1. Word Classes

2. Syntax Syntax is how words are put together to form sentences.
There are many theories of syntax, with lots of different terminologies. We will be using the terminology used in the Grammar Survey and in Fromkin et al.
We’ll mostly concentrate on English, although we will make reference to other languages

3. Syntax
Words belong to different classes or “parts-of- speech”, like noun, verb or adjective.
Let’s look at the following three groups of words:
Group 1: woman, table, dogs, morning, garden
Group 2: walk, see, hit, write, listen
Group 3: happy, blue, circular, big
How do we know which word belongs in which group or word class?

4. Notional vs Formal definitions
What is a noun?
‘a noun is a word that refers to a person, place or thing’
What is a verb?
‘a verb is a doing word’ or ‘a verb is a word that refers to an event or state’
What is an adjective?
'adjectives are words that refer to properties of things’

5. Notional vs Formal definitions
These definitions are meaning-based and are what are called notional definitions.
There are problems with notional definitions.

6. Problems with notional definitions
The explosion broke all the windows
The thirst was unbearable
Ponting took a great catch
We are expecting the train’s arrival
What sort of words are explosion, thirst,
catch and arrival in these sentences?

7. Problems with notional definitions
We want to say that they are nouns like the words in Group 1 (woman, table, dogs, morning, garden)
But do they refer to ‘a person, place or thing’?
an explosion is an event, not a thing
thirst is a state of being, not a thing
the arrival of the train is an event
a catch could be an event, or may be a thing

8. Problems with notional definitions
Nouns can refer to a wide range of concepts:
physical entities (table, chair, house, stone …)
people (girl, uncle, daughter, student …)
attributes (brightness, clarity, sadness …)
mental states (confidence, love, meditation …)
abstract entities (truth, individuality, ownership…)
events (disappearance, arrival, explosion …)

9. Notional vs Formal definitions
Rather than relying on notional definitions, linguists use formal properties to decide whether a word is in a particular word class or not
Words in the same word class behave the same (are found in the same environments, have the same grammatical features).

10. Syntactic features
Distributional or combinatorial features – the position that a word occupies relative to the other words it occurs with.
Example:
Nouns combine with words like the, a, this and my to form what is called a noun phrase: the dog, an explosion, this class
Adjectives combine with a following noun within a noun phrase: the clever dog, a loud explosion

11. Morphological features
Associated grammatical categories
Some words have variable forms which express special types of meaning or which depend on a relationship with other elements in a phrase or sentence.
Example:
English nouns can get a final ‑s to show that there’s more than one of them (the grammatical category of ‘number’) dog/dogs, walk/walks
verbs can get a final ‑ed to show that the event happened in the past (the grammatical category of ‘tense’) walk/walked, paint/painted

12. Morphological features
Most English pronouns have variable forms.
The choice of form depends on the relationship between the pronoun and other words:
I saw him, He saw me (*Me saw he, *Him saw I)
In Latin, most nouns have variable forms:
Agricola nautam vidit. The farmer saw the sailor
Nauta agricolam vidit.The sailor saw the farmer.

13. Formal definitions
Formal definitions are less problematic than notional ones.
If a word behaves in a particular way, it belongs in the same word class as all the other words which behave in the same way.

14. Note:
Some English words with the same form and similar meanings can be in different classes.
Example:
There are two words catch in English :
Good cricketers always catch the ball.
Ricky Ponting took a great catch.
These words have different formal properties:
they catch, they caught, they are catching
a great catch, several great catches.

15. Another example The students find the work difficult
find is a verb
The archaeologists made several finds
find is a noun

16. Open word classes
We can divide words into two classes - open and closed classes.
The open word classes are ‘open’ in the sense that new words can be added into these classes.
Words in open word classes are often referred to as content words.

17. Nouns Nouns make up one of the most important word classes in English.
This class includes words like: cat, dog, house, arrival, disappearance, John, Mary, Brisbane, linguistics, university, student

18. Morphological property of nouns
In English, many nouns have different forms depending on whether they refer to just one of the items, or more than one.
Examples:
cat ~ cats, dog ~ dogs, horse ~ horses
child ~ children, goose ~ geese
The subclass of nouns that vary in this way are called count nouns.
Mass nouns (sugar, snow, chalk, rice)
Proper nouns (Peter, Brisbane, Queensland)

19. Syntactic properties of nouns
Nouns can occur alone in the context: DETV ____
DETV is the abbreviation for determinative
Determinatives include words like the, a, this, these, some
Examples:
the book, an apple, those elephants, some sugar
The nouns which can occur in this context are the common nouns (mass nouns and count nouns).
Proper nouns in English do not (usually) occur with articles a/the (*the Samantha, *a/the Brisbane)

20. Syntactic properties of nouns
All nouns can occur alone in the context:
(DETV) ____ VERB
The parentheses mean that what it contains is optional.
Examples:
The cat smells, John smokes, Water freezes, Doors open

21. Lexical verbs Lexical verbs make up a large open class
There are many lexical verbs in English (which we’ll discuss in detail in week 4).
Lexical verbs include words like go, come, take, run, walk, read, write, think, cook, eat, understand, and arrive.

