
such utter rubbish |
Seldom |
