Categorisation in syntax: parts of speech
المؤلف:
Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green
المصدر:
Cognitive Linguistics an Introduction
الجزء والصفحة:
C2P31
2025-11-26
41
Categorisation in syntax: parts of speech
The received view in linguistics is that words can be classified into classes such as ‘noun’ and ‘verb’, traditionally referred to as parts of speech. According to this view, words can be classified according to their morphological and distributional behaviour. For example, a word formed by the addition of a suffix like-ness (for example, happi-ness) is a noun; a word that can take the plural suffix -s (for example, cat-s) is a noun; and a word that can fill the gap following a sequence of determiner the plus adjective funny (for example, the funny ____) is a noun. In modern linguistics, the existence of word classes is posited not only for practical purposes (that is, to provide us with a tool of description), but also in an attempt to explain how it is that speakers ‘know’ how to build new words and how to combine words into grammatical sentences. In other words, many linguists think that these word classes have psychological reality.
However, when we examine the grammatical behaviour of nouns and verbs, there is often significant variation in the nature of the grammatical ‘rules’ they observe. This suggests that the categories ‘noun’ and ‘verb’ are not homogenous, but instead that certain nouns and verbs are ‘nounier’ or ‘verbier’– and hence more representative – than others. In this sense, parts of speech constitute fuzzy categories.
By way of illustration, consider first the agentive nominalisation of transitive verbs. A transitive verb is a verb that can take an object, such as import (e.g. rugs) and know (e.g. a fact). However, while transitive verbs can often be nominalised – that is, made into ‘agentive’ nouns like driver, singer and helper some verbs, such as know, cannot be:
Now consider a second example. While verbs can often be substituted by the ‘be V-able’ construction, this does not always give rise to a well-formed sentence:
Finally, while most transitive verbs undergo passivisation, not all do:
Despite these differences, these verbs do share some common ‘verbish’ behaviour. For example, they can all take the third person present tense suffix-s (s/he import-s/know-s/read-s/spot-s/kick-s/owe-s . . .). Therefore, while certain verbs fail to display some aspects of ‘typical’ verb behaviour, this does not mean that these are not part of the category VERB. In contrast, this variation shows us that there is not a fixed set of criteria that serves to define what it means to be a verb. In other words, the linguistic category VERB contains members that are broadly similar yet exhibit variable behaviour, rather like the physical artefact category CUP.
Now let’s consider the linguistic category NOUN. While nouns can be broadly classified according to the morphological and distributional criteria we outlined above, they also show considerable variation. For example, only some nouns can undergo what formal linguists call double raising. This term applies to a process whereby a noun phrase ‘moves’ from an embedded clause to the subject position of the main clause via the subject position of another embedded clause. If you are not familiar with the grammatical terms ‘noun phrase’, ‘subject’ or ‘(embedded) clause’, the schematic representation in (14) should help. Noun phrases, which are units built around nouns (but sometimes consist only of nouns (for example in the case of pronouns like me or proper names like George), are shown in bold type. Square brackets represent the embedded clauses (sentences inside sentences) and the arrows show the ‘movement’. Subject positions are underlined:
As these examples show, the noun phrase (NP) John can only occupy the subject position of a finite or tensed clause: when the verb appears in its ‘to infinitive’ form (for example, to be/to have), the NP John (which we interpret as the ‘doer’ of the cheating regardless of its position within the sentence) has to ‘move up’ the sentence until it finds a finite verb like is. However, some nouns, like headway, do not show the same grammatical behaviour:
Our next example of variation in the behaviour of nouns concerns question tag formation, a process whereby a tag question such as, isn’t it? don’t you? or mustn’t he? can be tagged onto a sentence, where it picks up the reference of some previously mentioned unit. For example, in the sentence Bond loves blondes, doesn’t he? The pronoun he refers back to the subject noun phrase Bond. Despite the fact that this grammatical process can apply more or less freely to any subject noun phrase, Taylor (2003: 214) argues that there are nevertheless ‘some dubious cases’. For example, the use of a question tag with the noun heed is at best marginal:
As we saw with verbs, examples can always be found that illustrate behaviour that is at odds with the ‘typical’ behaviour of this category. Although most linguists would not consider this variation sufficient grounds for abandoning the notion of word classes altogether, this variation nevertheless illustrates that categories like NOUN and VERB are not uniform in nature, but are ‘graded’ in the sense that members of these categories exhibit variable behaviour.
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