Talk:Part of speech

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Just in order to keep the editors calm, we know that Japanese does not have, in fact, "two classes of adjectives", but noun-like qualifiers ("na-adjectives") and stative verbs ("i-adjectives"). The "two classes" in the article are a common and very useful simplification. There's definitely a problem with the "correct" view vs. the "traditional" view. IIRC even Japanese language and Japanese grammar contradict each other on this respect. --Pablo D. Flores 12:06, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Japanese adjectives

message: Regarding the addition of circumpositions: it's OK to add them, but the example given in the edit summary is not a circumposition, it's a circumfix. The ge- and -t of gemacht are grammatical bound morphemes. I think the French ne ... pas would qualify as a circumposition. I don't know of any other languages that have them, though, and even in French ne is often deleted when pas follows. --Pablo D. Flores 10:23, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Circumpositions

message: How did we wind up with this article title? It seems awfully ambiguous for an article title and I don't quite see the problem with using word class. Can someone explain why it should stay under the current title?
Peter Isotalo 16:35, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: this may have been written by authors who are not familar with that terminology. i moved to lexical category. perhaps a separate article should be on parts of speech which explains things from a traditional perspective. parts of speech have rather long history which probably cannot be covered adequately in a general article on lexical categories. peace – ishwar  (speak) 23:49, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a background in linguistic software, and it was my experience that in 90% of the literature within this domain referred to such as part of speech. I just wanted to point that out, that it is confusing to other audiences with such backgrounds that there is a need to use the name 'lexical category'. It may be more technically appropriate, but it differs from the popular usage in academic articles regarding software. For example, try doing a Google search for part of speech tagging or going to the article Part-of-speech_tagging. I just did a search and it found more than 2 million pages. Just trying to point that out, that linguists seem to have total control over this particular sense of the phrase, and the fact that part of speech redirects here is confusing for others like myself. Perhaps a disambiguation page for Part of speech with a link to lexical category and something along the lines of Part of speech (computing) would help. Since this move was done a year ago and I do not consider myself authoritative I will not make the change, but perhaps it will at least enlighten someone as to yet another interpretation. Josh Froelich 20:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just a quick note about the article title. The main article has been renamed 'lexical category', which I agree with. However, the category page is still 'part of speech' and it of course still links to the article 'part of speech', which then redirects. I am not very well-versed in changing it though, should a change be necessary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.24.80.145 (talk • contribs) 2 July 2007
I have moved the article back to "Part of speech". This is the usual term, much more common than "lexical category". Many of the references given in the article use the term "part of speech". I am missing the justification for the use of the term "lexical category". Try searching Google scholar for "part of speech" vs Google scholar for "lexical category" vs Google scholar for "word class". --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:02, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why "part of speech"? 

message: Generative grammar defines lexical categories as 4 possibilities resultant from the binary features [+N] and [+V].  Underthis schema nouns are [+N,-V], verbs [-N,+V], adjective [+N,+V], and prepositions [-N, -V].  There are no lexical categories other than these.  With this understanding one can better explain the relationship relationship, such as the fact that both nouns and adjectives require case or for creating more accurate context-sensitive rules such as the of-insertion rule in English where null=> of / [+N]_NP, where NP stands for noun phrase.  If possible can the linguists who do the pages considered linguistics stub confirm this and provide a better written and more expansive section?
::It's true.  It's been argued that this way of setting things up are not very insightful, however, and that by such generative grammarians as Mark Baker. Neither 15:53, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Generative Grammar Lexical Categories 

message: I'm a sophomore in college admittedly with poor English skills, but trying to improve. Isn't this supposed to be an encyclopedia? I am not criticizing the poriginal authors of this article, who know much more than I, but I will say that the first sentence of this article contains three words that I, and probably the majority of the population aren't familiar with: 'lexical', 'syntactic' and 'morphological'. I have learned that often the best way to quickly learn a subject in Wiki is to go back to the original article (view history tab) before it became polluted. I applaude the original authors and ask those who are concerned with exacting definitions to remember that approximation is OK early in these articles for the sake of the general public. I am not completely sure but it seems to me that highly educated people (or people who think they are) often try to use WIKI as an archival reference manual, or something to that effect. Wouldn't you agree?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.233.66.61 (talk) 13:23, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is it? 

