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
can a can ’in terms of morphological and
syntactic criteria?

(1)
(2)
(3)
Syntax of the major word classes
Major Word Classes
NOUNS
VERBS
ADJECTIVES
ADVERBS
PREPOSITIONS
WHAT RE THE MOST
FREQUENTLY FOUND WORD
CLASSES IN THE
NEWSPAPER HEADLINES?
The verb class
John
sleeps
Argument
Predicate
(participant) (event)
John
Loves
Coffee.
argument
(participant)
Predicate
(event)
argument
(participant)
The types of verbs

Intransitive verbs


Transitive verbs


John yelled.
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


Demonstratives


This, that, these, those
Quantifiers


a/an, the
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


Patient


The purpose of the action
Experiencer


The person/thing which undergoes the action
Goal


The person/thing which receives the action
Theme


The person/thing which performs the action
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

He is, they are
Person


I am, you are, he is, we
are
The French example

plural
Number


singular
1st
Je chante
person
Nous
chantons
2nd
Tu chantes Vous
person
chantez
Chanter ‘to sing’
3rd
Il chante
person
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
Nominative
mas
fem
Neu.
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


Hare
SU-PAST-STEAL wife
The hare stole the elephant’s wife.’

mkazi wa njovu a-na-b-edw-a

wife

‘The elephant’s wife was stolen.’
of
mkazi wa njovu
of
elephant
elephant SU-PAST-STEAL-PASSIVE
Morpho-syntactic categories for
adjectives
Comparison
 Agreement

Comparison

Superlative


Comparative


English: THE -est; THE MOST adj
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

A

‘a small child saw a rich man.’
small-SU:SING:NEUTER child
saw
a
Mann.
rich-OB:SING:MASC man