Lexical categories

1.5 Lexical categories

In the discussion of the constituents of sentences, reference has been made to nouns and noun phrases, verbs and verb phrases, and prepositions and prepositional phrases. Nouns, verbs and prepositions are traditionally referred to as ‘parts of speech’ or ‘word classes’; in contemporary linguistics they are termed lexical categories. The most important lexical categories are noun, verb, adjective, adverb and adposition, which subsumes prepositions and postpositions. In traditional grammar, lexical categories are given notional definitions, i.e. they are characterized in terms of their semantic content [9,pp.25-67].

For example, noun is defined as ‘the name of a person, place or thing’, verb is defined as an ‘action word’, and adjective is defined as ‘a word expressing a property or attribute’. In modern linguistics, however, they are defined morphosyntactically in terms of their grammatical properties.

Nouns may be classified in a number of ways. There is a fundamental contrast between nouns that refer uniquely to particular entities or individuals and those that do not; the best example of the first kind of noun is a proper name, e.g. Sam, Elizabeth, Paris or London, and nouns of this type are referred to as proper nouns.

Nouns which do not refer to unique individuals or entities are called common nouns, e.g. dog, table, fish, car, pencil, water. One of the important differences between proper and common nouns in a language like English is that common nouns normally take an article, while proper nouns do not, e.g. : The boy left versus *The Sam left (cf. *Boy left versus Sam left). Common nouns may be divided into mass nouns and count nouns. Count nouns, as the name implies, denote countable entities, e.g. seven chairs, six pencils, three dogs, many cars. Mass nouns, on the other hand, are not readily countable in their primary senses, e.g. *two waters, *four butters, *six snows. In order to make them countable, it is necessary to add what is sometimes called a ‘measure word’, which delimits a specific amount of the substance, e.g. two glasses/bottles/drops of water, four pats/sticks of butter, six shovelfuls of snow. Measure words can be used with count nouns only when they are plural, e.g. *six boxes of pencil versus six boxes of pencils, *two cups of peanut versus three jars of peanuts. Pronouns are closely related to nouns, as they both function as NPs. Pronouns are traditionally characterized as ‘substitutes’ for nouns or as ‘standing for’ nouns, e.g. John went to the store, and he bought some milk, in which he substitutes or stands for John in the second clause. This, however, is true only of third-person pronouns like he, she, it, or they; it is not true of first-person pronouns like I or second-person pronouns like you. First- and second-person pronouns refer to or index the speaker and addressee in a speech event and do not replace or stand for a noun.

Verbs can likewise be categorized along a number of dimensions, such as:

person, number( in Modern English there are but few form indicating them in the synthetic forms of the verb. These are (1).the 3^rd person singular Present Indefinite Indicative; (2) the Future Indefinite tense; (3) the suppletive forms of the verb to be for different persons of singular and plural), aspect (perfect and progressive), voice (active and passive), mood (indicative, imperative and subjunctive) and tense (there are four groups of tenses: Indefinite, Continuous, Perfect and Perfect Continuous; each of these forms includes four tenses: Present, Past, Future and Futute-in-the-Past. Thus there are 16 tenses in English.)

Conclusions to Part I

1 .Syntax is the branch of grammar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaning within the sentence.

2. The main object of syntax is sentence construction.

3. One of the most obvious yet important ways in which languages differ is the order of the main elements in a sentence.

4. The basic word order in English clauses is subject–verb–object, articles precede the noun they modify, and auxiliary verbs precede the main verb. These are English-specific syntactic rules.

5. The connection between the words in a sentence is realized through the changes in their forms and these changes in the form of the words to indicate their function in the sentence are called ‘inflections’, and the study of the formation of words and how they may change their form is called morphology.

6. Syntax investigates simple sentences, as well as their combinations called complex sentences.

7. A central part of the description of what speakers do is characterizing the grammatical (or well-formed) sentences of a language and distinguishing them from ungrammatical or (ill-formed) sentences.