message: "defined four main categories of words: [...] These 15 were" looks like a typing error.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.209.199.229 (talk) 06:11, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical classes 

message: Indo European langages have the common denominator that there is nine part of speeches. In this article numbers are forgotten. Ex: four, the third, zero etc. If English doesn't count numbers as part of speeches - where do they then belong ? (For instance Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian - languages that  not are Indo European, lackes prepositions) Boeing720 (talk) 23:09, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numbers - 9th Part of Speech 

message: Early on, the article refers to a list of PoS 'above.'  There is no list above that statement that I can find.  My guess is is that there once was a list with 1.verb, 2. noun etc. that got moved or deleted but the reference to that list got overlooked.  Right?211.225.33.104 (talk) 09:45, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  What list? 

message: The article states that (Indo-?) European don't have nominal classifiers (linguistics.  The linked-to article gives at least one example:  head of cattle and the French equivalent (perhaps source).211.225.33.104 (talk) 09:48, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  (Nominal) classifiers 

message: I believe that parts of this article could be extended and also more concisely elaborated on. In addition English, it would be helpful to introduce sections on the word classes in other languages. Perhaps there can be a section added to explain the distinction between lexical and grammatical categories. To expand on the paragraph about how certain words in English can fall into multiple categories, it might be helpful to explain how to determine the word class (via tests or clues) if a word has an ambiguous category. Some citations are also missing in the latter half of the article. Cnchia (talk) 02:51, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Ling 300, UBC, right? You all received the assignment to post on a talk page. Interestingly, not one of you has of yet written anything positive about the article you are critiqueing. Criticism is really easy, too easy. --Tjo3ya (talk) 03:34, 19 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: General Suggestions

message: In this article, half of the information is stated twice. I'm not sure if they're the same or just very similar, but I don't want to accidentally delete information that wasn't actually duplicated.Zombiedude347 (talk) 04:03, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duplicated information 

message: :"It was not until later (e.g. Beauzée, 1767) that the adjective was taken as a separate class."
* Already Gottsched differed between substantives (nomen substantivum; Hauptwort) and adjectives (nomen adjectivum; Beywort). Though: There substantives and adjectives are both nouns (nomen, Nennwort). ([www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Gottsched,+Johann+Christoph/Theoretische+Schriften/Grundlegung+der+deutschen+Sprachkunst/I+Register Gottsched's work]) And already Schottel had this kind of distinction. (As far as I remember he used German terms, which are like "selbständiges Nennwort" and "beiständiges Nennwort" (which became shortend to Beiwort), which look more like the Latin terms.)
* [books.google.de/books?id=C7BeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA11 Jakob Redinger (1659, Latin & German)] writes that there are 5 flectable parts of speech (nomen [Germ.: Nennwort], adnomen [Germ.: Beinennwort; also Latin adjectivum though just in brackets], pronomen, verbum, participium) and 5 inflectibale parts (adverbium, praepositio, conjunctio, interjectio, adjectio [Germ. Zusazwort ("Zusatzwort")]). There articles are missing, but he's talking about Latin (which has no articles), and there nomen means substantive and adnomen means adjective. His terms most likely were not popular, as it's nowadays like English adjective, Latin-German Adjektiv etc. and not adnoun, Adnomen etc. But anyway, he differed between substantives and adjectives and called them both parts of speech.
-10:34, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: But none of this contradicts what was written - it just shows that the example given (the 1767 one) was not the most informative, and ought to have been replaced by an earlier one such as Redinger. W. P. Uzer (talk) 13:24, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Well. 1. The statement is kind of misleading. Even though Gottsched (and others) viewed adjectives as a subgroup of noun, adjectives already existed as a separate (sub)class. 2. The statement is kind of unsourced. The ref most likely just proofs that Beauzée viewed adjectives as a separate class (and maybe even a main class and not a subclass), but it most likely doesn't proof that he was the first one to view adjectives as a separate main class. 3. Between Redinger and Beauzée are around 100 years, and maybe before Redinger there were others who viewed adjectives as a main class. -20:39, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adjectives 

