Download The Structure of Sentences

Parts of Speech
(Lexical Categories)
Parts of Speech
Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Prepositions,
Adverbs (etc.)
 The building blocks of sentences

 The [Nsun]
shines too brightly in Tucson
 *[VWill glow] shines too brightly in Tucson

Also called:
Lexical Categories, Syntactic Categories.
Classic Definitions of P.O.S

Noun:
 Person,

Verb:
 Action,

place, or thing
occurrence or state of being
Adjective:
 modifier
that expresses quality, quantity or extent.
Classic Definitions of P.O.S

Adverb:
 modifier
that expresses manner, quality, place, time,
degree, number, cause, opposition, affirmation or
denial

Preposition:
 modifier
that indicates location or origin.
Problems with the semantic def.

Not so clear cut:
assassination of the president…
 Sincerity is an important quality
 Tucson is where New Yorkers flee for the winter
 The

Multiple parts of speech?
 Gabrielle’s
father is an axe-murderer
 Anteaters father attractive offspring
 ?Wendy’s father country is Iceland
Time flies like an arrow;
fruit flies like a banana.
(first flies is a verb, second one is a
noun. First like is a comparative
conjunction, second like is a verb. )
Problems with the semantic def.

Cross-linguistic Problems
–
Irish Gaelic:
a)
b)
D’ith
Seán
Pst’eat.3sng John
“John ate”
’S-dochtúir-é
Seán
Pres-doctor-3sng John
“John is a doctor” (lit. John doctors)
Problems with the semantic def.

Cross-linguistic Problems
–
Kwamera:
a)
b)
Iak-imiki Kuri u
1sg.dislike dog this
“I don’t like this dog”
ianpin iak-am-óuihi ihi
when 1s-prog-small still
“when I was still small”
Problems with the semantic def.

Cross-linguistic Problems
–
Warlpiri:
a)
Wita-rlu ka maliki wajilipinyi
Small-subj aux dog chase.present
“The small one is chasing the dog”
Problems with the semantic def.

The yinkish dripner blorked quastofically
into the nindin with the pidibs.
 yinkish
-adj
 dripner -noun
 blorked -verb
 quastofically -adverb
 nindin -noun
 pidibs -noun
Distributional definitions
We determine the P.O.S of a word by the
affixes that are attached to it and by the
syntactic context (where in the sentence) it
appears in.
 The definition of P.O.S is distributional

 Because
they are distributional, POS
definitions are language specific.
Two kinds of distribution

Morphological distribution
(affixes --prefixes, suffixes etc.-- that appear on the
word)

Syntactic distribution
(position relative to nearby words.)
P.O.S distributionally (English)

Nouns
 take
case, number and gender endings
 -ness, -ment, -ing, -er, etc. derivational affixes
 appear after [ the _____ ]
 can be subject/object of sentence
 Modified by Adjectives
 [_____ is a pain in the neck]
P.O.S distributionally (English)

Verbs
 take
-ify, -ing, re- derivational affixes
 takes -s, -ed, -en, -ing, inflectional affixes (can be
inflected for tense, mood, aspect)
 appear after auxiliaries [ will ______ ]
 [Please _______!]
 follows subject and precedes object
 can be negated
P.O.S distributionally (English)

Adjectives
 take
-er, -est, -ate, -ity, -ish, -some affixes
 appear between ‘the’ & noun [ the _____ book ]
 can follow ‘very’ [very _______]
 can appear in [John is __________]

Adverbs
 take
-ly affix
 appear before adjectives and verbs
 [very ______]
 can appear at very beginning or end of sentence
Distinguish Adverbs from
Adjectives?
Adverbs: take -ly, and modify any category
but nouns
 Adjectives: modify nouns, no -ly.
 But they are in complementary distribution:

–
part of the same category?
Also both take the same modifiers (eg. ‘very’)
 We’ll be agnostic on this point and abbr.
both Adv & Adjs as “A”, but the jury is still out on

this one.
Cross-Linguistic Variation in
POS
Each language has its own set of
distributional criteria.
 Not all languages have the same sets of
parts of speech as English. Some may have
less (eg. They may not distinguish verbs
from adjectives) or they may have more!

Open vs. Closed P.O.S

Open POS:
allow neologisms (new
words)
 express content
 N, V, Adj, Adv


Closed POS:
don’t allow new
additions
 express function
 Prepositions,
conjunctions, modals,
auxiliaries, determiners
(articles) pronouns,
among others.

Some closed class POS
•Prepositions (P): to, from, under, over, with, by, up, etc.
•Conjunctions (Conj): and, or, either … or,
•Determiners/deitics/quantifiers/numerals (D): this, that,
the, a, my, your, our his, her, their, each, every, some,
one, two three etc.
•Complementizers (C): that, which, for, if
•Auxiliaries/Modals/Tense (T): will, have, can, should,
is, must, would
•Negators (D) or (N): no, not, n’t, never, no-one.
THIS LIST IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE!!
Summary: POS
Building blocks of sentences
 Classic definitions are meaning-based.



Linguistic definitions are distributionally
based:



don’t work well: unclear cases, ambiguous POS, crosslinguistic problems, knowledge of POS without knowledge of
meaning
morphological distribution (affixes)
syntactic distribution (nearby words)
Open vs. Closed classes