Linguistics II LI2023
Download
Report
Transcript Linguistics II LI2023
LEXICAL CATEGORIES
LI 2013
N AT H A L I E F. M A R T I N
Syntactic/Lexical 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 :
• INFLECTION
• DISTRIBUTION
A Concise
Introduction to
Linguistics,
Rowe & al. 2012:
p. 107-114.
Contemporary
Linguistics Analysis,
O’Grady & al., 2009:
p. 146-150.
Making Sense of It All!
Lewis Carroll in his 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice
Found There, a poem entitled Jabberwocky.
What is the lexical 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/lexical Categories
= Word/Grammatical 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:
Examples:
Determiner
the,
(Det)
this
Auxiliary
(Aux)
Conjunction (Con)
Functional words!
will,
can
and, or
Lexical Categories of Words
Lexical Categories
Non-Lexical
Categories
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Prepositions *
Determiner
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 three tests one can use:
1.
2.
3.
Inflection
Distribution
Verification through replacement
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.
Verification Test 3: Replacement
To test to see if you have assigned the right
lexical category, it is possible to replace the
word with another word of that same
category – even if the sentence becomes
nonsensical.
Lets try in out:
Great
joy is to come in the morning.
Joy comes later today.
Holidays are the best!
Indicate the category of each word in the
following sentences.
a. The glass suddenly broke.
b. A jogger ran towards the end of the lane.
c. The peaches never appear quite ripe.
d. Gillian will play the trumpet and the drums in the
orchestra.
Rowe & al., 2012: p. 114.
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 ?
W R I T T E N O N M Y H E AT E R :