Anglistika státnice – morfologie a syntax (Parts of Speech – criteria for their classification)

Parts of Speech – criteria for their classification (similarities and differences between English and Czech, syntactic, morphological, semantic, phonological; grammatical categories, e.g. number, countability, definiteness; open/autosemantic and closed/synsemantic word classes; syntactic functions of various parts of speech)

EN: primary criterion is syntax
CZ: primary criterion is morphology

Criteria for classification

1. phonetic criterion

a) alternation of phonemes – e.g. advice X advise, practice X practise
b) accent/stress – e.g. insult – when it’s a noun -> stress on the first syllable, when a verb -> on the second, according to how we stress a word:
I. main stress – words having main stress have also their own meaning and this meaning can be defined or explained -> are autosemantic (have meaning outside the context), open class (see below)
II. minor stress – words not having main stress – are called sinsemantic (= meaning is purely grammatical -> must be used in context), close class

2. morphological

a) primary – inheretent, e.g. gender
b) primary – optional, e.g. number
c) secondary – configurational (agreement in a sentence, e.g. case)
another division:
affixes:
A) inflectional (s, est, th, plural)
B) derivational (ly, ness, ity)
some affixes are only used with a certain part of a speech
-ment is used with nouns that were derived from verbs
-hood typical of nouns that are derived from nouns
Other morphological criteria:
– Whether the word expresses the category of number, declination (in EN only 3 cases with pronouns + 2 with nouns), conjugation and gradation

3. syntactic

a) co-occurrence – e.g. determiner usually goes with a noun, verbs govern nouns and adverbs
b) distribution – noun can be subject/object/complement; adjective-> attribute, verb -> predicate

4. semantic

– the typical meaning – e.g. adjectives imply quality

CZ+EN: division into part of speech is done according to the features word share
CZ: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, particles, interjections
EN: nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, particles, interjections, + determiners, modals (look at questions 8 + 9 for determiners and modals)

Parts of speech can be divided into 2 sorts:
a) open class – lexical words, unlimited number, productive class (= new words can enter), N,ADJ, DV, V + sometimes prepositions
b) Close class – limited number, establish register – conjunctions, particles, numerals, pronouns, interjections, determiners, modals, prepositions

Some words have to be out into context to recognize their word class – e.g. come down (down = adj), ups and downs (downs = noun), they downed a glass (down = verb)

Conversion – look at question 4 in lexicology

Category prototypical – the best example of each category which has all features typical for the category
X
Fussy categories – e.g. reading in a sentence – Reading is very difficult
1) semantics – assigns activity -> verbal feature
2) morphology – has derivational suffix -ing, which is non-verbal because it doesn’t have auxiliary like e.g. in case he is reading (for the whole list of thing -ing suffix can mean look at question no 14 in morpho-syntax; reading has no article – so if it’s a noun, it must be an abstract noun
3) syntax – reading precedes predicate and its function here is a subject
the result is: according to its position in a sentence it’s probably a noun, because it’s highly typical of subjects to be nouns

NOUNS

EN: number, gender, case + countability + definiteness
CZ: number, gender, case + declination
For number, gender, countability and definiteness see questions 3, 4 and 5

Case – with nouns only 2 cases
a) common case, e.g. Peter
b) saxon- genitive case e.g. Peter’s
– with pronouns 3 cases
a) subject case
b) object case
c) saxon genitive case
– case assigners are V + PREP
– in CZ case is manifested in flexion, cases are: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative, instrumental

syntactic function of parts of speech – look at question no 13 + 16