2B. Parts of speech

The general current definition of parts of speech places them

as lexico-grammatical word-classes which are characterized h general abstract grammatical meaning expressed in certain grammatical markers. Parts of speech present a mixed lexical grammatical phenomenon because, on the one hand, words characterized by a certain lexical meaning, e.g.: to run, girl, quickly, and, on the other, each generalized word-class, such as noun, verb, adverb, etc. possesses a unifying abstract meaning, such as substances "thingness" (предметность) - noun; process, action, state - verb property of an action -adverb, etc. As this kind of meaning covers the whole class, it may be defined as grammatical due to the wide scope of abstraction embracing a wide range of units. The grammaticalness of word-classes mainly manifests itself in the ability of some of them to express grammatical categories in a set of formal exponents. However, not all word-classes have special markers for grammatical categories, and besides, the range of word-classes capable of possessing categorical paradigms is not universal and differs in various Indo-European languages. For instance, in synthetic languages, adjectives, numerals, all pronouns are inflected in categories in case, number and gender, whereas in English, which exposes an analytical structure, these word-classes are utterly devoid of any grammatical markers with the exception of a few pronouns. The markers of degrees of comparison in some subclasses of adjectives and adverbs (longer, more difficult, more quickly) are evidently of a lexical nature, and not grammatical (categorical because they change the meaning of the word itself and, besides, the very markers are either of lexicological (-er, -est) or syntactic (more, the most) nature. It is especially difficult to draw a line between a free word combination and a grammatical form with analytical means oi expressing the superlative degree; of: a most pleasant person of all" comparison. The argument about a non-grammatical nature of degrees of comparison is confirmed by the ability of an adverb to be subjects to this kind of process too. The adverb in all Indo-European languages is an indeclinable part of speech.

Usually speech parts are considered in grammars as isolated groups, each with their own grammatical meaning and material shape. However, in language, all its elements are interconnected as it presents a conglomeration of isolated elements. Parts of independent. First of all, they are distinguished one by the number of words constituting each class. The greatest amount of words is contained in the noun (N) and verb (V) conditioned by the functional role that these classes coherent speech, in the sentence; and in the long run the background for word-class distinctions is the logical structure of thought, which finds reflection in the syntactic arrangement of mints of the sentence. The noun and the verb are destined to fill the positions of the main sentence elements - subject and predicate, - the ,center of predication in any connected discourse, and the main elements of proposition. One should always bear in mind the fact that sentence members and word-classes closely interrelated, one of them cannot be analyzed without taking into account the other.

These two word-classes are opposed to each other on the basis of contrastive meanings and formal characteristics. Nouns are subjected to inflection («cклонение»), verbs - to conjugation «спряжение»), The reverse is impossible.

Other word-classes with a full notional meaning are dependent upon these two, they are satellites to the head words N and for example: adjectives are dependent on the noun, they have the type of nominal inflections (in synthetic languages). In the sentence, the adjective is attached to the noun denoting its properties means of attributive or predicative relations. The formal (where they exist) and functional properties of other two classes - numerals and pronouns - are distributed between the noun and the adjective.

The scope of class inclusion largely depends both on generalized grammatical meaning of the class and its function in speech. Thus, pronouns have no referential meaning of their own, they do not have correlate in reality and do not denote things or properties; they either point at them (he, this) or have an indefinite meaning of a nondescript nature (something). For all these reasons the word-class of pronouns is small in number; all actual units belongs to this class can be observed. It presents a closed class, which is not replenished under any circumstance in modern languages.

Numerals are also a closed class, they include a limited number of items; their name indicates their meaning.

Such is the hierarchy of parts of speech that are united in Russian by one name " " and are practically satellites to the proper ("substantive").

The meaningful relations of the enumerated parts of speed the noun can be illustrated syntagmatically;

Relations:

N-N This boy is a student predicative relation N-A This boy is big predicative relations N-A a big boy attributive relations

N-Num three boys attributive relations

N-Num The boys were three in number. Predicative relations

N-Pron The boy came.

He was young. He -noun substitute. The relations may be defined as a positive.

N-Pron this boy attributive relations

The verb has one satellite among parts of speech - the adverb, which adheres to the verb, denoting the properly of the action. Being a verb adjunct, it cannot possibly have nominal inflections, neither can it possess verbal inflections due to the abstract nature of verbal categories, intended only for action, for the realization of predication. Therefore the adverb is indeclinable in all Indo-European languages.

The initial meaningful interconnection among the main, notional parts of speech may be illustrated schematically:

V .

Adv.

N

P ron Num.

Adj.

This scheme shows primary in rank (N-V) and secondary relations (other classes). In general, in actual speech, on the syntagmatic axis, the interdependence of different word-classes may vary but the initial correlation based on the logical structure of human thought and communication exposes the connections mentioned above.

So the background of word-class differentiation in syntagmatic, in other words, word-classes are distinguished in language according to the typical positions they occupy in connected speech and in the long run, according to the natural relations existing between objects and notions of objective reality. It does not mean, however that word-classes should not be analysed and characterized separately. As isolated units they have their own properties, they are registered in dictionaries as lexical units pertaining to some grammatical class, and grammar regards them from its own, generalizing grammatical point of view. Each word-class differs from the other, as equivalent of classes do not exist in grammar, but it does not mean that some overlap of different classes is impossible. There exist in language formal, meaningful and functional connections between word-classes. For instance, the adjective and the adverb may contact in actual speech as they both express some kind of modification (adjective - modification of the substance, adverb-modification of an action). The verb acquires nominal characteristics in its non-finite forms; adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions overlap in form, etc.

Morphology deals mainly with word-classes that are capable of form-building, i.e. of expressing grammatical categories. The other goal of morphology, where parts of speech are concerned, is to give criteria for their identification and a genera! characterization of each of them.

We have been discussing the notional parts of speech, six in number, out which four are the main ones - noun,. verb, adjective and adverb. They cover about 93 % of the whole English lexicon and fill all the main position in a sentence. They are usually called autonomous, autosemantic, contents words, which mean that they posses an independent notional meaning of their own.

Other parts of speech serve as connectors between the main ones; they are synsemantic or synlagmatic words. They do not have a full, independent sense and always perform the function of linkage on the syntagmatic axis. These dependent words are prepositions conjunctions. Prepositions act within one clause, conjunctions may connect words, clauses and even separate sentence: in the room, before noon; after they came. So prepositions and conjuctions express relations and not real objects and notions. Relations are purely formal, they are meaningful, and so each preposition conjunction is characterized by some meaning of its own.

The ninth part of speech usually mentioned in grammars is the interjection. However, it clearly falls out of the system of parts of speech, and of the sentence structure as well. Interjections express neither relations, nor notions. They represent a different layer of language, a supersyntactic element, as they express emotions, i.e. the attitude of speaker towards the situations of speech. Their forms are unpredictable difficult to define from the structural point of view. In addition, functionally, they are undistinguishable from word combinations: "Oh! Ouch! My God! By Lord! Come now!" It would be logical to call such units emotional elements without specifying to what part of speech they belong. By structure the emotional elements are either reflections of sounds of surprise, indignation, etc. (of the type "Ah!", "Oh!"), or they draw from notional words which usually acquire a different meaning in the emotive function: "My!", "Come!" "Well!", or they form word combinations: "Dear me !", "By Lord!" etc. The number of such elements is limited. They may form a special field of study in connection with the ways of expressing emotions.

Lecture3. The noun.