Lecture 2: Categories I

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Lecture 2 Categories I

• ENGL 3373
• Dr. Min-Joo Kim

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Todays agenda

• Categories or parts of speech introduction
• How to classify words into lexical categories

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How many types of categories?

• Lexical categories/content words lexical
  contents open class Noun, Verb, Adjective,
  Adverb, Preposition
• Grammatical/functional categories no or little
  lexical meaning on their own closed class e.g.,
  Determiner, Modal verb, Auxiliary, Coordinator,
  Complementizer.

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How to define categories

• Three criteria
• morphological form okay reliability
• syntactic distribution mostly reliable
• semantics not so reliable.

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Criterion I morphological form

• What are the morphological characteristics of the
  words that belong to that particular part of
  speech?
• What kind of formal changes are made to them when
  they occur in sentences?
• Examples
• -- nouns tend to end with an s when they are
  pluralized (e.g., book ? books).
• -- verbs tend to inflect for tense (time such as
  past and present) (e.g., talk ? talked, and
  talks).

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Difficulty with the morphological criterion

• Different categories behave differently with
  respect to inflection across languages e.g.,
• In English, determiners do not inflect for person
  and gender (some only inflect for number) but, in
  German, they inflect for person and gender as
  well as number. (Note also Guarani determiners.)
• English verbs inflect for tense and number but
  adjectives do not they only inflect for
  comparison. In Korean and Japanese, however,
  adjectives do inflect for tense.

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Criterion II Syntactic Distribution

• What kind of syntactic environments do words tend
  to occur? That is, what are their neighboring
  words?
• Examples
• Nouns tend to occur after determiners, in
  particular, the.
• The ___ is running on the roof.
• Words that can occur in the slot in (1) are cat,
  dog, child, boy, jogger, and they are all nouns.

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More examples of using the syntactic criterion

• Verbs tend to occur following a modal auxiliary
  verb such as can and will.
• (2) John will ______ the clothes.
• Lexical items that occur in the above slot are
  wear, iron, wash, etc. and they are all verbs.

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Criterion III semantics

• Each category seems to be associated with certain
  semantics or meanings e.g., traditionally, nouns
  are believed to name or refer to things, concrete
  objects, concepts, etc., whereas verbs tend to
  describe events, actions, and states of affairs.
• But there are problematic cases for this
  criterion e.g.,
• action vs. act
• Is vs. like John is happy vs. John likes Mary.
• The same word can be used both as a noun or a
  verb e.g., I ride a bike a lot It was a fun ride

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So to conclude

• Among the three criteria, i.e., morphological
  form, syntactic distribution, and semantics,
  syntactic distribution appears to be the most
  reliable.
• Therefore, well use it most predominantly in
  this course. But well also rely on the other two
  criteria from time to time.
• So the conclusion is Apply all the three
  criteria as much as you can.

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Back to Lexical Categories

• Remember that lexical categories are content
  words they are filled with inherent meaning.
• Nouns
• Verbs
• Adjectives
• Adverbs.
• Prepositions (or postpositions depending on the
  word order of the language)

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Nouns morphological features

• Typical derivational affixes for nouns, i.e.,
  morphemes that derive nouns e.g., -ion/ation
  -er -ism -ity -ment.
• Derivational affix a morpheme that derives a new
  category or a new meaning.
• Ability to have a plural form by co-occuring
  with an s at the end e.g., boy(s), box(es).
• Ability to express possession by co-occurring
  with the Saxon genitive s e.g. this boys
  mother is sick.

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Nouns syntactic distribution

• 1. After a determiner or a quantifier
• The ___ is interesting.
• A ____ is a faithful and smart animal.
• Which ____ did you read?
• How many _____ did you see?
• Every ____ likes syntax.

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Nouns syntactic distribution

• 2. Usually at the beginning of a sentence, right
  before a verb.
• ______ is interesting.
• ______ run fast.

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Nouns syntactc distribution

• 3. After a preposition (sometimes following a
  determiner)
• You can find the book at _______.
• Welcome to ________.

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Lexical verbs morphological features

• Some derivational affixes signaling verb
  category -ize, ate. E.g., computer-ize.
  Domestic-ate.
• Inflectional marking -ed, s, -ing. e.g.,
  walk-ed, walks, walking.

