Grammatical Categories and Word Classes

Grammatical morphemes-these are words or parts of words which express grammatical notions (like number, gender, etc.). In ANY language, these can be free roots (aka function words?.e.g. for English-prepositions) or bound morphemes (aka inflectional affixes?e.g. for English-past tense -ed).

A grammatical category is a linguistic category, not a real world category. However, we can talk about the relationship between a linguistic category such as TENSE and a real world category such as TIME.

There are at least two ways of considering grammatical categories. First, for any given language, we can ask, ?What grammatical categories are regularly expressed in Language X through the use of inflections or function words?? Our answer would be the set of grammatical morphemes for the language; we would not consider how the language expresses something if there is no relevant dedicated grammatical morpheme.

The other way to look at it is, ?There are a set of universal grammatical categories. For any given category, how does Language X distinguish between the possibilities-with regular grammatical morphemes? With adverbs or other lexical morphemes?? Our answer to this question would allow us to compare Language X with Languages Y or Z. [E.g. Dutch has no progressive morphology, UNLIKE English.]

Grammatical Categories:
· number-English uses the ?singular? (concept of ?one?) and ?plural? (concept of ?more than one?); in contrast, some languages also express ?dual? (concept of ?two?)

In English, number is expressed by inflection (usually -s) on NOUNS
Number is expressed on count nouns, demonstratives, and personal pronouns, possessive determiners, possessive pronouns, and reflexive pronouns (1 and 3p only)

PRONOUNS AND ADJECTIVES-there are distinct forms of certain pronouns and adjectives (every vs. all)

VERBS-number is expressed in a limited way with 3 sg. -s in present tense but not past. Expressed more fully in forms of ?to be?

GENERIC NUMBER-when you don?t want to specify number, you can use
Def article + single noun
Indef article + single noun
Ø article + plural noun

WEIRD USE: editorial ?we?

· gender-natural gender is used in English-we say ?he?, ?she?, or ?it? according to whether something is biologically masculine, feminine, or nothing. [contrast with ?grammatical gender?, which is an arbitrary classification of nouns?.who can say if a ?table? is masculine or feminine?, and if grammatical gender were based on something more than arbitrary decision, then why don?t all languages which use grammatical gender AGREE on whether ?table? is masculine or feminine or neuter?

See Brinton Ch 5 for more on how gender is expressed in English (all ways are unsystematic)

GENERIC GENDER-traditionally, people used masculine default: ?Every child should put on his coat.? This way is generally thought to be sexist. People also use ?Every child should put on their coat.? Prescriptivists hate this since ?every? is singular but ?their? is plural. The other option is to use ?his/her? or ?his or her?. Most people think this is bulky and unnecessarily hard to say, but it satisfies feminists and prescriptivists at the same time!

· person -there are three people:
1 speaker
2 listener
3 person/thing spoken about

person is expressed in pronouns, verbs (in a limited way)
GENERIC PERSON-we can use ?one?, but it sounds really formal; ?we?, ?you?, and ?they? are also used, but only ?one? and ?we? are considered formal enough to use in writing! Be careful! ?you? is most common in informal usage.

· case-case is the indication of the function of a noun phrase, or the relationship between a noun phrase and a verb or other noun phrases in the sentence. In English, we?ll talk about three cases, with the first and third being the most important:

nominative-something with ?nominative case? functions as a SUBJECT in a sentence
e.g. I, we, you, he, she, it, they, who
genitive-something with ?genitive case? functions as a POSSESSOR
e.g. my/mine, our/ours, his, her/hers, its, their/theirs, whose
[NOTE: there are no apostrophes on any of these pronouns!!]
objective-something with ?objective case? functions as an OBJECT in a sentence; it could be the object of a verb (i.e. direct object) or object of a preposition
e.g. me, us, you, him, her, it, them, whom
dative-something with ?dative case? functions specifically as an INDIRECT OBJECT in a sentence; thus it is a subcategory of objective case

Notice that some of the pronouns take the same form in both nominative and objective cases (you, it). When these pronouns are used in a sentence, we can say that the only way to tell their ?case? is to look at word order.

Technically, there are other cases, but English has no grammatical way of expressing them. We can express those relationships periphrastically with prepositions. Since we don?t have particular inflections for each one, it?s often hard for English speakers to see the point in discussing them since we don?t necessarily think that they are separate ?grammatical categories?. If you?re learning another language, however, you may find that knowledge of additional cases is necessary.

· degree-this category relates adjectives to adverbs; there are three terms: positive, comparative, superlative.
Positive is expressed by root of adjective/adverb; comparative and superlative are expressed through inflection or periphrasis (-er, -est; or more/most; less/least)

Sometimes each degree has a different word instead of root + inflected forms, e.g. good/better/best

Not all adjectives can be inflected for degree (remember: perfect, *perfecter, *perfectest) [How can we break the rules? Remember Orwell?.?All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.?

