Teaching & Learning Guide for: Word Classes
Authors: Rijkhoff Jan 
Published: April 2009

Author's Introduction

Word classes (‘parts‐of‐speech’, ‘syntactic categories’, ‘lexical categories’) are the fundamental building blocks of linguistic expressions in all natural human languages. They have been investigated since antiquity and continue to play a central role in modern linguistics. Today an increasingly important role is assigned to the information that is specified in the lexical entry of a word in the lexicon (including, of course, information about its category membership), both in formal and in functional approaches to grammar. Furthermore, there is a growing awareness that the traditional set of word classes is biased towards the better studied European languages and needs to be revised to accommodate unfamiliar word classes in non‐European languages.

Author Recommends

1. Ansaldo, Umberto, Jan Don, and Roland Pfau (eds). 2008. Parts of Speech: Descriptive tools, theoretical constructs. Special issue of Studies in Language 32–2.

doi 10.1075/sl.32.3.02ans; ISSN 0378‐4177; E‐ISSN 1569‐9978.

[notice that the doi refers to the ‘Introduction’ by the editors].

This special issue of Studies in Language offers an excellent, broad overview of current approaches to the study of word classes (to quote the editors: ‘from the theoretical to the descriptive, the synchronic to the diachronic, variation and language contact to acquisition’). The 11 articles discuss a large variety of word class‐related issues on the basis of detailed studies of many different languages (e.g. Dutch, English, German, Spanish and other Romance languages, Yucatec Maya, modern and late archaic Chinese, Tukang Besi, Ryukyan, Jakarta Indonesian, Zuni), including two sign languages (German Sign Language and Kata Kolok, the sign language of a village community in Bali, Indonesia). Notice furthermore that several studies in this collection are based on samples containing up to 50 languages.

2. Vogel, Petra M., and Bernard Comrie (eds). 2000. Approaches to the typology of word classes (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 23). Berlin, Germany/New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter.

This anthology is also a highly valuable, albeit slightly less recent collection of articles on word classes. The 14 articles deal with word classes from both a typological and a diachronic perspective. The book is divided into two parts. The eight articles in part I discuss word class categorization in general and the remaining six articles in the second part are language specific studies.

3. Anward, Jan, Edith Moravcsik, and Leon Stassen. 1997. Parts of speech: a challenge for typology. Linguistic Typology 1–2, 167–183.

A programmatic article, which argues that the actual range of part‐of‐speech systems has not been properly assessed and which proposes a template for part‐of‐speech typology ‘that outlines the parameters of variation and possible constraints on the logically available systems, with the aim of prompting further work on the topic’.

4. Hengeveld, Kees, and Eva van Lier. Forthcoming. An implicational map of parts of speech. Linguistic Discovery 7 (2009).

http://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi‐bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/2/xmlpage/1/issue

‘An implicational map of parts of speech’ complements Hengeveld's (1992) original classification of part‐of‐speech systems (see ‘Word Classes’ in Language and Linguistics Compass (2007) 1–6), which has been presented in a greater detail in two subsequent articles:

Hengeveld, Kees, and Jan Rijkhoff and Anna Siewierska. 2004. Parts‐of‐speech systems and word order. Journal of Linguistics 40–3, 527–570.

Hengeveld, Kees, and Jan Rijkhoff. 2005. Mundari as a flexible language. Linguistic Typology 9–3, 406–431.

In this follow‐up article, Hengeveld and Van Lier also deal with counterexamples to the part‐of‐speech hierarchy that was part of Hengeveld's original proposal, showing that they can be explained if part‐of‐speech systems are described on the basis of two parameters (rather than one): the Predication‐Reference parameter and the Head‐Modifier parameter.

5a. Baker, Mark C. 2003. Lexical Categories: Verbs, Nouns, and Adjectives. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 102. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

5b. Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

[Published by Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2007. doi: 10.1075/sl.32.3.02ans]

Apart from Hengeveld's influential proposal, there are currently at least two other major proposals concerning word classes: Baker (2003) and Croft (2001/2007). Baker discusses major lexical word classes from a formal‐generative perspective, whereas Croft offers a functional‐typological account of word classes (see also ‘Word Classes’ in Language and Linguistics Compass (2007), 1–6).

