How are parts of speech delimited?
The world’s languages differ, therefore, in the parts of speech recognized in their grammars. In order to understand this variation fully, we need to understand how we decide what parts of speech a language has. This is not a simple question. Modern European languages have inherited a ready-made classification of grammatical categories from traditional grammar, as developed since ancient times (see text box p. 295). We sim ply take it for granted that it is appropriate to think of our languages as having nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, determiners/articles, prepositions, as well as a few additional minor categories like interjections and conjunctions. For the purposes of teaching grammar at school these categories are certainly adequate. But when we turn to languages without any indigenous tradition of part of speech distinctions, or when we examine a familiar language like English objectively, we discover that determining exactly what the parts of speech are is a complicated question: there are often several different ways of analysing the facts of any one language, and the question of how the parts of speech should be identified seems open to answering in a variety of different ways.
QUESTION Over the past few decades, grammarians have proposed several different parts-of-speech lists for English and other languages, ranging from eight categories to as many as a dozen or so. Before we discuss this in the text, think about what the major reasons for these differences might be.
Let’s illustrate this with English. One of the main descriptive grammarians of modern English, Rodney Huddleston, states in his 1984 grammar of English that ‘It is inconceivable . . . that one might write a viable grammar of English that failed to distinguish classes of nouns, verbs and adjectives with very much the same coverage as in traditional grammar. . .’ (1984: 98). As we’ll see, this is largely true. But notwithstanding that hard core of central categories, different modern descriptive theories of grammar have made quite different divisions. Let’s look, then, at three different catalogues of English parts of speech, Huddleston and Pullum (2002), Radford (2004/1988) and Hockett (1958), before going on to consider the criteria on which we might base a classification.
Leaving aside interjections, which we’re going to ignore in what follows, Huddleston and Pullum’s classification recognizes eight categories:
Radford, by contrast, has eleven. One difference is largely terminological: Radford’s complementiser is equivalent to Huddleston and Pullum’s subordinator. Some of Radford’s categories are unfamiliar: quantifier includes words which fall into Huddleston and Pullum’s determinative category, and prepositions include conjunctions; the tensemarker category contains forms which Huddleston and Pullum class as verbs (can, could, might, may, must, shall, should, will, would) – and includes infinitival to (as in I want to go home).
Radford (2004/1988)
Noun
Verb
Adjective
Adverb
Preposition (including particles and conjunctions: Radford 1988: 137)
Determiner
Quantifier
Pronoun
Auxiliary
Tensemarker (= finite auxiliaries and infinitival to)
Complementiser
Finally, let’s look at Hockett’s (1958) classification, focusing purely on his treatment of nouns, verbs and adjectives. In fact, Hockett divides those three parts of speech into no fewer than seven separate categories, depending on the syntactic possibilities of their members. The seven categories are N, A, V, NA, NV, AV and NAV. A word is an N if, like cat, it can only occur in the syntactic positions traditionally associated with nouns (e.g. following a determiner). It is NA if it can occur as both a traditional noun and a traditional adjective: an example would be good, as in the good soldier (adjectival use) and the government is concerned for both the public and the private good (nominal use). In its adjectival use, good displays the grammatical possibilities characteristic of adjectives (notably comparison: good, better, best), whereas in its nominal use it can follow a determiner and may take plural marking (no goods may be left in storage). A word is NV if it can be used as both a traditional noun and verb: an obvious example is cook (The cook (N) is too drunk; now let’s cook (V) the duck). Finally, NAVs, such as green, display all three uses (This green (N) is darker than that one; the green (A) grass; the council wants to green (V) the city). In Hockett’s scheme, then, the ‘pure’ categories N, V and A are just the kernel of a more elaborate system.
QUESTION In some classifications, pronouns are considered as a sub category of nouns and auxiliaries are considered a subcategory of verbs. What might some advantages and disadvantages of these categorizations be? Consider both the consequences for assigning a meaning to the category, and the consequences for describing grammatical structure.
It’s clear just from a cursory examination of the three interpretations of English that quite a lot of variation is possible in parts of speech systems, especially in the less central categories. This variability in modern classificatory schemes shows that there’s no sense in which the division of the entire vocabulary into parts of speech is natural. Terms like ‘noun’, ‘verb’, ‘conjunction’ and so on are ones which many of us feel entirely familiar with, and which we apply unhesitatingly. It’s tempting to feel that there’s no more doubt about whether something is a noun or a verb than there is about whether a rabbit is a plant or an animal. Yet the variety of classifications which have been advanced shows that the opposite is the case. What the parts of speech are is a matter for discussion, not an obvious and straightforward fact about language. Whether or not she is a noun or pro noun depends on what your criteria for nounhood and pronounhood are. And, as we’re about to see, different criteria are possible, and it may well be that some criteria are better than others.
QUESTION Suggest some criteria for determining parts of speech in English.
QUESTION What part of speech is say in Say we come tomorrow. . .? What about come in Come Tuesday, we’ll know the answer?
QUESTION There are a few items whose function is to introduce an utterance in discourse, such as well (as in Well, are you coming this Sunday?) and now (as in Now, we can do one of two things). What are the arguments for and against these constituting a separate part of speech category?
