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The standard doctrine that basic grammatical classes (parts of speech) are not semantically definable rests on erroneous assumptions about the nature of linguistic meaning. With a proper view of meaning, basic categories—notably noun and verb—have plausible conceptual characterizations at both the prototype level (for typical examples) and the schema level (valid for all instances). The prototypes are based on conceptual archetypes: objects for nouns, and actions for verbs. The schemas are independent of any particular conceptual content, residing instead in basic cognitive abilities immanent in the archetypes: for nouns, grouping and reification; in the case of verbs, the ability to apprend relationships and to track their evolution through time. An expression's grammatical category specifically depends on the nature of its profile (not its overall content). Thus a noun profiles a thing (defined abstractly as any product of grouping and reification), while a verb profiles a process (a relationship tracked through time). Expressions that profile non-processual relationships include adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, infinitives, and participles. Relational expressions can be categorized in different ways, depending on factors like the number and type of focused participants, whether the profiled relation is simplex or complex, and whether it is apprehended holistically or sequentially. These characterizations prove efficacious in describing how relational expressions function as noun modifiers and in clausal organization.

This book discusses copulas and their function, their morphosyntactic properties, their syntagmatic properties such as their compatibility with different parts of speech, their historical origin, and their distribution in discourse. Copulas are thought to be meaningless, that is, ‘semantically empty’. This leads to one of the central questions the present study is concerned with: if the existence of copulas cannot be accounted for in terms of meaning, how can it be accounted for? Usually, the existence of linguistic items of whatever kind can be motivated through the meanings they carry. Moreover, the fact that copulas are lacking entirely in certain languages, such as Tagalog, indicates that languages can operate effectively without copulas. This book covers the following topics about copulas: copulas in cross-linguistic perspective, copularization and lexical semantics, the multi-factor model of copularization, parts of speech, nouns, verbs, adjectives, markedness, time-stability, and lexical class formation.

In Lecture 9, the Indo-European comparative syntax of Berthold Delbrück and Karl Brugmann in introduced, and the psychological approach to language (Völkerpsychologie) of Heymann Steinthal and Hermann Paul is discussed. The chapter illustrates (Lectures 9–11) various types of syntactic assimilation (of number, gender, case, the relative pronoun,mood, tense), and (Lecture 12) of syntactic interference by association of ideas, and reviews (Lectures 12–13) three recent introductions to syntax (especially that of Wilhelm Kroll). The general introduction concludes with a few pages on the parts of speech and the permeable boundaries between them (verbs from nouns, and nouns from verbs).

In this chapter nominal forms — nouns (or substantives) and adjectives — as parts of speech as considered by Wakermagel are considered. Lecture 6 discusses and illustrates in turn the use of adjectives as nouns and of nouns as adjectives (including the example of Lat. uber). Lecture 7 concludes the discussion of the boundary line between noun and adjective,and the frequent shifts between the two classes, with special reference to proper names and adjectives. The chapter then offers further observations on nouns and adjectives, in particular on proper names and appellatives, and on certain special uses of derived adjectives: among the latter, the use of a derived adjective in alternation with a genitive, in Greek, Latin, Germanic, and other languages, occupies all of Lecture 8.

In Lecture 9, the Indo-European comparative syntax of Berthold Delbrück and Karl Brugmann in introduced, and the psychological approach to language (Völkerpsychologie) of Heymann Steinthal and Hermann Paul is discussed. The chapter illustrates (Lectures 9–11) various types of syntactic assimilation (of number, gender, case,the relative pronoun, mood, tense), and (Lecture 12) of syntactic interference by association of ideas, and reviews (Lectures 12–13) three recent introductions to syntax (especially that of Wilhelm Kroll). The general introduction concludes with a few pages on the parts of speech and the permeable boundaries between them (verbs from nouns, and nouns from verbs).