· definiteness-something ?definite? denotes something known, familiar, or identified by speaker and hearer; something ?indefinite? denotes a referent which is novel, unknown, or unfamiliar. In English this is a covert category, since we only see definiteness as reflected in the article used with the noun.

Think this one?s easy? It?s so not! J Definiteness intersects with specificity, but not totally (so, it?s not the case that all specific nouns are definite and all non-specific nouns are indefinite). Further, there are dialect differences in the use of articles (consider: ?in hospital? vs. ?in the hospital?). This aspect of English turns out to be VERY difficult for second language learners of English.

· deixis-points out objects and events with respect to a particular reference point (usually the speaker?s here and now).

PERSONAL: personal pronouns??I? refers to a different person depending on who is speaking?don?t confuse with anaphoric use in texts (the boy?he)

SPATIAL DEIXIS: come/go, bring/take

TEMPORAL DEIXIS: expressed by adverbs relating to the time of speaking (now, later, etc.)

TEXTUAL DEIXIS: expressed by articles or demonstratives?I rode the roller coaster. This was very exciting.

· tense-linguistic indication of the time of action with respect to the time of speaking OR some other reference point. This is a kind of deixis. Think: ?it will rain? can be said to be true or not, dependent upon the relation of the statement and the time of speaking.

English makes a formal tense distinction between present and past tenses. If we examine the ways that the English ?simple present? is used, we might wish to call it the ?non-past? tense. (see Brinton pg 112 (Ch5)). The English past tense more uniformly refers to events which have happened in the past.

Future time can be expressed in English, even though we have no formal inflections for doing so. We can use the present progressive, simple present, certain modal auxiliary verbs, etc.

· aspect-view taken of an event, whether it?s completed (perfective) or incomplete (imperfective). English specifically marks progressive aspect with an inflectional ending, and the perfective with auxiliary ?have? + past participle.

Aspect combines with tense (expressed on auxiliary verbs) to make several possible
constructions.

· mood-speaker?s attitude toward what s/he is saying, specifically, FACT or NON-FACT (like wishes, desires, requests, warnings, prohibitions, commands, predictions, possibilities, contrary-to-fact statements).

Indicative mood-FACT, in English expressed by the simple form of the verb
Subjunctive mood-NON-FACT, in English, only remnants of a subjunctive are expressed (see Brinton for details)?.this form is being lost.
Imperative mood-NON-FACT, aka ?command form?

· voice-is the subject of the sentence performing an action or being acted upon? The first is ACTIVE VOICE and the second is PASSIVE VOICE.

English has two periphrastic passive constructions-?be? and ?get?

MIDDLE VOICE-action of verb reflects back upon the subject (reflexive)?Henry shaved himself.

NOTIONAL PASSIVE-active in form but passive in meaning?The shirt washes easily. (= is easily washed.)

Word Classes
Traditionally, 8 parts of speech are defined: noun, adjective, verb, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, and interjection (or article). These were derived from a study of Classical Greek, so are not necessarily relevant to every other language studied. We will now say ?word class? rather than ?part of speech?, and we will define 5 word classes for English.

Traditionally, parts of speech are defined according to a number of different criteria, some of which are not actually helpful. Here we will consider some tests which will help us.

Distributional test-if a group of words can all fill one syntactic slot, then they can be said to be of the same class of words.

Inflectional test-if a group of words can take a particular inflectional suffix, then they can be said to be of the same class of words. Derivational affixes are not useful in this respect because of their very nature. However, English does not have an ideal inflectional system for applying this test (there aren?t enough inflections).

We?ll use distributional and inflectional tests in conjunction with each other. NOTE that words of one class will not pass ALL tests the same?.there are SUBCATEGORIES within word classes, and if you?re looking at words that are part of different subcategories, their behavior will be a little different. (Don?t worry, we?ll get into more detail with this later.)
 
 

· noun
inflectional tests-try plural -s and possessive ?s
note that proper nouns can?t take plural -s
distributional tests-Determiner + noun; adjective + noun; determiner + adjective + noun

· adjective
inflectional tests-try comparative/superlative endings -er and -est
distributional tests-det + adj + noun; Vcop + adj.; degree + adj.

· verb
inflectional tests-add -ing, 3 sg. -s; past tense -ed; past participle -ed
distributional tests-verb + NP; verb + clause boundary; verb + AP/NP; to + verb

adverb tests have problems?.READ Brinton!

Other problems-recategorization, or one word can belong to several categories.
 

Grammatical glossary (after class and reading, you should know the meanings of these words and phrases. If you don?t, find out!)

morpheme
lexical morpheme
grammatical morpheme
inflection
periphrasis
overt vs. covert expression of a grammatical category
natural gender vs. grammatical gender
animacy
noun phrase
case
nominative
genitive
objective
word order
dative
phonologically indistinguishable
suppletion
referent
determiner
copula