1. Subject of theoretical grammar. Analytic and synthetic word forms

Analytical Types
These consist in using a word (devoid of any lexical meaning of its
own) to express some grammatical category of another word.
There can be no doubt in Modern English about the analytical character of
such formations as, e. g., has invited or is invited, or is inviting, or does not
invite. The verbs have, be, and do have no lexical meaning of their own in
these cases. The lexical meaning of the formation resides in the participle or
infinitive following the verb have, be or do. Some doubt has been expressed
about the formations shall invite and will invite. There is a view that shall
and will have a lexical meaning.
While the existence of analytical forms of the English verb cannot be
disputed, the existence of such forms in adjectives and adverbs is not
nowadays universally recognised. The question whether such formations as
more vivid, the most vivid, or, again, more vividly and most vividly are or
are not analytical forms of degrees of comparison of vivid and vividly, is
controversial. We can only say here that if these formations are recognised as
analytical forms of degrees of comparison, the words more and most have to
be numbered among the analytical means of morphology.

4. МОРФЕМНАЯ СТРУКТУРА СЛОВА MORPHEMIC STRUCTURE OF THE WORD
As shown in the previous unit, the morpheme is the elementary meaningful lingual unit built up from phonemes and used to make words. It has meaning, but its meaning is abstract, significative, not concrete, or nominative, as is that of the word. Morphemes constitute the words; they do not exist outside the words. Studying the morpheme we actually study the word: its inner structure, its functions, and the ways it enters speech.
Stating the differences between the word and the morpheme, we have to admit that the correlation between the word and the morpheme is problematic. The borderlines between the morpheme and the word are by no means rigid and there is a set of intermediary units (half-words - half-morphemes), which form an area of transitions (a continuum) between the word and the morpheme as the polar phenomena. This includes the so-called “morpheme-like” functional, or auxiliary words, for example, auxiliary verbs and adverbs, articles, particles, prepositions and conjunctions: they are realized as isolated, separate units (their separateness being fixed in written practice) but perform various grammatical functions; in other words, they function like morphemes and are dependent semantically to a greater or lesser extent. Cf..: Jack’s, a boy, have done.
This approach to treating various lingual units is known in linguistics as “a field approach”: polar phenomena possessing the unambiguous characteristic features of the opposed units constitute “the core”, or “the center” of the field, while the intermediary phenomena combining some of the characteristics of the poles make up “the periphery” of the field; e.g.: functional words make up the periphery of the class of words since their functioning is close to the functioning of morphemes
In traditional grammar, the study of the morphemic structure of the word is based on two criteria: the positional criterion - the location of the morphemes with regard to each other, and the semantic (or functional) criterion - the contribution of the morphemes to the general meaning of the word.
According to these criteria morphemes are divided into root-morphemes (roots) and affixal morphemes (affixes). Roots express the concrete, “material” part of the meaning of the word and constitute its central part. Affixes express the specificational part of the meaning of the word: they specify, or transform the meaning of the root. Affixal specification may be of two kinds: of lexical or grammatical character. So, according to the semantic criterion affixes are further subdivided into lexical, or word-building (derivational) affixes, which together with the root constitute the stem of the word, and grammatical, or word-changing affixes, expressing different morphological categories, such as number, case, tense and others. With the help of lexical affixes new words are derived, or built; with the help of grammatical affixes the form of the word is changed.
According to the positional criterion affixes are divided into prefixes, situated before the root in the word, e.g.: under-estimate, and suffixes, situated after the root, e.g.: underestim-ate. Prefixes in English are only lexical: the word underestimate is derived from the word estimate with the help of the prefix under-. Suffixes in English may be either lexical or grammatical; e.g. in the word underestimates -ate is a lexical suffix, because it is used to derive the verb estimate (v) from the noun esteem (n), and –s is a grammatical suffix making the 3rd person, singular form of the verb to underestimate. Grammatical suffixes are also called inflexions (inflections, inflectional endings).