message: "Aristotle added another class, "conjunctions" [sýndesmos], which included not only the words known today as conjunctions, but also pronouns, prepositions, and the article."There's a reference for that, but that's more than questionable:
* [books.google.de/books?id=hkJCAQAAMAAJ] (p.176) states that Aristoteles' conjunction means particle, that are words which can not be inflected. So it would include adverb, interjection, preposition, conjunction, but not pronoun and not article (at least in Greek and German, not in English and maybe in other Romance languages).
* [archive.org/stream/onlatinlanguage02varruoft#page/378/mode/2up] (+ the following page), Varro's "De lingua latina" with a translation as "On the Latin Language":
** First it is: "In the word-classes in which inflections may develop, the parts of speech are two, unless, following Dion, we divide into three divisions the ideas which are indicated by words: one division which indicates also case, a second which indicates also time, a third which indicates neither. Of these, Aristotle says that there are two parts of speech; nouns, like homo 'man' and equus 'horse', and verbs like legit 'gathers' and currit 'runs'." That sounds like: noun (vocabulum/nomen) = noun substantive, noun adjective, numeral, pronoun, participle, article (in Greek and German, not in Latin and English); verb (verbum) = verb; conjunction (conjunctio/convinctio) = adverb, interjection, conjunction, preposition.
** Though than it is: "Of the two kinds, noun and verbs, certain words are primary and certain are secondary: primary like homo 'man' and scribit 'writes', and secondary like doctus 'learned' and docte 'learnedly', for we say homo doctos 'a learned man' and scribit docte 'writes learnedly'. These ideas are attended by those of place and time, because neither homo nor scribit can be asserted without the presupposition of place and of time -- yet in such a way that place is more closely associated with the idea of the noun homo, and time more closely with the act of writing." That sounds like noun includes noun substantives and noun adjectives (but could also include the other words with cases), but that may also sound like verb includes both verbs and adverbs.
* In [penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/1B*.html] it's: "18 Earlier writers, among them Aristotle himself and Theodectes, hold that there are but three, verbs, nouns and convinctions. Their view was that the force of language resided in the verbs, and the matter in the nouns (for the one is what we speak, the other that which we speak about), while the duty of the convinctions was to provide a link between the nouns and the verbs. I know that conjunction is the term in general use. But convinction seems to me to be the more accurate translation of the Greek συνδεσμός. 19 Gradually the number was increased by the philosophers, more especially by the Stoics: articles were first added to the convinctions, then prepositions: to nouns appellations were added, then the pronoun and finally the participle, which holds a middle position between the verb and the noun. To the verb itself was added the adverb. Our own language dispenses with the articles, which are therefore distributed among the other parts of speech. 20 But interjections must be added to those already mentioned.". That sounds like: noun includes noun substantive, noun adjective, numeral, pronoun, participle; verb includes verb, adverb; conjunction includes conjunction, preposition, article.
** Interjection might either belong to the verb (as it was part of the adverb in Dionysius Thrax Techne Grammatike) or to the conjunction (as interjections are particles, not flectable words, like conjunctions and prepositions).
** It might be that "article" includes both articulus praepositivus and articulus postpositivus (which is viewed as a relative pronoun in modern times). But then, saying that "pronouns are part of the conjunction" is wrong anyway. Correctly that would be, if article includes both types of article, "some pronouns are part of the noun, while some are part of the conjunction". [Also see the PS.]
** BTW: Later in the text it is said that some say that noun includes proper nouns and appellative nouns (common nouns), while some others say that there are "propers" and "appellatives" (adding noun to them here would be misleading). The common variant should be similar to the modern one: noun is either abstract or concrete, the concrete is proper or appellative (common), or maybe also collective or material (some add the collective and material noun to concrete noun, while others add it to appellative).
Thus: Correctly it's most likely that there are different interpretations of Aristoteles' terms, some that it's this way, some others say it's that way. So the best way should be to write something like "There are different interpretations of Aristoteles' terms. Some that it's this way, some others say it's that way." in the article.
PS - might also relate to the above discussion and to the following statements in the article: "Article (árthron): a declinable part of speech, taken to include the definite article, but also the basic relative pronoun" and "The Latin grammarian Priscian (fl. 500 AD) modified the above eightfold system, excluding "article"". Isn't the Latin "qui, quae, quod" the basic relative pronoun of Latin? So: In case of Greek "article" and "pronoun" might mean something different in antique times than they mean nowadays, but in case of Latin they mean the same: Quintilian and Priscian exclude the article from Latin, but they don't exclude the Latin relative pronoun.
-02:59, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aristoteles 

