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Lexical Categories

Lexical Categories. LI 2013 Nathalie F. Martin. Contemporary Linguistics Analysis, O’Grady & al., 2009: p. 146-150. A Concise Introduction to Linguistics, Rowe & al. 2012 : p. 107-114. Syntactic/Lexical Categories. Categories of words Distinguishing categories:

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Lexical Categories

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  1. Lexical Categories LI 2013 Nathalie F. Martin

  2. Contemporary Linguistics Analysis, O’Grady & al., 2009: p. 146-150. A Concise Introduction to Linguistics, Rowe & al. 2012: p. 107-114. Syntactic/Lexical Categories Categories of words Distinguishing categories: Inflection Distribution

  3. 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: • Brillig • Slithy • Toves* • Gyre* • Gimble* • Wabe* • Mimsy • Borogroves • Mome • Raths • Outgrabe • Which are English words? Why is it important that those words remain there?

  4. 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.”

  5. 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 (1)

  6. Non-lexical categories: Determiner (Det) Auxiliary (Aux) Conjunction (Con) Functional words! Examples: the, this will, can and, or Syntactic Categories (2)

  7. Lexical Categories of Words • Nouns • Verbs • Adjectives • Adverbs • Prepositions * • Lexical Categories • Non-Lexical Categories • Determiner • Auxiliary • Conjunctions

  8. 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.

  9. 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: • Inflection • Distribution • Verification through replacement

  10. 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.

  11. 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!

  12. 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.

  13. 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!

  14. 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.

  15. Translation and Lexical Categories What Got LostIn Translation? Written on my heater:

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