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The Principles of Classification as Used by Structural Descriptive
The Theory of Grammatical Classes of Words
The Parts of Speech Problem. Grammatical Classes of Words
The parts of speech are classes of words, all the members of these classes
having certain characteristics in common which distinguish them from the
members of other classes. The problem of word classification into parts of speech
still remains one of the most controversial problems in modern linguistics. The
attitude of grammarians with regard to parts of speech and the basis of their
classification varied a good deal at different times. Only in English grammarians
have been vacillating between 3 and 13 parts of speech. There are four approaches
to the problem:
1. Classical, or logical-inflectional, worked out by prescriptivists
2. Functional, worked out by descriptivists
3. Distributional, worked out by structuralists
4. Complex
The Principles of Classification as Used by Prescriptive Grammarians
Prescriptive grammarians, who treated Latin as an ideal language, described
English in terms of Latin forms and Latin grammatical constraints. Similar to
Latin, words in English were divided into declinables (nouns, adjectives, pronouns,
verbs, participles) and indeclinables (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions,
interjections, articles). The number of parts of speech varied from author to author:
in early grammars nouns and adjectives formed one part of speech; later they came
to be treated as two different parts of speech. The same applies to participles,
which were either a separate part of speech or part of the verb. The article was first
classed with the adjective. Later it was given the status of a part of speech and
toward the end of the 19th century the article was integrated into the adjective. The
underlying principle of classification was form, which, as can be seen from their
treatment of the English noun, was not only morphologic but also syntactic, i.e. if
it was form in Latin, it had to be form in English.
The Principles of Classification as Used by Non-Structural Descriptive
Grammarians
Non-structural descriptive grammarians adopted the system of parts of
speech worked out by prescriptivists and elaborated it further. Henry Sweet
(1892), similar to his predecessors, divided words into declinable and indeclinable.
To declinables he attributed noun-words (noun, noun-pronoun, noun-numeral,
infinitive, gerund), adjective-words (adjective, adjective-pronoun, adjectivenumeral, participle), verb (finite verb), verbals (infinitive, gerund, participle) and to indeclinables (particles), adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection. Henry Sweet speaks of three principles of classification: form, meaning, and function.
However, the results of his classification reveal a considerable divergence between
theory and practice: the division of the parts of speech into declinable and
indeclinable is a division based on form. Only within the class can we see the
operation of the principle of function.
Otto Jespersen, another noted descriptivist, also speaks of three principles
of classification: “In my opinion everything should be kept in view, form, function
and meaning...” (O Jespersen, 1935:91). On the basis of the three criteria, the
scholar distinguishes the following parts of speech: substantives, adjectives,
pronouns, verbs, and particles (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections).
Otto Jespersen’s system is a further elaboration of Henry Sweet’s system. Unlike
Henry Sweet, Otto Jespersen separates nouns (which he calls substantives) from
noun-words, a class of words distinguished on the basis of function – a noun word
is a word that can function as a noun; he also distinguishes pronouns as a separate
part of speech, thus isolating them from Henry Sweet’s noun-words and adjective words. Both scholars treat the verb alike: to Henry Sweet the verb includes
primarily finite forms: he doubts as to the inclusion of non-finites in the verb.
Although the scholar speaks of form, function and meaning, in practice he gives
preference to form.
The Principles of Classification as Used by Structural Descriptive
Grammarians
The traditional classification of words into parts of speech was rejected by
structural grammarians who bitterly criticized it from two points. First, in their
opinion, traditional grammar relies heavily on the most subjective element in
language, meaning. The other is that it uses different criteria of classification: it
distinguishes the noun, the verb and the interjection on the basis of meaning; the
adjective, the adverb, the pronoun, and the conjunction, on the basis of function,
and the preposition, partly on function and partly on form.
One of the noted representatives of American structuralism, Charles Fries
(1956), rejected the traditional principle of classification of words into parts of
speech replacing it with the methods of distributional analysis and substitution.
Words that exhibit the same distribution (which is the set of contexts, i.e.
immediate linguistic environments, in which a word can appear) belong to the
same class. Roughly speaking, the distribution of a word is the position of a word
in the sentence. To classify the words of English, Charles Fries used three
sentences called substitution frames. He thought that the positions, or the slots, in
the sentences were sufficient for the purpose of the classification of all the words
of the English language.
Frame A
The concert was good.
Frame B
The clerk remembered the tax.
Frame C
The team went there.
The position discussed first is that of the word concert. Words that can
substitute for concert (e.g. food, coffee, taste, etc.) are Class 1 words. The same
holds good for words that can substitute for clerk, tax and team – these are typical
positions of Class 1 words. The next important position is that of was, remembered
and went; words that can substitute for them are called Class 2 words. The next 17
position is that of good. Words that can substitute for good are Class 3 words. The
last position is that of there; words that can fill this position are called Class 4
words. According to the scholar, these four parts of speech contain about 67 per
cent of the total instances of the vocabulary. He also distinguishes 15 groups of
function words set up by the same process of substitution but on different patterns.
These function words (numbering 154 in all) make up a third of the recorded
material. Charles Fries does not use the traditional terminology. To understand his
function words better, we shall use, where possible, their traditional names: Group
A words (determiners); Group B (modal verbs); Group C (the negative particle
“not”); Group D (adverbs of degree); Group E (coordinating conjunctions); Group F (prepositions); Group G (the auxiliary verb “to”); Group H
(the introductory “there”); Group I (interrogative pronouns and adverbs); Group J
(subordinating conjunctions); Group K (interjections); Group L (the words “yes”
and “no”); Group M (the so-called attention-giving signals: look, say, listen);
Group N (the word “please”); Group O (the forms “let us”, “lets” in request
sentences).
It is obvious that in classifying words into word-classes Charles Fries in fact
used the principle of function, or combinability (the position of a word in the
sentence is the syntactic function of word). Being a structuralist, he would not
speak of function: function is meaning while position is not. His classification is
not beyond criticism. First, not all relevant positions were tested. Class 3 words are
said to be used in the position of good (Frame A). But the most typical position of
these words is before Class l words. If this position had been used by the scholar,
such words as woolen, wooden, golden, etc. (i.e. relative adjectives) would have
found their place in the classification. But if he had done it, the classification
would have collapsed, for their position can be filled by other word-classes: nouns,
numerals, pronouns. Second, his functional classes are very much ‘splintered’, i.e.
broken into small groups. This is good for practice but bad for theory, for
theoretical grammar is more interested in uniting linguistic facts than in separating
them. Third, being deprived of meaning, his word-classes are “faceless”, i.e. they
have no character. No wonder, other structuralists deemed it necessary to return to
traditional terminology and to use the criterion of form and, additionally, position.
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