message: The introduction has been vandalized to the extent it makes no sense.  It is more than just the last edit.  Some-body please clean it up. Kdammers (talk) 16:50, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  VANDALISM 

message: Perhaps a thorough explanation of the difference between adverbs and adjectives would help. Parts of speech can sometimes get confusing especially with adverbs and adjectives.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Boorumr (talk • contribs) 18:56, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adverbs 

message: Original context in lede:
: Uralic languages like Finnish and Hungarian lacks prepositions (instead are the noun they refer to bent), a very significant difference.
I have no clue what this phrase means in standard English. Help? --Pete Tillman (talk) 20:29, 16 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: @Pete Tillman: My guess is that they intended to say that, instead of adding a preposition before a noun to achieve an effect, the noun is inflected ("bent") to achieve the same effect. Thus, for English and Czech: "I gave the cup to Peter" would be rendered as Czech "Hrnek jsem dal Petrovi"; here, English uses preposition "to" for an effect that is achieved in Czech by inflecting the noun "Petr" to yield "Petrovi". Just a guess. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:38, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Gone now. No time at the moment to look further, sorry. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 23:47, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  "instead are the noun they refer to bent":  ?? 

message: It is noted that pronouns remain a closed class (a class of words rarely if ever added to), but now with the sudden affection of "76 genders" and asking "what your pronouns are", will that remain true?  There should be a section mentioning pronouns will become an open class with designer genders.  174.114.77.231 (talk) 02:09, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Will pronouns remain a closed class, or will they open? 

message: The page does not currently say where participles and gerunds (or verbal nouns in some languages) fit. These kinds of words are somewhat ambiguous. Participles are traditionally considered verb forms, and have some properties typically associated with verbs. Yet they can also modify nouns like adjectives (e.g. a falling tree), and in many languages such as German, they inflect like adjectives too. The same question applies to gerunds or verbal nouns as well. While they have verbal properties, such as taking objects, they inflect like nouns in some languages and can also have grammatical gender.
How do POS/lexical category classifications figure in these cases? Do they consider them verbs, or nouns and adjectives? Does their part of speech depend on how they are used, with some uses being verbal and others being adjectival/nominal? Or could they even be given their own label, separate from all of these, to accurately encompass both the verbal and adjectival/nominal properties? Rua (mew) 11:14, 25 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Participles and gerunds/verbal nouns 

message: He is the tallest Man in the world 144.48.132.233 (talk) 16:34, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  English 

message: in the mend department we bought tied shirts and socks 2600:6C58:47F:BDD6:30AB:8BDB:2FE9:F3DE (talk) 20:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  parts of speech