Azu’s Notes

In linguistics, grammatical aspect is a property of a verb that defines the nature of temporal flow in the described event or state.

In most modern Indo-European languages, including English, the concept of aspect has become conflated with the concept of tense.

It is somewhat difficult to explain the idea of aspect in English because it uses the same patterns to encode in tense both the time and the aspect of a verb together.

Time signals whether an action or event happens in the past, present, or future.

Aspect signals the duration that the event covers (and perhaps its commencement, continuation, completion, or repetition, etc.).

Time and aspect do not necessarily have to be represented together; but any clear distinction has long been lost in English, where the verb tense-form now encodes both aspect and time together.

Aspect is often indicated by verbal affixes or auxiliary verbs.

In English present and past are expressed using direct modifications of the verb, which is then modified further by one or more non-simple aspects

i.e. either

progressive/continuous,

prefect/completed  or

both

Each tense is named according to its combination of aspects and time.

We will define seven MAJOR word classes:

Some may include different word classes from these; they may also define the boundaries between the classes in different ways.

E.g. some may treat pronouns as a separate word class, but we will consider them a subclass of nouns, which we will look at in a bit more detail next class.

Differences like these highlight an important principle in grammar — GRADIENCE which refers to the fact that the boundaries between the word classes are not absolutely fixed.

Criteria for Word Classes

Combinations of three criteria are used for determining the word class of a word:

1. The meaning of the word
2. The form or `shape’ of the word
3. The position or `environment’ of the word in a sentence

1. Meaning

Using this criterion, we generalize about the kind of meanings that words convey.

E.g.

we could group the words husband, car, Idhurees, house, and Maldives, on the basis that they all refer to people, places, or things.

and words like cook, drive, eat, run, shout, and walk because they denote some kind of “action”.

This approach has certain merits, as it lets us determine word classes by replacing words in a sentence with words of “similar” meaning.

E.g.

My husband cooks dinner every Friday.

we can replace the verb cooks with other “action” words:

My husband prepares dinner every Friday.

My husband eats dinner every Friday.

My husband orders dinner every Friday.

My husband misses dinner every Friday.

On the basis of this replacement test, we can conclude that all of these words belong to the same class – “action” words, or verbs.

However, this approach also has some serious limitations.

E.g. the traditional definition of a noun – word denoting a person, place, or thing, is inadequate, as it does not account for abstract nouns like time, imagination, repetition, wisdom, chance.

Similarly, if verbs are “action” words, how do we categorize verbs like be, in I want to be a doctor.

2. The form or `shape’ of a word

Some words can be assigned to a word class on the basis of their form or `shape’. For example many nouns have a characteristic -tion ending:
e.g. action, condition, contemplation, demonstration, organization, repetition

Similarly, many adjectives end in -able or -ible:
e.g. acceptable, credible, miserable, responsible, suitable, terrible

And most adverbs end in ‘-ly’

e.g. briefly, quietly, furiously, serenely, absolutely

Many words of the same class also take on the same inflections –

Nouns, for example, can take a plural inflection, usually by adding an -s at the end:
e.g. home — homes
flat — flats
room — rooms

Verbs also take similar inflections:
e.g. talk — talks — talked — talking

3. The position or `environment’ of a word in a sentence

This criterion refers to where words typically occur in a sentence, and the kinds of words which typically occur near them.

E.g.

[1] He cooks dinner every Friday.
[2] The cook is on holiday

In [1], cook is a verb, but in [2], it is a noun. We can see that it is a verb in [1] because it takes the inflections which are typical of verbs:

And we can see that cook is a noun in [2] because it can take the plural -s inflection

[2] The cooks are on holiday

Obviously there is no one-to-one relation between words and their classes.

E.g. cook can be a verb or a noun – depending on how the word is used. In fact, many words can belong to more than one word class.

e.g.

She looks very pale (verb)
She’s very proud of her looks (noun)

He drives a fast car (verb)
He drives very fast (adverb)

Turn on the light (noun)
I’m trying to light the fire (verb)
I usually have a light lunch (adjective)

However, they only belong to one word class at a time, depending on how they are used.

Open and Closed Word Classes

Some word classes are OPEN – i.e. new words can be added to the class.

E.g. the class of nouns is potentially infinite, it is continually being expanded as new discoveries are made, new products are developed, and new ideas are explored.

e.g.

Internet, website, URL, CD-ROM, email, newsgroup, bitmap, modem, multimedia

New verbs have also been introduced:

e.g.

download, upload, reboot, right-click, double-click

The adjective and adverb classes can also be expanded by the addition of new words, though less prolifically.

On the other hand, we never invent new prepositions, determiners, or conjunctions.

These classes include words like of, the, and yet.

They are called CLOSED word classes because they are made up of finite sets of words which are never expanded (though their members may change their spelling, for example, over long periods of time).

The subclass of pronouns, within the open noun class, is also closed.

