Identifying word classes

Overview

Identifying word classes Syntax of the major word classes Grammatical categories

Syntactic criteria

Distribution Only the same members of one specific word

class can be filled in the same slot in a sentence. Each word class has its own specific set of

modifying words

Morphological criteria

Form The specific set of affixes in the form of words

shows that the words belong to the same word class.

Case Study: Identifying the word class of ‘barista’

Data A barista is a coffee master of making coffee. Baristas are in charge of training new

employees. Only the best barista is hired.

In terms of morphology Singular-plural forms

In terms of syntactic function Modified by adjectives and articles (a, an, the)

Questions:

How do we identify the word class of 信 in ‘他每週寫信給朋友’ in terms of morphological and syntactic criteria?

Analyze the word class of ‘can’ in ‘You can (1) can (2) a can (3)’in terms of morphological and syntactic criteria?

Syntax of the major word classes

Major Word Classes

WHAT RE THE MOST FREQUENTLY FOUND WORD CLASSES IN THE NEWSPAPER HEADLINES?

The verb class

John sleeps

Argument

(participant)

Predicate

(event)

John Loves Coffee.

argument (participant)

Predicate

(event)

argument (participant)

The types of verbs

Intransitive verbs John yelled.

Transitive verbs John cooked a pot of coffee.

Ditransitive verbs John bought Mary a cup of coffee.

The noun class

NP -> Det N Only co-occur with determiners

Determiners

Articles a/an, the

Demonstratives This, that, these, those

Quantifiers Some, all

Possessives His, my, their, your.

The properties of determiners

Used before or after an NP. In some languages, determiners agree with

the NP. Gender

Der Sontag (mas.), die Rose (fem.), das Berlin (neu.) Number

un cadeau (a gift), les cadeaux (gifts)

The semantic role of NPs

Agent The person/thing which performs the action

Patient The person/thing which receives the action

Theme The person/thing which undergoes the action

Goal The purpose of the action

Experiencer The person/thing which experiences the process of senses

Instrument The tool to perform the action.

Analysis

A burglar ransacked my house to steal my coffee. AGENT: PATIENT: INSTRUMENT:

My mother’s bowl was broken by the cat. AGENT: PATIENT: INSTRUMENT:

Exercise:

Mary roasted the duck in the kitchen. The terrorists destroyed the building with a

bomb.

Syntactic roles of NPs

Grammatical relations Subject Object

The tests of subjecthood

Subject-verb agreement Case marking Prepositional object

The tests of subjecthood 1

Subject-verb agreement Number

He is, they are

Person I am, you are, he is, we

are

The French example Chanter ‘to sing’

singular plural

1st person

Je chante Nous chantons

2nd person

Tu chantes Vous chantez

3rd person

Il chante Ils chantent

The captain who commanded these two starships is Jean-Luc Picard.

The tests of subjecthood 2

Case marking Nominative case: subject Accusative case: object

An English case

text He loved her

case Nom. Acc.

Gram category

Subject Object

German case

Definite article

mas fem Neu.

Nominative der die das

Accusative den die das

German case

Glosary Hund: dog beißt : bite Mann: man

Sentences Der Hund beißt den Mann. Den Mann beißt der Hund.

The tests of subjecthood 3

Prepositional object The NP in a PP is an object, NOT a subject.

PP

P NP

Grammatical/morpho-syntactic categories

What are morpho-syntactic categories?

The grammatical information attached to the specific class words Number Case Agreement

How are morpho-syntactic categories represented?

Open class words (e.g., nouns, verbs, or adjectives) change the form by adding affixes to represent grammatical information. Books; John talked too much.

Closed class words may be used with lexical words to represent the grammatical information. Comparative/superlative suffix

Morpho-syntactic categories for nouns 1

Number Gender

Indicated by nouns themselves. Il libro; la casa

Indicated by determiners Le soleil, la lune

Definiteness Case

Morpho-syntactic categories for nouns 2

Definiteness Marked by determiners

Une voiture ‘a car’, la voiture ‘the car’

Marked by morphological form. Den mus-en ‘the mouse’ (Swedish)

Morpho-syntactic categories for nouns 3

Case She (nom.) hates her. (accu.)

Morpho-syntactic categories for verbs

Tense and aspect Mood Voice Agreement

Tense and aspect

Tense “grammaticalized expression of location in time”

(Comrie, 1985) Past and non-past

English He walks to school every day; He walked to school last

week.

The Wishram-Wasco dialect of Chinook Ni-ciux ‘He did it long time ago’ Ga-ciux ‘He did it some time ago’ Na-ciux-a ‘He did it recently’ i-ciux ‘He just did it’

Aspect

Whether an action is completed or ongoing. English:

Auxiliary verb + Verbal inflection They are working. They have worked for two days.

Bantu Verbal morphology

Ba-lee-bomba ‘they are working’ (progressive aspect) Ba-la-bomba ‘they (repeatedly) work’ (habitual aspect)

Mandarin Chinese is …

[+tense, +aspect] [+tense, -aspect] [-tense, +aspect] [-tense, -aspect]

Mood

Definition A grammatical category which marks the

properties such as possibility, probability, and certainty.

for actual events Indicative John bought Starbucks (because he is really rich).

for hypothetical events Modal auxiliaries

John would buy Starbucks (if he were rich).

Subjunctive mood (verbal morphology specifically for hypothetical events)

John demands that he (should) BUY Starbucks. It faut que je le choisses. ‘I should choose it’

je choisis –indicatif Je choisses-le subjontif

Voice

Active vs. passive Chichewa

Kalulu a-na-b-a mkazi wa njovu Hare SU-PAST-STEAL wife of elephant The hare stole the elephant’s wife.’

mkazi wa njovu a-na-b-edw-a wife of elephant SU-PAST-STEAL-PASSIVE ‘The elephant’s wife was stolen.’

Morpho-syntactic categories for adjectives

Comparison Agreement

Comparison

Superlative English: THE -est; THE MOST adj

Comparative English: -er; MORE adj

Equative English: AS adj AS Welsh:

Mae-r cwpan cyn llawn-ED a-r botel Is-the cup as full-EQUATIVE with-the bottle ‘The cup is as full as the bottle’

Agreement

Commonly marked to agree with the nouns adjectives modify in gender and in case

French Le vin blanc ‘the white wine’ La porte blanche ‘the white door’

German Ein kleines Kind sah einen reich-en Mann. A small-SU:SING:NEUTER child saw a rich-OB:SING:MASC man

‘a small child saw a rich man.’