8. Two interrelated aspects of syntax: relational structure and constituent structure.

9. Words organization into phrases. Types of phrases.

10. In order to check if word combination is a phrase, the tests for phrases are to be done.

11. Lexical categories. Their semantic content.

Part II. English Verb. Verb Phrases

 

2.1 Peculiarities of the Verb

The term “verb” is used in two senses:

1.  the verb is one of the elements used in the clause structure, like the subject and the object.

2.  a verb is a member of a word class, like a noun, and an adjective.

The two senses are related in this way: a verb phrase consists of one or more verbs (sense 2) e.g. linked, is making, can believe, might be leaving in the sentences below; the verb phrase operates as the verb (sense 1) in the clause, e.g.:

They linked hands. He is making a noise.

I can believe you. She will be leaving soon.

Verbs are the very large lexical word class in English, and were traditionally called ‘doing’ words when taught to young children. The lexical verb class is more inclusive than the label implies as there are verbs (for example have, be) which do not describe doing, but being, or states, rather than processes and still others that describe events with no intentional action behind them (for example die, fall).

In order to group these words together, then, we need to identify their formal nd functional features. The inflectional morphemes can be used to modify the verb in English. These include the present-tense, third-person singular morpheme, which is written as -s in most cases; the past tense morpheme, written as -ed in all regular verbs in English; and the progressive form, which is written as -ing for all English verbs.

Many minor sentences, and many spoken ones, consist of a single word that is not necessarily a verb:

No! Natalie! Me. Singing. Slowly.

It is possible to work out likely contexts in which these words will occur as utterances in their own right. However, they must have a context in order to have a viable meaning.

With the exception of these and other minor utterance types, clauses in English need to have a verb in them. This verb may be the head of a verb phrase, but it may stand alone as a verb phrase too. The following clauses have a single verb functioning in the predicator role:

Young Jolyon looked round the room. [59, p.65]

The old face looked worn and hollow again [59, p.34]

His eyes roved from bottle to bottle.[59, p.74]

Two ladies advanced. [59, p.44]

The fixity of Swithin's eye alone betrayed emotion[59, p.52]

As a word class verbs can be divided into three main categories, according to their function within the verb phrase: the open class of Full Verbs (or lexical verbs), and the very small closed classes of Primary Verbs, and Modal Auxiliary Verbs. Since the primary verbs and the modal auxiliary verbs are closed classes, we can list them in full.

Full Verbs believe, follow, like, see,…

Primary Verbs be, have, do

Modal Auxiliaries can, may, shall, will, must, could, would,…

If there is only one verb in the verb phrase, it is the Main Verb. If there is more than one verb, the final one is the main verb, and the one or more verbs that go before it are auxiliaries. For example transmit is the main verb in this sentence, and might and be are auxiliaries:

 … to whom he might transmit the money he saved,…[59, p.66]

Of the three classes of verbs, the full verbs can act only as main verbs, the modal auxiliaries can act only as auxiliary verbs, and the primary verbs can act either as main verbs or as auxiliary verbs. Let us investigate the auxiliary verbs closer.

Auxiliary verbs. Auxiliaries have little or no lexical meaning. They are ‘helper’ verbs, in the sense that they help to form complex verb forms. In doing so they express either a grammatical notion (like ‘passive’, ‘progressive’ or ‘tense’) or one or more modal ideas. This is not to say that auxiliaries are devoid of meaning, but their meanings are more schematic (i.e. more ‘skeletal’, more ‘abstract’, less ‘full’) than those of lexical verbs.

Within the auxiliaries we can make a distinction between two classes: grammatical auxiliaries and modal auxiliaries. The former, which are sometimes referred to as ‘primary auxiliaries’, have a purely grammatical function:

1.  the ‘tense auxiliary’ have, which is used in forming perfect tense forms;

2.  the ‘aspect auxiliary’ be, which is used for building progressive verb orms;

3.  the ‘voice auxiliary’ be, which is used in the passive;

4.  the ‘periphrastic auxiliary’ do, which is used as a ‘dummy’ (pro-form) when a VP that does not contain an auxiliary (e. g. love her) is used in a construction that requires one (e. g. I don’t love her, Do you love her?, I do love her, etc.)