6. Journal of Neurolinguistics, volume 16 (2003), Issues 2–3.

Occasionally, a journal devotes a special issue word class related issues; here is a recent example. In this particular case the articles focus on psychological and neurological aspects of verb processing and noun/verb differences.

Online Materials

There are very few interesting sites about word classes for students of linguistics. This is particularly true for sites that approach word classes from a cross‐linguistic (typological) perspective.

1. Some materials on word classes for free downloading

http://www.phil‐fak.uni‐duesseldorf.de/sfb282/working_papers/BEYNOUNF.pdf

This publication discusses word classes in Tamil, Nama, Indonesian, Arabic, Turkish, Laz, Cayuga:

Jürgen Broschart and Carmen Dawuda. 2000. Beyond nouns and verbs: typological studies in lexical categorization. Working Paper Arbeiten des Sonderforschungsbereichs 282, Düsseldorf – Wuppertal – Köln. ISSN‐0939‐995X. 268 KB, 107 pages.

http://alphalinguistica.sns.it/RdL/2002.html

This is a site where one can download a special issue of Italian Journal of Linguistics/Rivista Di Linguistica (14 (1), 2002), which is mainly devoted to neurolinguistic and psyocholinguistic aspects of the verb–noun distinction. 904 KB, 147 pages.

2. Word classes in English

There are many sites that deal with word classes in English.

http://www.uoregon.edu/~tpayne/engram/Engramsection03.pdf

This is a chapter (in pdf) about English word classes from Tom Payne's ‘A brief grammatical sketch of English’.

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/profdev/literacy/571599/nls_ssgfw_wordclasses02.swf

Even though this website contains training materials for English teachers who want to improve their grammatical knowledge, it is also useful to introduce undergraduate students to English word classes.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet‐grammar/wordclas/wordclas.htm

This online course is part of ‘The Internet Grammar of English’ for university undergraduates and does not assume any prior knowledge of grammar.

Important notice: ‘The Internet Grammar of English will be accessible free of charge to users from UK educational institutions (i.e. for those who log in from a domain ending in .ac.uk). For a limited trial period only, IGE will also be accessible free of charge to all other users.’

3. Word classes in Greek

http://www.geocities.com/alexandrosworld/Greek/WordClasses.html

This is another site that is only concerned with word classes in one particular language: Greek. The following site gives a contrastive presentation of word classes in Greek and English:

http://wordhoard.northwestern.edu/userman/pos‐and‐wc.html

4. Word classes in German

http://www.canoo.net/services/OnlineGrammar/Wort/Ueberblick/Wortklasse.html?lang=en

This site is in English but discusses the basis principles of word classes in German.

Sample syllabus

Since this course aims to go beyond the traditional lexical categories (Verb, Noun, etc.), the syllabus also includes texts on grammatical word classes such as demonstrative and personal pronouns, but also on, for example, numerals, which are sometimes regarded as a distinct word class but whose members can belong to different categories. Furthermore, the syllabus contains suggestions for texts that deal with neurolinguistic aspects of word class distinctions and word classes in sign languages.

The articles in Week 1 are meant to familiarize the students with word class distinctions and offers brief overviews of the various approaches to word categorization (Anward 2001; Haspelmath 2001; Rijkhoff 2007). Three kinds of texts have been selected with regard to the three major word classes Verb, Noun, and Adjective (Week 2‐3‐4): one article provides a general perspective on the word class, another article treats the word class from a morphological point of view, and the third article offers a case study or focuses on certain semantic aspects of the word class. Adverbs are ignored in this syllabus, mainly because they do not constitute a single, coherent category.

Week 5 is devoted to lexical word classes whose members cannot be easily classified in terms of the traditional categories Verb, Noun or Adjective. Members of these so‐called flexible word classes have properties that are strongly associated with at least two of the traditional word classes (e.g. Noun and Adjective). Hengeveld et al. (2004) introduce the phenomenon of lexical flexibility and show that word order possibilities of a language are partly determined by the presence or absence of a flexible word class in the part‐of‐speech system of that language. Evans and Osada (2005) argue against the existence of flexible word classes and Hengeveld and Rijkhoff (2005) offer a critical evaluation of the arguments against lexical flexibility offered by Evans and Osada.