22. Morphological property of lexical verbs
Lexical verbs have an ‑ing form, an ‑s form,
and a past tense form (at least).
Example:
the verb eat has forms eating, eats and ate
Many lexical verbs (but not all) have a form in ‑ed
(as in walked) or a form in ‑en (as in eaten).

23. Syntactic property of lexical verbs
Lexical verbs can occur alone in the context:
MODAL NP ____
where MODAL is a type of auxiliary verb (which will be discussed shortly) like can, must, will;
and NP stands for noun phrase (which we will look at in Week 2) e.g., the book, John, some sugar, cats, a big elephant.

24. Syntactic property of lexical verbs
MODAL NP ____ ?
Examples:
Must you go?
Can he stay?
Should we hyphenate?
Will the horses eat?
Should the students leave?

25. Adjectives
Adjectives include words like big, small, large, heavy, interesting, expensive and fast
Example: a fast car, the expensive coat

26. Morphological properties of adjectives
Many adjectives inflect for grade.
Most adjectives with only one or two syllables can take the suffixes ‑er and ‑est to form the comparative (‘more’) and superlative (‘most’).
Examples:
great ~ greater ~ greatest
happy ~ happier ~ happiest
NOTE: Many adverbs also have this property

27. Morphological properties of adjectives
Most adjectives can take the suffix ‑ly to form an adverb.
Examples:
quick ~ quickly, ready ~ readily, beautiful ~ beautifully, unconstitutional ~ unconstitutionally
The first member of these pairs is an adjective
The second is an adverb.
NOTE:
This -ly must not be confused with the -ly that forms adjectives from nouns:
man ~ manly, cost ~ costly, friend ~ friendly, love ~ lovely

28. Syntactic property of adjectives
Adjectives can occur alone in the context:
(DETV) NOUN is ____
Nearly all adjectives (and mass nouns) can occur in this position
Examples:
This car is green
Peter is hungry
A lion is dangerous
My neighbour is happy

29. Syntactic property of adjectives
Most adjectives can occur in the context
DETV ____ NOUN
Examples:
the big elephant, a fast car, a dangerous lion
However, some nouns can also occur in this position.
the police car, the kitchen floor

30. A syntactic test which does distinguish adjectives from nouns is:
DETV ADJ NOUN
* DETV NOUN ADJ
Examples:
a beautiful baby (*a baby beautiful)
the fantastic film (*the film fantastic)
this yummy meal (*this meal yummy)

31. A noun can precede or follow another noun
DETV NOUN NOUN
Examples:
A corporation law
A law corporation
A prayer meeting
A morning prayer

32. Adverbs
Adverbs are words like quickly, slowly, fortunately and fast (e.g., She ran fast).
Degree adverbs form a subclass of adverbs which combine with adjectives or other adverbs
Examples: very, rather, extremely and quite.
very nice, rather handsome, quite slowly

33. Morphological property of adverbs
Many adverbs have the form adjective +ly, as in happily, quickly,
beautifully, amazingly
Not all words ending in -ly are adverbs; when added to a noun, -ly
forms an adjective, as in costly, heavenly, manly, womanly, friendly…
Some adverbs have no distinctive ending (and no related adjective),
e.g., soon, just, very, less, well, worse.
Don’t rely on the traditional formal definition that “adverbs end in –ly”,
this is not always the case.

34. Syntactic property of adverbs
Most adverbs can appear alone in the context:
NP VERB NP ____
Examples:
The boys finished the job quickly
She did the job badly/well.

35. OPEN WORD CLASSES
noun
lexical verb
adjective
adverb

36. Closed word classes
Closed word classes are ‘closed’ in that they do not easily accept new members, and most of them are quite small, so that it is possible to exhaustively list all the members of the class.
Unlike with the open word classes, there is often variation in the terms and classifications used in talking about closed word classes, and different languages have different closed word classes.

37. Closed class words: Pronouns Determinatives/determiner Prepositions
Auxiliary Verbs
Coordinators / conjunctions
Subordinators / complementisers

38. Pronouns We will talk about three different types of pronouns:
personal pronouns
interrogative pronouns
relative pronouns.
(Traditional grammar also talks about demonstrative
pronouns and indefinite pronouns, but we will not use
these terms.)