Next, there are the ‘modal auxiliaries’: can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, ought to, will, and would. These auxiliaries express special shades of meaning, such as volition, possibility, permission, necessity, intention, obligation, expectation, inference, ability, determination, etc. The modal auxiliaries differ semantically from the first group in that they add lexical meaning rather than fulfill a grammatical function. However, they still have less concrete, and hence more widely applicable, meanings than most lexical verbs. This wider applicability explains why auxiliaries form a relatively small set when compared with lexical verbs.

 Because an auxiliary does not have a full lexical meaning, it cannot be used without a main (lexical) verb, except in ‘code’, where the auxiliary is used as pro-form for an entire verb phrase (as in If I do the thing, I will do it thoroughly, but I must have a free hand). In other words, an auxiliary cannot be the only or last verb form in the VP (except in ‘code’). In the following example the main verbs are italicized while the auxiliaries are underlined:

[“What did he do last night?”] - “He {studied / worked / may have slept / could /had to / would}.”

Unlike lexical verbs, auxiliaries have the so-called ‘NICE-properties’. ‘NICE’ is an acronym (coined by Huddleston 1976) consisting of the initial letters of the terms negation, inversion, code and emphasis. The reference is to the four cases in which the English VP requires an auxiliary. If there is no auxiliary, the ‘periphrastic auxiliary’ do has to be added. In that case we say that the lexical verb requires ‘do-support’. In other words, the statement that ‘auxiliaries have the NICE-properties’ means that they do not combine with the periphrastic auxiliary do in clauses made negative by the use of not, in clauses involving subject-auxiliary inversion, in code and in cases of emphasis. By contrast, clauses without an auxiliary need ‘do-support’ (i.e. the insertion of do) in these four cases. Compare:

He went / He didn’t go / Did he go? / Yes he did / He did go.

He will go / He won’t go / Will he go? / Yes he will / He will go.

The auxiliary verbs are made up of the modals (may, must, might and so on), have (perfective) and be (progressive and passive). Here it is worth noting some of the uses of the auxiliary function: to construct questions, to provide emphasis and to carry negation.

Looking at questions first, the first auxiliary in a verb phrase can be put before the subject in order, to ask a question:

She will be coming. Will she be coming?

The emphatic use of the auxiliary is connected with stress and intonation patterns, but it is again the first auxiliary that carries the extra emphasis of an emphatic version:

Will you ask Mr. Bosinney, and I will get young Flippard.[59, p.66]

I will call for you and your young man at seven o'clock.[59, p.23]

A Forsyte will require good, if not delicate feeding, but a Dartie will tax the resources of a Crown and Sceptre [59, p.34]

 

His drink, too, will need to be carefully provided; there is much drink in this country 'not good enough' for a Dartie; he will have the best.[59, p.52]

The negation of English sentences is usually carried by the verb phrase in the form of a negative particle, which intervenes in the verb phrase after the first auxiliary and before the following auxiliary or lexical verb:

If you exceed that sum by as much as fifty pounds, I will not hold you responsible Jane hasn’t been hurt.[59, p.33]

He knew it was done that he might not feel she came because of her dead lover.[59, p.23]

The feeling of shame at what might be called 'running after him' was smothered by the dread that he might not be there, that she might not see him after all 59, p.35]

 

As these examples show, the negative particle is often attached to the auxiliary verb, though in the case of might the reduced form (mightn’t) is less common now.

All three of these special uses of the auxiliary require some attention to the first auxiliary of a verb phrase. This may be a modal auxiliary or it may be have or be.

Whichever it is, this verb is known as the ‘operator’ because it has the special functions described above. In the absence of an auxiliary (that is, where there is only a lexical verb), the dummy operator – the verb do – is used instead:

But I suppose you feel it much as I do when I part with a picture--a sort of child?"[59, p.34]

But if you ask me how I do it, I answer, because I'm a Forsyte."[59, p.67]

The dummy operator, then, performs the three functions of the other auxiliaries, but it does not carry any meaning of its own to add to the verb phrase.

