Talk:Part of speech

Japanese adjectives

READ THIS!

Just in order to keep the editors calm, we know that Japanese does not have, in fact, "two classes of adjectives", but noun-like qualifiers ("na-adjectives") and stative verbs ("i-adjectives"). The "two classes" in the article are a common and very useful simplification. There's definitely a problem with the "correct" view vs. the "traditional" view. IIRC even Japanese language and Japanese grammar contradict each other on this respect. --Pablo D. Flores 12:06, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

(Old, corrected)

This needs attention badly, but from the start, I think the Japanese examples are nonsense. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but shinsetsu is a "na-adjective" or a "nominal adjective" or an "adjectival noun" (or whatever), and that doesn't change no matter what particle you put after it, ne? Shinsetsu ni is an adverbial *phrase*, not a word, and ni is an adposition, not a part-of-speech marker! -- Pablo D. Flores 14:01, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

---

This article seems pretty far afield from real liguisting research. For example, the parts of speech listed are pretty Latin-based (most Asian languages, for example, don't have anything that can be reasonably called an "adjective", and most languages do not distinguish adverbs, even European ones). Likewise, I don't think the following sentence is true:

In most languages a word can only be one part of speech. English allows some words to play different parts of speech.

For example, "set" can be a noun (such as a set in mathematics), a verb (set it down), or an adjective (the trap is set).

That is, it is clearly true that English words are flexible, and many other languages are less flexible, but I don't think the categroical statement that other languages generally follow the one word/one part of speech rule really holds. --Lee Daniel Crocker

• 2002.03.20: Thank you for that excellent example; I agree with Lee. There is also the confusion of "word" as grapheme (homophones) and "word" as a phonemic item (homonyms), as well as whether we really consider the meanings of "set" above to be the "same word" in any derivational sense, as opposed to different words that are "just pronounced the same". There certainly are many languages that assign the same phonemic string several different meanings. For example, the Mandarin Chinese syllable 1yi has approximately 60-ish different possible meanings, depending on context. Also, almost all languages have productive processes for transforming a morpheme from one lexical class to another - the "verbing" of nouns in English is a good example, as is the "adverb-ing" and "preposition-ing" of certain classes of Mandarin Chinese verbs. I'd also be careful to distinguish the "schoolmarm grammarian's" definition of English parts of speech from, for example, the lexical classes of Transformational-Generative Grammar. How to do so in a reasonably clear manner is not for me to undertake 2 hours past my bedtime on a work night. *grin* pgdudda

---

One example of a dodgy part of speech concept is the preposition. It's definition has a word order requirement in it. This results in the need of another part of speech concept postposition, which plays the same role as preposition, but has a different word order requirement.

The situation is anologous to calling an adjective something else if it comes after the noun it qualifies.

Also there may be a case for regarding a preposition/postposition as a different part of speech depending on whether the phrase it heads acts as an adjective, adverb or indirect object.

Is preposition a bona-fide lexical category? Or does P stand for proposition or postposition?

--- User:Karl Palmen

• 2002.03.21: Hi Karl! Hrmmm... Yes, it's a "bona-fide" lexical category - I believe linguists use the term "adposition" to cover the set {preposition, postposition}. But I'm not certain of the terminology, which is why I haven't gone there. *grin* I do know that in TGG, the symbol P is used to stand for this syntactic function / lexical category. The situation is similar to the use of "affix" to cover the set {prefix, suffix, infix} - affixes function similarly across languages, but which of the three subtypes is used varies from language to language. pgdudda

---

I'm disambiguating Conjunction, and there is no page on the grammatical sense. Should this link to Grammatical conjunction, or is that phrase not used? If not, is another phrase used, or should we say Conjunction (grammar)? I will leave a link to the disambiguation page for now. — Toby 19:33 Aug 22, 2002 (PDT)

A google search turns up only 34 instances of "grammatical conjunction", but it sounds reasonable to me. --Brion

Sounds reasonable to me too, but I don't think that we should use it if ordinary linguists and grammarians normally don't. This differs from Logical conjunction and Astronomical conjunction, which I have seen in books. After all, Conjunction (grammar) sounds reasonable too. — Toby 10:55 Aug 24, 2002 (PDT)

Circumpositions

Regarding the addition of circumpositions: it's OK to add them, but the example given in the edit summary is not a circumposition, it's a circumfix. The ge- and -t of gemacht are grammatical bound morphemes. I think the French ne ... pas would qualify as a circumposition. I don't know of any other languages that have them, though, and even in French ne is often deleted when pas follows. --Pablo D. Flores 10:23, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I apologize for the poor example. I guess I mixed things up. A better example is "von ... aus" as in "_Von_ der Burg _aus_ hast Du einen guten Überblick über die Stadt." (From the castle, you have a good overview over the city.) C.J. 24 May 2005. 17:21 (MEST)

Why "part of speech"?