Words in an open class are known as open-class items.

Words in a closed class are known as closed-class items.

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in words

There are two main types of morphemes — Free morphemes & bound morphemes

Bound morphemes are of two types — Derivational morphemes & Inflectional morphemes

Derivational morphemes are morphemes that have the effect of changing the lexical category or the central meaning of the word to which they are attached to

Inflectional morphemes are morphemes that create variant forms of a word to conform to different roles in a sentence or in discourse, without changing its lexical category

e.g.

When added to the noun doubt, the morpheme -FUL derives the adjective doubtful

The morpheme -MENT added to the verb establish derives the noun establishment:

In English such derivational morphemes tend to be added to the ends of words as suffixes

Some such derivations in English can thus be represented as:

Noun + -FUL = Adjective

Adjective + -LY = Adverb

Verb + -MENT = Noun

Verb + -ER = Noun

Adjective + -EN = Verb

Noun + -EN = Verb

English uses prefixes in a similar process

MIS- + Verb = Verb

UN- + Adjective = Adjective

UN- + Verb  = Verb

UNDER- + Verb  = Verb

RE- + Verb = Verb

EX- + Noun = Noun

In English prefixes typically change the meaning of a word but not its lexical category:

E.g.

paint — repaint

appear — disappear

favourable — unfavourable

Thus it can be concluded that derivational morphemes produce new words from existing words in 2 ways:

- by changing the meaning of a word

e.g. true Vs untrue

- changing the lexical category of a word

e.g. true Vs truly

Inflectional morphemes change the forms of the words:

On nouns and pronouns inflectional morphemes mark (semantic) notions like number and (grammatical) categories like gender and case

On verbs they mark such things as tense or number

On adjectives they serve to indicate degree

Inflectional morphemes create the so-called ‘related forms’

Many languages have large inventories of inflectional morphemes

English, however, has shed most of its inflections and today has only 8 remaining ones

They are:

Inflections in English

The 8 inflectional morphemes of English are fully productive

i.e. when new nouns, verbs and adjectives are added to the language (or when a child learns new words) they are extremely likely to be inflected like the examples shown

In order to talk about language at this level we need to make many distinctions that we did not overtly think about when studying grammar at school

First, we must note that languages are organized on two levels:
- level of expression’ in which the message is encoded

- level of content
this level encompasses both the organization of words into sentences and the meanings that are associated with those words

As linguists we need a comprehensive knowledge of both levels of organization, because language is abstract and messages can be encoded in either sounds or writing

Although the level of expression, in principle, extends to both written and sound systems, in practice, most attention is often focused on the expression of language in sound.

Hence, the study of the level of expression of sounds belongs to phonetics and phonology (which we will study next semester).

Study of the level of content is split between syntax and semantics.

Traditionally a third component, dealing with the structure of words, was also recognized ‘morphology’.

Syntax is the component of the grammar that deals with the system of rules and categories that underlie sentence formation in human language.

Like other linguistic systems, the syntactic component of the grammar is also both creative and systematic.

Speakers of a language can combine words in new ways to form sentences that they have never before heard or seen.

However, not all combination of words will give well-formed sentences.

For example:

1.
*Copies made student a the

2.
A student made the copies

English speakers recognize that the pattern in 1. is not permissible in English; however the same words arranged in a different order form an acceptable structure in 2.

A sentence is judged by speakers to be grammatical if they believe it to be a possible construction in their language.

The study of syntax focuses mainly on the ‘architecture’ of grammatical sentences, paying particular attention of the ways in which words are combined to form various sentences.

This analysis of the structure of sentences is traditionally known as ‘parsing’.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary:
‘PARSE’
- to resolve (a sentence etc.) into its component parts of speech and describe them grammatically.

In linguistics the ‘component parts’ of a sentence are called a ‘constituents’ and the whole procedure of analysis is known as ‘constituent structure analysis’.

As we said before, the domain of syntax involves the study of how different components join to form larger units.

Yet, there is more to language than just form.

In order for language to fulfill its most crucial function — communication, utterances must also convey a meaning.

The branch of linguistics that focuses on meaning is semantics.

Long before linguistics existed as a discipline, thinkers were speculating about the nature of meaning.

Contributions to semantics have come from a diverse group of scholars ranging from Plato and Aristotle to twentieth century scholars.

Semantics is sometimes problematic as it is quite difficult to determine precisely what ‘meaning’ is.

Despite many centuries of study, we still know very little about the nature of meaning or how it is represented in the human mind.

Even with all its constraints and difficulties, the study of language is different and exciting.

Of course, no complete grammar of any language as yet been written.

Even the enormous amount of work done on the syntax of English, has not solved all problems of English; instead it has only served to increase the number of complexities that need to be investigated.

Thus, people (like us) with little training in linguistics can find much to occupy our attention.

This is a subfield of linguistics that is most commonly defined as the study of meanings of linguistics units such as words, phrases and sentences.