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Verbs syntactic distribution

• After the subject noun
• Cats ______.
• I ______.

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Verbs syntactic distribution

• 2. Following a modal verb such as should and
  will.
• I should ______ this semester.
• Alex will _____ today.

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Verbs syntactic distribution

• 3. Following an auxiliary verb or helping verb,
  namely, be, have, do (and also get).
• I am combing Elaine's hair.
• I have finished the homework.
• I did watch the show.

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Verbs syntactic distribution

• 4. Some verbs can occur between two nouns, when
  the first noun is the subject of the sentence.
  These verbs are called transitive verbs.
• Jane _______ Mary.
• The tiger _______ the rabbit.

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Adjectives (ADJ) morphological features

• Some ADJs may be formed by adding the suffix -y
  to a noun
• e.g., noun/nouny verb/verby
  feather/feathery water/watery
• ADJs may appear with the comparative and
  superlative endings. (But the same is often true
  for adverbs as well).
• Comparative form A -er (or more A)
• e.g., Happy - happier
• Superlative form A -est (or most A)
• e.g., happy - happiest.

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Adjectives morphological features contd

• When do adjectives take more/most to express
  comparison and superlativeness?
• ? When it has more than two syllables
• e.g., intelligent
• more intelligent
• most intelligent.

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Adjectives syntactic distribution

• Most adjectives can appear before a noun,
  modifying it. This usage is called attributive.
• Illustration
• (1) He heard a loud noise.
• (2) This beautiful house is up for sale.
• (3) I saw that actor appear in some stupid
  movies.
• (4) I saw many visible stars.

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Adjectives syntactic distribution contd

• Most adjectives can also occur after linking
  verbs such as be or seem. This usage is called
  predicative.
• Illustration
• That comic is beyond funny.
• (2) They seemed uneasy.
• (3) Sallie appears lethargic.

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Adverbs Morphological Features

• Adverbs often end with the suffix -ly. (Note
  some adjectives also end in ly)
• Adding -ly to an adjective creates an adverb
  e.g., beautifully, happily, unhappily, curiously
• Adding ly to a noun creates an adjective e.g.,
  friendly, lovely, monthly

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Adverbs morphological Features

• Adverbs also have comparative and superlative
  forms, just like adjectives
• e.g., fast/faster/fastest hard/harder/hardest
• quickly/more quickly/most quickly
• Well/better/best badly, worse, worst
• Note not is an adverb as is never. Also, words
  like sometimes, always, yesterday, also, and
  often are adverbs. But such adverbs are not
  lexical. More on this later.

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Adverbs syntactic distribution

• Adverbs have a rather remarkable freedom in
  terms of where they occur in the sentence.
• Usually, they occur following an action verb, as
  shown in (1).
• (1) He left the building quickly.
• But they can also precede the verb, as shown in
  (2).
• (2) She quickly left the building.

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Adverbs syntactic distribution

• One important property of adverbs is that their
  syntactic position appears to be less restricted
  or constrained but it is also governed by their
  semantics depending on where they occur, their
  semantic contribution can vary.
• For example, when occurring sentence-initially,
  they scope over the entire sentence, in terms of
  meaning. Compare (4) and (5).
• (4) Rudely, she left early.
• (5) She rudely left early.

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A recent phenomenon on adverb distribution

• In informal use, many speakers tend to use
  adjectives rather than adverbs in certain
  environments.
• (6) Youre doing good.
• (7) That was real nice.
• (8) Come quick!

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Prepositions

• Describe spatial arrangements, time, place,
  relation, or direction of motion.
• English prepositions never have form-based clues
  (no inflectional or other suffixes)

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Prepositions

• English prepositions always come before a noun
  phrase. So (4) isnt an instance of a
  preposition it has a particle (a type of adverb)
  in it.
• (1) Don't go to the bridge.
• (2) I like the cat on the mat.
• (3) You should drive right into the store.
• (4) I was dragging on.
• A preposition plus a noun phrase will form a
  prepositional phrase.

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Next class

• Homework 1 review.
• Homework is found on the course website.