In this chapter nominal forms — nouns (or substantives) and adjectives — as parts of speech as considered by Wakermagel are considered. Lecture 6 discusses and illustrates in turn the use of adjectives as nouns and of nouns as adjectives (including the example of Lat. uber). Lecture 7 concludes the discussion of the boundary line between noun and adjective, and the frequent shifts between the two classes, with special reference to proper names and adjectives. The chapter then offers further observations on nouns and adjectives, in particular on proper names and appellatives, and on certain special uses of derived adjectives: among the latter, the use of a derived adjective in alternation with a genitive, in Greek, Latin, Germanic, and other languages, occupies all of Lecture 8.

In Lecture 9, the Indo-European comparative syntax of Berthold Delbrück and Karl Brugmann in introduced,and the psychological approach to language (Völkerpsychologie) of Heymann Steinthal and Hermann Paul is discussed. The chapter illustrates (Lectures 9–11) various types of syntactic assimilation (of number, gender, case, the relative pronoun, mood, tense), and (Lecture 12) of syntactic interference by association of ideas, and reviews (Lectures 12–13) three recent introductions to syntax (especially that of Wilhelm Kroll). The general introduction concludes with a few pages on the parts of speech and the permeable boundaries between them (verbs from nouns, and nouns from verbs).

The point of departure for this book on copularization had been the discovery of a prospective language universal, that is the scale NOMINALS > ADJECTIVALS > VERBALS, which translates the existing distributional patterns of copularizing vs. non-copularizing lexemes into a compact formula. In the extant literature on the pails-of-speech issue, this scale has been proposed repeatedly as it can be used to describe certain aspects of the morphosyntactic properties of lexical items at the universal level. This scale also lends itself to a general characterization in terms of the semantic parameter of time-stability. The possibility of explaining the behavior of copulas by means of a model that redefines the semantic macro-classes of nominals, verbals, and adjectivals in terms of the more profound semantic dimension of time-stability is taken into consideration. This book also considers markedness as a key factor in the copula paradox and a new approach to the issue regarding parts of speech.

In this chapter nominal forms — nouns (or substantives) and adjectives — as parts of speech as considered by Wakermagel are considered. Lecture 6 discusses and illustrates in turn the use of adjectives as nouns and of nouns as adjectives (including the example of Lat. uber). Lecture 7 concludes the discussion of the boundary line between noun and adjective, and the frequent shifts between the two classes,with special reference to proper names and adjectives. The chapter then offers further observations on nouns and adjectives, in particular on proper names and appellatives, and on certain special uses of derived adjectives: among the latter, the use of a derived adjective in alternation with a genitive, in Greek, Latin, Germanic, and other languages, occupies all of Lecture 8.

The set of words making up a text can be classified in different ways depending on an analyst's goals. Critics often intuitively select certain words for attention. This chapter covers explicit categories of word analysis. Words can, for example, be grouped into lexical or semantic fields; these are large fuzzy sets of terms that collocate in the same area of meaning and are retrieved in word association tests. Decisions about the subject of a text depend on the frequency of words from the same lexical field, and the interspersion of terms from other fields can help or harm the persuasiveness of a text. Words can also be related, especially within lexical fields, according to whether they are more or less abstract or concrete, that is, distant or proximate from physical referents. Concrete words, contrary to the advice in many style books, are not critical in rhetorical effectiveness, and in fact rhetorical manuals advised arguers to switch levels and support both particular and general versions of the same claim. The words in a text can also be assigned to functional classes (parts of speech) as a way to inspect how speakers or writers use these available roles. This kind of analysis is performed on paired passages from early twentieth-century nature writing. The chapter closes by reviewing the categories for language analysis created by twentieth-century rhetoricians Kenneth Burke (positive, dialectical, and ultimate terms) and Richard Weaver (god, devil, and charismatic terms).

This chapter discusses Institutiones grammaticae (Institutes of grammar) and Institutio de nomine pronomine verbo (Instruction on the Noun, Pronoun, and Verb), two handbooks written by Priscian of Caesarea, a professor of grammar in the Roman Empire, ca. 520. Institutiones grammaticae deals with vox (voice, sound), letters, and syllables. Priscian's discussion of all parts of speech is supplemented with Regulae-style morphological information. Institutio de nomine pronomine verbo, a beginners' textbook in medieval grammatical teaching, presents the morphology of the noun, pronoun, and verb in a systematic manner.