Grammatical suffixes in English have certain peculiarities, which make them different from inflections in other languages: since they are the remnants of the old inflectional system, there are few (only six) remaining word-changing suffixes in English: -(e)s, -ed, - ing, - er, - est, - en; most of them are homonymous, e.g. -(e)s is used to form the plural of the noun (dogs), the genitive of the noun (my friend’s), and the 3rd person singular of the verb (works); some of them have lost their inflectional properties and can be attached to units larger than the word, e.g.: his daughter Mary’s arrival. That is why the term “inflection” is seldom used to denote the grammatical components of words in English.
Grammatical suffixes form word-changing, or morphological paradigms of words, which can be observed to their full extent in inflectional languages, such as Russian, e.g.: стол – стола – столу – столом - о столе; morphological paradigms exist, though not on the same scale, in English too, e.g., the number paradigm of the noun: boy - boys.
Lexical affixes are primarily studied by lexicology with regard to the meaning which they contribute to the general meaning of the whole word. In grammar word-building suffixes are studied as the formal marks of the words belonging to different parts of speech; they form lexical (word-building, derivational) paradigms of words united by a common root, cf.:
to decide - decision - decisive - decisively
to incise - incision - incisive - incisively
Being the formal marks of words of different parts of speech, word-building suffixes are also grammatically relevant. But grammar study is primarily concerned with grammatical, word-changing, or functional affixes, because they change the word according to its grammatical categories and serve to insert the word into an utterance.
The morphemic structure of the word can be analyzed in a linear way; for example, in the following way: underestimates - W= {[Pr +(R+L)]+Gr}, where W denotes the word, R the root, L the lexical suffix, Pr the prefix, and Gr the grammatical suffix
In addition, the derivational history of the word can be hierarchically demonstrated as the so-called “tree of immediate constituents”; such analysis is called “IC-analysis”, IC standing for the “immediate constituents”. E.g.:
IC-analysis, like many other ideas employed in the study of the morphemes, was developed by an American linguist, Leonard Bloomfield, and his followers within the framework of an approach known as Descriptive Linguistics (or, Structural Linguistics). Immediate constituents analysis in structural linguistics starts with lingual units of upper levels: for example, the immediate constituents of a composite sentence might be clauses, each clause in turn might have noun phrase and verb phrase as constituents, etc.; the analysis continues until the ultimate constituents – the morphemes – are reached.
Besides prefixes and suffixes, some other positional types of affix are distinguished in linguistics: for example, regular vowel interchange which takes place inside the root and transforms its meaning “from within” can be treated as an infix, e.g.: a lexical infix – blood – to bleed; a grammatical infix – tooth – teeth. Grammatical infixes are also defined as inner inflections as opposed to grammatical suffixes which are called outer inflections. Since infixation is not a productive (regular) means of word-building or word-changing in modern English, it is more often seen as partial suppletivity. Full suppletivity takes place when completely different roots are paradigmatically united, e.g.: go – went.
When studying morphemes, we should distinguish morphemes as generalized lingual units from their concrete manifestations, or variants in specific textual environments; variants of morphemes are called “allo-morphs”.
Initially, the so-called allo-emic theory was developed in phonetics: in phonetics, phonemes, as the generalized, invariant phonological units, are distinguished from their concrete realizations, the allophones. For example, one phoneme is pronounced in a different way in different environments, cf.: you [ju:] - you know [ju]; in Russian, vowels are also pronounced in a different way in stressed and unstressed syllables, cf.: дом - домой. The same applies to the morpheme, which is a generalized unit, an invariant, and may be represented by different variants, allo-morphs, in different textual environments. For example, the morpheme of the plural, -(e)s, sounds differently after voiceless consonants (bats), voiced consonants and vowels (rooms), and after fricative and sibilant consonants (clashes). So, [s], [z], [iz], which are united by the same meaning (the grammatical meaning of the plural), are allo-morphs of the same morpheme, which is represented as -(e)s in written speech.