Though some verbs have a status intermediate between that of main verbs and that of auxiliary verbs. Sometimes the main verb (and perhaps the other words too) is understood from the context, so that only auxiliaries are present in the verb phrase:

I can’t tell them but you can. [i.e. ‘can tell them’]

Your parents may not have suspected anything but your sister may have. [i.e. ‘may have suspected something’].

There also multi-word verbs, which consist of a verb and one or more other words turn on, look up, take place, take advantage, put up with,…

Let us consider at the individual forms of lexical verbs in English and how they function. The first of the two clauses above also form complete sentences, whereas the third, fourth and fifth are only part of an utterance. These incomplete utterances are examples of subordinate clauses, which we shall investigate in a later section. We are using them here simply to demonstrate the use of particular forms of verb: non-finite forms. These forms, often known as the -ing form, the -en form and the i- form, are also called the progressive form, the perfective form and the infinitive form. These forms can be part of full verb phrases that function as the predicator in a complete clause. On their own, however, they do not link to the subject in a clear way (for example by an ending that indicates a person) and they do not establish the tense of the verb as either present or past.

Note how they need auxiliaries to establish such aspects of the meaning of the predicator:

Who shall tell of what he was thinking? [59, p.44]

And now you have your son and June coming back you will be so happy.[59, p.24]

 

I shall sit in the sun with a drink in my hand.[59, p.20]

Lexical verbs that do not need an auxiliary verb in order to function in main clauses are known as finite forms. They include the present tense form, which is normally indistinguishable from the infinitive form in terms of having no morphological suffix (for example catch, sing), the third-person present tense form, which normally adds an -s to base forms, and the past tense form, which adds -ed to regular verbs.

Table 3.1 shows some examples of all the forms of English lexical verbs.

Table 3.1

Citation form	Break	Play	Sing	Forget
Present tense	break	play	sing	forget
Present third person	breaks	plays	sings	forgets
Past tense	broke	played	sang	forgot
Progressive participle	breaking	playing	singing	forgetting
Perfective participle	broken	played	sung	forgotten
Infinitive	break	play	sing	forget

The most common pattern of forms in English verbs is the one represented n the table by play. There are effectively only four different forms (play, plays, playing, played), but because other common, but irregular, verbs distinguish, for example, the past tense (-ed) from the perfective form (-en), the regular verbs are also treated as though these forms were different.

The irregular forms tend to belong to common verbs derived from Old English, rather than those with Romance language influences, such as French. Because they are very common they have not changed to match the sheer quantity of verbs with a pattern such as play, although there is some evidence that some such thing is happening. If you think about the way that people these days often muddle sung and sang and rung and rang, it seems that the distinction between past tense and perfective markers is less clear-cut than in the past. However, although the two forms might be merging in irregular verbs too, they are not moving towards matching the regular verbs, which would result in forms such as *singed and *ringed.

The subclasses of lexical verb that can be identified tend to depend on the context in which they occur. Whilst the traditional grammars distinguished between transitive and intransitive verbs, we find it useful to distinguish further categories, depending on the clause structures in which they typically occur.

The intransitive verb will not be found with an object, and thus will occur n subject and predicator structures: I’m dying. The transitive verb occurs with an object in subject-predicator-object structures: She hates you. Ditransitive verbs occur with both indirect and direct objects: They gave me a beautiful present. There are also subclasses of verb that tend to occur with compulsory adverbials: John went home and I put the cigarette back in the packet.

Two further important subclasses of verb are intensive verbs (such as be) that occur with subject complements (She was really tired), and those which occur with objects and object complements: (You make me happy). The intensive verbs have a particular semantic effect in that they invoke existence (there is a tree) and equivalence (she is my daughter). These subcategories of verb are not watertight and some verbs can occur in a range of grammatical contexts. However it is useful to think in terms of verbs typically occurring in certain clause structures.