Inflectional classes are an instance of autonomous morphology, where expression in form cross-cuts syntactically relevant distinctions. However, most analyses assume some kind of ‘containment’, where choice of inflectional allomorphs is largely restricted to a part of speech. In default inheritance accounts of morphology higher defaults are assumed to correspond to recognizable parts of speech. Data from Archi and Noon indicate that violations of containment are not so implausible, but even here there is a role for principles, such as Network Morphology’s ‘morphological projection’, or Spencer’s ‘morpholexically coherent lexicon’, that entail a relationship between parts of speech and default morphological classes.

In Lecture 9, the Indo-European comparative syntax of Berthold Delbrück and Karl Brugmann in introduced, and the psychological approach to language (Völkerpsychologie) of Heymann Steinthal and Hermann Paul is discussed. The chapter illustrates (Lectures 9–11) various types of syntactic assimilation (of number,gender, case, the relative pronoun, mood, tense), and (Lecture 12) of syntactic interference by association of ideas, and reviews (Lectures 12–13) three recent introductions to syntax (especially that of Wilhelm Kroll). The general introduction concludes with a few pages on the parts of speech and the permeable boundaries between them (verbs from nouns, and nouns from verbs).

In Lecture 9, the Indo-European comparative syntax of Berthold Delbrück and Karl Brugmann in introduced, and the psychological approach to language (Völkerpsychologie) of Heymann Steinthal and Hermann Paul is discussed. The chapter illustrates (Lectures 9–11) various types of syntactic assimilation (of number, gender,case, the relative pronoun, mood, tense), and (Lecture 12) of syntactic interference by association of ideas, and reviews (Lectures 12–13) three recent introductions to syntax (especially that of Wilhelm Kroll). The general introduction concludes with a few pages on the parts of speech and the permeable boundaries between them (verbs from nouns, and nouns from verbs).

Languages differ in the kind of distinctions they show in either of the two elements that constitute proforms. In the case of the pronominal element that indicates their function, languages may show no distinction whatsoever, or may show several distinctions. In the case of the general term that denotes the scope of proforms also, there is variation among languages, which, however, is correlatable to a certain extent, with the part of speech distinctions that occur in them. There is also some overlap between pronominal elements and general terms in some languages.

The ‘parts of speech’ which have played a fundamental role in most descriptions of grammar, from primary school curriculum to advanced linguistic theory, are explored in this article, which considers some intriguing changes in recent everyday English that challenge traditional assumptions about the definition and usefulness of word classes such as ‘pronoun’, ‘adjective’ and ‘noun’. The article raises important questions about what happens at the boundaries between these word classes and looks at how we can answer these questions—potentially changing the direction of both future linguistic research and pedagogical practice.

What are the effects of grammar on the organization of meaning? A logically possible answer is: none. But this answer seems far too radical: on a number of grounds, it seems implausible that grammar would have no such effect on the organization of our rational minds. So what is the effect, exactly? Chapter 2 begins from a form of semantics already present in pre-linguistic perception. But as percepts become lexicalized as words, and as words start to develop grammatical functions, the organization of meaning changes again. We specifically develop an account of the kind of semantics associated with lexical atoms and with part of speech distinctions: the distinction, say, between how the word run functions when read as a noun or as a verb. Once we have arrived there, we argue, we have already arrived at grammar, and the semantics in question reflects how words implement grammatical functions: grammatical semantics

This chapter discusses three works by Aelius Donatus (ca. 350), a leading figure in late antique and medieval grammar: Ars minor, Ars maior, and Life of Virgil. Consisting of three books, Ars maior provides the standard structure for any treatment of grammar until it was replaced with the fourfold division into ortographia, prosodia, ethimologia, diasintastica (‘syntax’) current in the later Middle Ages. The third book of Ars maior treats grammatical deviations as well as figures of speech and tropes. Ars minor, intended for beginners, deals with the main concepts of the theory of the parts of speech in question and answer format. ‘Life of Virgil’ is a commentary on Virgil, the most important literary source in Ars maior.