39. Personal pronouns Personal pronouns have different forms for:
person (first, second, third): I, you, he/she
number (singular, plural): I, we
case (nominative, accusative, dependent genitive, independent genitive and reflexive): I, me, my, mine, myself
The forms of the personal pronouns in standard English are listed on page 5 of your lecture notes 1B.

40. Interrogative pronouns
who, whose, whom for humans
what for non-humans
We use these forms to ask about someone or something:
Who said that? What happened? Whose book?

41. Relative pronouns
Relative pronouns are used within a noun phrase in constructions like:
the woman who took the car
the woman whose book you borrowed
the man whom you interviewed
the tree which fell
a pub where we met
that time when you fainted
one reason why they left

42. Determinatives/determiners
Determinatives usually indicate whether the speaker has a particular individual in mind or whether they assume that the addressee can – or cannot – identify what is being referred to:
the, this, each, every, a, some, any …
The most important members of the class of determinatives are the (definite article) and a/an (indefinite article).

43. Syntactic property of Determinatives
Determinatives occur as the first word in a noun phrase:
the happy boy
those new books
a dirty face
some fast cars
many new books
several unhappy people
various brave and hearty students

44. Types of Determinatives
There are quite a few determinatives, and they can be sub-classified according to the kinds of meanings they express.
The major determinatives are:
Article: the, a, an
The student came to class.
Demonstrative: this, these, that, those
That student came to class.

45. More Determinatives Universal: all, both Both students came to class.
Distributive: each, every
Every student came to class.
Existential: some, any
Some students came to class.
Cardinal numerals: one, two, three, etc.
Three students came to class.

46. Determinatives Disjunctive: either, neither
Neither student came to class.
Negative: no
No student came to class.
Additive: another
Another student came to class.
Degree: many, more, few, little
Few students came to class.
Sufficiency: enough, sufficient
Enough students came to class.

47. Prepositions
Traditionally, the notional definition of prepositions has to do with space and time, and the traditional formal definition is that it occurs before a noun phrase:
in the box, on the sofa, at 3 o’clock, before dawn
Prepositions in English are morphologically invariable (that is, they do not change form). This means we’ll have to concentrate on their syntactic properties to define them.

48. Syntactic Properties of Prepositions
____ NP
He was standing outside the house
The horse jumped over the fence
He ran from the burning building.
Joseph came after the party.
Some prepositions can stand alone without a following NP
He was standing outside
The horse jumped over
Joseph came after
* He ran from

49. Syntactic Properties of Prepositions
Some prepositions precede other prepositions:
____ P + NP
He crawled out from behind the sofa
He looked over from the house
She took it off of the table. (American English)
She threw it out of the window.
She stole it from under his nose.

50. Syntactic Properties of Prepositions
Most prepositions can be modified by right
Examples:
He was standing RIGHT outside the house
The horse jumped RIGHT over the fence
He ran RIGHT from the burning building.
Joseph came RIGHT after the party.

51. Prepositions Prepositions can occur in a variety of contexts:
before noun phrases:
I went to the shops
on their own:
I went outside
before another preposition:
I went out through the window

52. NOTE:
The Grammar Survey also classifies as preposition words which are preposed to a clause (or sentence-like element):
He arrived before/after the train had left.

53. Auxiliary Verbs
Auxiliary verbs (often just called auxiliaries) occur in a sentence in addition to a lexical verb. We use them to indicate various grammatical categories, such as aspect, mood and voice. We will talk about them much more in future lectures, but they can be sub-classified as:
Modal verbs: will, would, can, could, shall, should, may, might, must
Perfect auxiliary: have
Progressive auxiliary: be
Passive auxiliary: be
Do-support auxiliary: do
Note that the verbs have and do are both auxiliaries and also lexical
verbs, depending on their use.

54. Coordinators In English, we have three main coordinators:
and, but and or.
These usually coordinate elements that are
grammatically alike — clauses (John got up but
he didn’t leave), noun phrases (the man or
his dog), verb phrases (he came in and sat down),
nouns (the knives and forks) ….

55. Subordinators/ Complementisers
Another class of invariant words: that, for, whether, to, if.
___ CLAUSE
Examples:
I know that he is here
I wonder whether he knows the answer
I asked Mary if she had eaten her lunch
I arranged for John to stay

56. Further reading: Grammar survey pp1-3.
(Chapters 3 and 5 are also relevant, but you
may not be able to understand those
chapters fully until later in the course, so
you may want to wait until then to read
them.)