7. Pronouns: categories and subclasses. Theory of deixis and pronouns.

There is a peculiar observation about the class of pronouns. They are not united by any solid and more or less convincing categorical meaning. Pronouns belonging to different categories answer different questions and perform different functions in the sentence.

It is traditional to distinguish 9 subclasses of pronouns:

1) personal; 6) indefinite-negative;

2) possessive; 7)generalizing;

3) reflexive; 8) demonstrative;

4) reciprocal; 9) quantitative.

5) interrogative-relative;

Such outright heterogeneity has caused much debate as the composition of the part of speech. Reasoning from the etymology of the word, such scholars as Nesfield, Curm and others stuck to the point of view that only substitutes of nouns can be considered pronouns. YET, I, WE, YOU, ETC. NORMALLY DO NOT REPLACE ANY NOUN.

Others scholars widened their group up to the words which serve to substitute nouns and adjective, that is nominal parts of speech.

Finally, the most liberal scholars call then substitutes of nouns, adjectives, adverbs and numerals.

Yet, a solution seems to have been found.

Many scholars in different countries and historical epochs arrived to the same conclusion, namely, that there exists a category which is now universally known as deixis.

Deixis is the function or use of a deictic word, that is a word, whose meaning is fully dependent on the context, including extralinguistic context. The referent of such a word cannot be reconstructed without being aware of the context.

There are three major types of deixis:

1) personal;

2) spatial (proximal, distal);

3) temporal.

Deixis was studied by such scholars as Jespersen (shifter), Fillmore, Buler, Jacobson, Пешковский.

Based on their discoveries professor Blokh came to the conclusion that it is deixis which serves as the categorical meaning of pronouns.

8. Adverbs: categories and subclasses.

The adverb is one of the parts of speech established in antiquity. Its categorical meaning is that of a non-substantive property. In other words, it modifies any part of speech other than noun, as well as word combinations and clauses.

As to their structure, Pns may be simple (very, rather), derived (clockwise) and composite (at last, to and fro).

The most broad classification of adverbs outlines two classes:

1) qualitative Advs (usually formed from adjectives via the suffix –ly, but also well, hard, fast – flat adverbs);

2) circumstantial Advs.: spatial, temporal relationships, frequency, etc.

But also :

3) quantitative adverbs – all types of intensifiers (very, extremely, dreadfully, fairly, quite).

Morphologically, Advs are classified into gradable (loudly – more loudly) and non-gradable (extremely).

Non-traditional word classes: modal words, statives (<category of state> words).

The class of MW as a separate part of speech was first distinguished within the grammatical tradition of this country (Vinogradov). Yet, some Western scholars (such as Henry Sweet), even referring them to a class of adverbs, admitted their special character. Thus, by modal words we understand words expressing the subjective attitude of the speaker toward the utterance or the situation.

Modal words can express certainty or presumption, as well as subjective judgment. Of course, indeed, undoubtedly – certainty; perhaps, maybe, possibly – presumption, uncertainty; fortunately, unluckily – desirability, undesirability.

Modal words occupy a special position in relation to the sentence, as they don’t function as any of its members, but rather provide an evaluation of the whole sentence.

As it often happens, not all of the criteria put forward by Scherba characterize modal words as a PoS, namely, there is no clear-cut typical morphological form. Yet, as for the rest of the bases, they give grounds to single them out into a special part f speech.

Statives comprise a class words built with the help of the productive prefix a- (in English) or, as a rule, the suffix –o (in Russian, though other variants are possible) and denoting a temporary state an object finds itself in. There’s a serious linguistic discussion as for their constituting a separate part of speech.

Points of view:

1. Statives make a separate part of speech.

2. Statives are a subclass of adjectives (in English) or adverbs (in Russian).

An argument against the second position is that statives are used as adverbial modifiers/predicatives rather than attributes. The current states expressed by the statives may denote a) a physical state; b) a psychic state; c) a position in the space, etc.

Щерба и Виноградов described such words as “the words of the category of state”, which later contracted up to “statives”.

Бархударов и Блох, Бурлакова, Почепцов opposed to considering statives a separate part of speech in English on the following grounds:

1) their categorical meaning is very similar to that of the adjective with a slight specification;

2) they combine with nouns and link-verbs like adjectives;

3) analytically they can form degrees of comparison;

4) they can be modified by adverbs;

5) in the sentence they act as predicatives (and post-positional attributes: they caught him asleep).

Yet there are arguments against their belonging to adjectives:

1. On a large scale the semantic meaning is different.

2. No synthetic forms of degrees of comparison. What Blokh and others considered degrees of comparison are actually free word combinations similar to “half asleep, almost asleep”, et.

3. They possess their own derivational affix different from those typical of adjectives.

4. The syntactic functions differ greatly. Statives are practically never used as attributes, mostly as predicatives, whereas the attribute is the main function of the adjectives.

5. The combinability with other parts of speech: right-hand C. with nouns is typical of adjective, but statives were historically formed from phrases starting with ­on.

Zigadlo, Ivanova, Iofik distinguished between stable and unstable statives, the first ones being most widely used (about 30 of them), others appearing as products of individual speech acts (bout 100): aswim, adream, ashine, etc.