Some grammatical word classes are covered in Week 6, in particular demonstrative and personal pronouns. Diessel (1999) investigates morphosyntactic properties of demonstratives in a wide variety of languages, whereas Bhat (2005) examines the relationship between third person pronouns and demonstratives on the basis of data from 225 languages. Since some linguists have argued that certain Southeast Asian languages lack a distinct class of personal pronouns and use nouns instead (Cooke 1965; Bhat 2004: 30–31), the syllabus also contains an article that focuses on pronouns – or their functional equivalents – in the Burmese‐Lolo languages (Bradley 1993).

Texts in Weeks 7 and 8 deal with numerals and classifiers. Members of both groups are sometimes regarded as a distinct word class, but these texts show that this is not always the case (within or across languages). For example, in some languages especially higher numerals display properties of nouns in that they belong to a certain gender or noun class. Classifiers come in different varieties (e.g. numeral classifiers, verbal classifiers). Aikhenvald (2006) offers an overview of the various kinds of classifiers that are attested in languages across the globe, whereas Aikhenvald (2000) is concerned with the origin, evolution, and decay of classifiers. Additionally the syllabus has a short article on particles, which also consist of a rather mixed bag of elements and which consequently are difficult to characterize in terms of word classification (Miller 2006).

Texts in Weeks 9 and 10 are concerned with word classes from a discourse perspective (Hopper and Thompson 1984), word classes in sign languages (Schwager and Zeshan 2008), and neurolinguistic aspects of word class distinctions. Druks (2002) provides a review of the recent literature on verb/noun differences from a neurolinguistic perspective and verb processing in aphasia patients. Cappa and Perani (2003) discuss neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies dealing with the neural correlates of noun and verb processing, whereas De Bleser and Kauschke (2003) investigate a possible correspondence between the acquisition and breakdown of the ability to name nouns and verbs.

The syllabus refers to several chapters in Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics (2nd edition, editor‐in‐chief Keith Brown), not only because they offer excellent, short introductions to the various topics that are addressed in this course, but also because they are easily accessible on the Internet (provided the educational institution has a subscription, of course). Apart from encyclopedias and handbooks (on morphology, syntax, typology etc.), the World Atlas of Language Structures or WALS (http://wals.info) has useful chapters on individual word classes and word class related issues. Notice, however, that word classes are sometimes defined on the basis of semantic criteria. This is also true for certain chapters in WALS, which means, for example, that the category of adjectives in the chapter on the order of adjective and noun includes elements that are strictly speaking verbs or nouns (cf. Dryer 2008).

Week 1. Introduction

Anward, Jan. 2001. Parts of speech. Language typology and language universals: An international handbook (Volume 1), ed. by Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher and Wolfgang Raible, 726–735. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.

Haspelmath, Martin. 2001. Word classes and parts of speech. International Encyc‐lopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. by Paul B. Baltes and Neil J. Smelser, 16538–45. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Pergamon.

Rijkhoff, Jan. 2007. Word classes. Language and Linguistics Compass 1‐6, 709–726. doi 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2007.00030.x

Week 2. Verbs

Viberg, Åke. 2006. Verbs. Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics, 2nd edn, ed. by Keith Brown, 408–411. Oxford, UK: Elsevier. doi 10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00281-9

Bybee, Joan. Verb. 2000. Morphology: an international handbook on inflection and word‐formation, ed. by Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann and Joachim Mugdan, 794–808. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.

Botne, Robert. 2003. To die across languages: Toward a typology of achievement verbs. Linguistic Typology 7‐2, 233–278. doi 10.1515/lity.2003.016, 04/08/2003

Week 3. Nouns

Koptjevskaja‐Tamm, Maria. 2006. Nouns. Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics, 2nd edn, ed. by Keith Brown, 720–724. Oxford, UK: Elsevier. doi 10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00280-7

Lehmann, Christian and Edith Moravcsik. 2000. Noun. Morphology: an international handbook on inflection and word‐formation, ed. by Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann and Joachim Mugdan, 732–757. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.

