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LEXICAL CATEGORIES
LI 2013
N AT H A L I E F. M A R T I N
Syntactic Categories
• C AT E G O R I E S O F W O R D S
• D I S T I N G U I S H I N G C AT E G O R I E S :
1. MEANING
2. INFLECTION
3. DISTRIBUTION
Contemporary
Linguistics Analysis:
p. 146-150.
Making Sense of It All!
What is the syntactic category of:
g) Mimsy
a) Brillig
h) Borogroves
b) Slithy
i)
Mome
c) Toves*
j)
Raths
d) Gyre*
k) Outgrabe
e) Gimble*
f)
Wabe*
Which are English words? Why is it
important that those words remain
there?
Syntactic Categories
 = Word Classes = Parts of Speech
 All languages have syntactic categories. The
syntactic category of a word determines the role it
can play in a sentence.
 Only a noun can complete the sentence “Give a
__________ to me.”
Syntactic Categories (1)
Lexical categories
 Noun (N)
 Verb (V)
 Adjective (A)
 Preposition (P)
 Adverb (Adv)
 Clearly identifiable
meanings!
Examples
 moisture, policy
 melt, remain
 good, intelligent
 to, near
 slowly, now
Syntactic Categories (2)
Non-lexical categories
 Determiner (Det)
 Degree word (Deg)
 Auxiliary (Aux)
 Conjunction (Con)

Functional words!
Examples
 the, this
 very, more
 will, can
 and, or
Lexical Categories of Words


 Lexical Categories



 Non-Lexical

Categories



Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Prepositions *
Determiner
Degree words
Auxiliary
Conjunctions
TRICKS!
Distinguishing Categories
 By meaning:
 Nouns = entities (people, things), including individuals (Harry,
Sue), objects (book, desk),
 Verbs = actions (run, jump), sensations (feel, hurt), and states
(be, remain)
 Adjectives: Properties and attributes of a noun.
 Adverbs:
Properties and attributes of the actions, sensations, and states
(verbs)
 Manner and time


What about words like: likelihood, give a push, near, etc.
Distinguishing Categories
 Native speakers may have a good intuition about the
syntactic category of a word.
 But linguists require more objective ways of
determining syntactic categories.
 There are two tests one can use:
1.
2.
Inflection
Distribution
Test 1: Inflection
 Certain inflectional paradigms apply only to one
syntactic category.
 For example, if a word can take the inflectional suffix
-ed in English, it must belong to the verb category.
 Lets try in out:


The cute cat dances.
You think the end is near.
 What about these words: sing (-ed*), intelligent (-er*),
knowledge(-s*), etc.
Test 2: Distribution
 The words with which a word may co-occur can be
used to determine its syntactic category.
 Example: only nouns can come after a or the in
English.
 All languages have such distributional restrictions on
syntactic categories.
 Lets try in out:
 Great joy is to come in the morning.
 Joy comes later today.
 Holidays are the best!
Distribution tests – Rules of other languages
 Distribution tests for syntactic categories are
different in all languages.
 Chinese has no articles like a, the. So you can’t test
for nouns with them.
 But in Chinese, only nouns co-occur with
“classifiers”. If a word can come after a classifier, it
must be a noun.
Indicate the category of each word in the
following sentences.
a. The glass suddenly broke.
Det / N /
Adv /
V
b. A jogger ran towards the end of the lane.
Det / N /
V /
P /
Det / N / P / Det / N
c. The peaches never appear quite ripe.
Det /
N /
Adv
/
V /
Deg /
A
d. Gillian will play the trumpet and the drums in the
N/
Aux /
orchestra.
/N
V / Det /
N /
Conj / Det /
N/
P / Det
Translation
and Lexical
Categories
W H AT G O T L O S T
I N T R A N S L AT I O N ?
F O U N D O N M Y H E AT E R :