How did we wind up with this article title? It seems awfully ambiguous for an article title and I don't quite see the problem with using word class. Can someone explain why it should stay under the current title?

Peter ^Isotalo 16:35, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

this may have been written by authors who are not familar with that terminology. i moved to lexical category. perhaps a separate article should be on parts of speech which explains things from a traditional perspective. parts of speech have rather long history which probably cannot be covered adequately in a general article on lexical categories. peace – ishwar  (speak) 23:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I have a background in linguistic software, and it was my experience that in 90% of the literature within this domain referred to such as part of speech. I just wanted to point that out, that it is confusing to other audiences with such backgrounds that there is a need to use the name 'lexical category'. It may be more technically appropriate, but it differs from the popular usage in academic articles regarding software. For example, try doing a Google search for part of speech tagging or going to the article Part-of-speech_tagging. I just did a search and it found more than 2 million pages. Just trying to point that out, that linguists seem to have total control over this particular sense of the phrase, and the fact that part of speech redirects here is confusing for others like myself. Perhaps a disambiguation page for Part of speech with a link to lexical category and something along the lines of Part of speech (computing) would help. Since this move was done a year ago and I do not consider myself authoritative I will not make the change, but perhaps it will at least enlighten someone as to yet another interpretation. Josh Froelich 20:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Just a quick note about the article title. The main article has been renamed 'lexical category', which I agree with. However, the category page is still 'part of speech' and it of course still links to the article 'part of speech', which then redirects. I am not very well-versed in changing it though, should a change be necessary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.24.80.145 (talk • contribs) 2 July 2007

I have moved the article back to "Part of speech". This is the usual term, much more common than "lexical category". Many of the references given in the article use the term "part of speech". I am missing the justification for the use of the term "lexical category". Try searching Google scholar for "part of speech" vs Google scholar for "lexical category" vs Google scholar for "word class". --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:02, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Also notice the existence of Category:Parts of speech, created on 31 July 2004. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:05, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Generative Grammar Lexical Categories

Generative grammar defines lexical categories as 4 possibilities resultant from the binary features [+N] and [+V]. Underthis schema nouns are [+N,-V], verbs [-N,+V], adjective [+N,+V], and prepositions [-N, -V]. There are no lexical categories other than these. With this understanding one can better explain the relationship relationship, such as the fact that both nouns and adjectives require case or for creating more accurate context-sensitive rules such as the of-insertion rule in English where null=> of / [+N]_NP, where NP stands for noun phrase. If possible can the linguists who do the pages considered linguistics stub confirm this and provide a better written and more expansive section?

It's true. It's been argued that this way of setting things up are not very insightful, however, and that by such generative grammarians as Mark Baker. Neither 15:53, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

What is it?

I'm a sophomore in college admittedly with poor English skills, but trying to improve. Isn't this supposed to be an encyclopedia? I am not criticizing the poriginal authors of this article, who know much more than I, but I will say that the first sentence of this article contains three words that I, and probably the majority of the population aren't familiar with: 'lexical', 'syntactic' and 'morphological'. I have learned that often the best way to quickly learn a subject in Wiki is to go back to the original article (view history tab) before it became polluted. I applaude the original authors and ask those who are concerned with exacting definitions to remember that approximation is OK early in these articles for the sake of the general public. I am not completely sure but it seems to me that highly educated people (or people who think they are) often try to use WIKI as an archival reference manual, or something to that effect. Wouldn't you agree? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.233.66.61 (talk) 13:23, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Article

To which of those eight word classes do articles belong? --Jobu0101 (talk) 17:33, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

In traditional prescriptive English grammar (e.g., what you learn in elementary school), articles are adjectives. In formal linguistics, they are considered determiner, as you could see if you looked in the article before posting your question. rʨanaɢ (talk) 22:06, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. But in formal linguistics you have more than those eight word classes. So what I was looking for is the first part of your answer. I can't find this information in the article. --Jobu0101 (talk) 10:46, 23 July 2011 (UTC)