Rijkhoff, Jan. 2008. On flexible and rigid nouns. Studies in Language 32‐3, 727–752. doi 10.1075/sl.32.3.12rij

Week 4. Adjectives

Pustet, Regina. 2006. Adjectives. Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics, 2nd edn, ed. by Keith Brown, 60–63. Oxford, UK: Elsevier. doi 10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00282-0

Bhat, Darbhe Narayana Shankara and Regina Pustet. 2000. Adjective. Morphology: an international handbook on inflection and word‐formation, ed. by Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann and Joachim Mugdan, 757–769. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Bolinger, Dwight. 1967. Adjectives in English: attribution and predication. Lingua 18, 1–34.

Week 5. Flexible word classes

Hengeveld, Kees and Jan Rijkhoff and Anna Siewierska. 2004. Parts‐of‐speech systems and word order. Journal of Linguistics 40‐3, 527–570.

Evans, Nicholas and Toshiki Osada. 2005. Mundari: The myth of a language without word classes. Linguistic Typology 9‐3, 351–390.

Hengeveld, Kees and Jan Rijkhoff. 2005. Mundari as a flexible language. Linguistic Typology 9‐3, 406–431.

Week 6. Demonstrative and personal pronouns

Diessel, Holger. 1999. The morphosyntax of demonstratives in synchrony and diachrony. Linguistic Typology 3–1, 1–49.

Bhat, Darbhe Narayana Shankara. 2008. Third person pronouns and demonstratives. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, ed. by Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil and Bernard Comrie (eds), Chapter 43. München, Germany: Max Planck Digital Library. Available at: http://wals.info/feature/43.

Bradley, David. 1993. Pronouns in Burmese‐Lolo. Linguistics of the Tibeto‐Burman Area 16‐1, 157–215.

Week 7. Numerals

Numerals require a somewhat special approach in a course on word classes. They are perhaps one of the most interesting but also problematic entities with regard to word categorization and it is probably for this reason that they are often ignored in discussions on word classes. In many languages, numerals can be said to constitute a word class by themselves, but there are also quite a few languages in which at least some numerals more or less resemble members of other word classes. For example, formally speaking Russian numerals fall in between nouns and adjectives and numerals higher than one in the nominative or so‐called inanimate accusative case appear with the NP referring to the quantified entity in the genitive of quantification (Comrie 1981: 101–104):

 Russian

(1)
pjat’
mašin

five:Nom
car:Gen.Pl

‘five cars’

 Similarly, in Finnish the numeral displays nominal features as it imposes partitive case on the noun (see also Malchukov 2000 on dependency reversal):

 Finnish

(2)
kolme
poika‐a
puhu‐u
Ranska‐a

three:NOM
boy‐PRTV:SG
speak:PRS‐3:SG
French

‘Three boys speak French’

It should also be observed that there are languages that only have a few numerals (Greenberg 1978: 276; Comrie 1999: 81–82; Everett 2005: 623) or lack a purely linguistic category of cardinal numerals altogether. Such languages may use expressions that are accompanied by a gesture and often the gesture alone is sufficient, as in Kobon (Davies 1981: 206–207). Notice furthermore that in many languages numerals are borrowed from another language.

There are several large scale studies on numerals (e.g. Gvozdanović 1992, 1999; Hurford 1975), but perhaps the best way to get a taste of word class issues regarding numerals are chapters in grammatical descriptions of individual languages or language families. For example, in Babungo (Central Niger‐Congo) the words for ‘digit’, ‘ten’, ‘hundred’, ‘thousand’ and ‘million’ are ‘nouns with their own noun class and gender membership’ (Schaub 1985: 187) and in Krongo (Kordofanian) numerals are regarded as verbal elements (Reh 1985: 242f). Some families that are worth exploring with regard the word class membership of numerals are: Slavic, Bantu, Na‐Dene, Penutian, Polynesian and Formosan (cf. Rijkhoff 2004: 158–159).

Other valuable sources are World Atlas of Language Structures (http://wals.info), which also has articles on e.g. ordinal numerals, numeral bases, and numeral classifiers, and the website ‘Numeral Systems of the World's Languages’ (http://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/numeral/). This site has information about numeral systems in approximately half of all the extant languages (total number: approximately 7000), ‘focusing especially on little‐known, undescribed and endangered languages, to record and preserve the traditional counting systems before they fall out of use’.

Comrie, Bernard. 1981. On definitions and categories. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology, by Bernard Comrie, 100–104. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Corbett, Greville G. 1993. The head of Russian numeral expressions. Heads in Grammatical Theory, ed. by Greville G. Corbett, Norman M. Fraser and Scott McGlashan, 11–35. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Also available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/smgjournal/4/

Week 8. Classifiers and particles

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2006. Classifiers and Noun Classes: Semantics. Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics, 2nd edn, ed. by Keith Brown, 463–471. Oxford, UK: Elsevier. Available online 16 March 2006. doi 10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/01111-1

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2000. Origin and development of classifiers. Chapter 13 of Classifiers: A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, 352–411. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Miller, J. 2006. Particles in spoken discourse. Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics, Second Edition, ed. by Keith Brown, 214–217. Oxford, UK: Elsevier. doi 10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00571-X

Week 9. Word classes in discourse and sign languages

Hopper, Paul and Sandra A. Thompson. 1984. The discourse basis for lexical categories in universal grammar. Language 60‐3, 703–752.

Schwager, Waldemar and Ulrike Zeshan. 2008. Word classes in sign languages: criteria and classifications. Studies in Language 32‐3, 509–545. doi 10.1075/sl.32.3.03sch

Week 10. Neurolinguistic aspects of word classes

Druks, Judit. 2002. Verbs and nouns – a review of the literature. Journal of Neurolinguistics 15‐3/5, 289–315.

Cappa, Stefano F. and Daniela Perani. 2003. The neural correlates of noun and verb processing. Journal of Neurolinguistics 16‐2/3 (special issue Objects vs. actions and nouns vs. verbs, ed. by J. Druks and J. Masterton), 183–189.

De Bleser, Ria and Christina Kauschke. 2003. Acquisition and loss of nouns and verbs: parallel or divergent patterns? Journal of Neurolinguistics 16‐2/3 (special issue Objects vs. actions and nouns vs. verbs, ed. by J. Druks and J. Masterton), 321–229.

Works Cited

Bhat, Darbhe Narayana Shankara. 2004. Pronouns. Oxford, UK: .

Comrie, Bernard. 1999. . In
Numeral Types and Changes Worldwide, ed. by
, 81–94. Berlin, Germany/New York, NY: .

Cooke, Joseph R.
1965. Pronominal Reference in Thai, Burmese, and Vietnamese. University of California Publications in Linguistics, Volume 52. Berkeley, CA: .

Davies, John. 1981. Kobon
(Lingua Descriptive Studies 3). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: .

Dryer, Matthew S.
2008. .
The world atlas of language structures online, ed. by
,
,
and

(eds), Chapter 87. München, Germany: . Available at http://wals.info/feature/87.

Everett, Daniel L.
2005. in Pirahã.
Current Anthropology
46‐4, 621–46.

Greenberg, Joseph H.
1990 1978. .
On language: selected writings of Joseph H. Greenberg, ed. by
and
, 271–309. [Originally published in
Universals of Human Language, ed. by
,
and
, Vol. 3, 249–95. Stanford:

(ed.). 1992. Indo‐European numerals. Berlin, Germany: .

ed.). 1999. Numeral types and changes worldwide (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 118). Berlin, Germany: .

Hurford, John. 1975. The linguistic theory of numerals. Cambridge, UK: .

Malchukov, Andrej L.
2000. Dependency reversal in noun‐attribute constructions: towards a typology (LINCOM Studies in Language Typology
03). München, Germany: .

Reh, Mechthild. 1985. Die Krongo‐Sprache (Nìinò Mó‐dì) – Beschreibung, Texte, Wörterverzeichniss. Berlin, Germany: .

Rijkhoff, Jan. 2004. The noun phrase. Oxford, UK: .

Schaub, Willi. 1985. Babungo. London, UK: .

Focus Questions

What could be the reason(s) why we tend to find the same or similar word classes in languages across the globe?

Why are word classes (‘parts‐of‐speech’, ‘syntactic categories’, ‘lexical categories’) important for grammatical theory?

Why is it so difficult to define word classes across languages?

Give examples of typical and less typical members of the categories Verb and Noun in English.

What would be an impossible PoS system – and why?