The “allo-emic theory” in the study of morphemes was also developed within the framework of Descriptive Linguistics by means of the so-called distributional analysis: in the first stage of distributional analysis a syntagmatic chain of lingual units is divided into meaningful segments, morphs, e.g.: he/ start/ed/ laugh/ing/; then the recurrent segments are analyzed in various textual environments, and the following three types of distribution are established: contrastive distribution, non-contrastive distribution and complementary distribution. The morphs are said to be in contrastive distribution if they express different meanings in identical environments the compared morphs, e.g.: He started laughing – He starts laughing; such morphs constitute different morphemes. The morphs are said to be in non-contrastive distribution if they express identical meaning in identical environments; such morphs constitute ‘free variants’ of the same morpheme, e.g.: learned - learnt, ate [et] – ate [eit] (in Russian: трактора – тракторы). The morphs are said to be in complementary distribution if they express identical meanings in different environments, e.g.: He started laughing – He stopped laughing; such morphs constitute variants, or allo-morphs of the same morpheme.
The allo-morphs of the plural morpheme -(e)s [s], [z], [iz] stand in phonemic complementary distribution; the allo-morph –en, as in oxen, stands in morphemic complementary distribution with the other allo-morphs of the plural morpheme
Besides these traditional types of morphemes, in Descriptive Linguistics distributional morpheme types are distinguished; they immediately correlate with each other in the following pairs. Free morphemes, which can build up words by themselves, are opposed to bound morphemes, used only as parts of words; e.g.: in the word ‘hands’ hand- is a free morpheme and -s is a bound morpheme. Overt and covert morphemes are opposed to each other: the latter shows the meaningful absence of a morpheme distinguished in the opposition of grammatical forms in paradigms; it is also known as the “zero morpheme”, e.g.: in the number paradigm of the noun, hand – hands, the plural is built with the help of an overt morpheme, hand-s, while the singular - with the help of a zero or covert morpheme, handØ. Full or meaningful morphemes are opposed to empty morphemes, which have no meaning and are left after singling out the meaningful morphemes; some of them used to have a certain meaning, but lost it in the course of historical development, e.g.: in the word ‘children’ child- is the root of the word, bearing the core of the meaning, -en is the suffix of the plural, while -r- is an empty morpheme, having no meaning at all, the remnant of an old morphological form. Segmental morphemes, consisting of phonemes, are opposed to supra-segmental morphemes, which leave the phonemic content of the word unchanged, but the meaning of the word is specified with the help of various supra-segmental lingual units, e.g.: `convert (a noun) - con`vert (a verb). Additive morphemes, which are freely combined in a word, e.g.: look+ed, small+er, are opposed to replacive morphemes, or root morphemes, which replace each other in paradigms, e.g.: sing -sang – sung. Continuous morphemes, combined with each other in the same word, e.g.: worked, are opposed to discontinuous morphemes, which consist of two components used jointly to build the analytical forms of the words, e.g.: have worked, is working.
Many of the distributional morpheme types contradict the traditional definition of the morpheme: traditionally the morpheme is the smallest meaningful lingual unit (this is contradicted by the “empty” morphemes type), built up by phonemes (this is contradicted by the “supra-segmental” morphemes type), used to build up words (this is contradicted by the “discontinuous” morphemes type). This is due to the fact that in Descriptive Linguistics only three lingual units are distinguished: the phoneme, the morpheme, and syntactic constructions; the notion of the word is rejected because of the difficulties of defining it. Still, the classification of distributional morpheme types can be used to summarize and differentiate various types of word-building and word-changing, though not all of them are morphemic in the current mainstream understanding of the term “morpheme”.
5. Categorial structure of the word
Grammatical meanings of notional words are rendered by their grammatical forms. For example, the meaning of the plural in English is regularly rendered by the grammatical suffix –(e)s: cats, books, clashes. Grammatical meanings of individual grammatical forms are established as such in paradigmatic correlations: the plural correlates with the singular (cat – cats), the genitive case of the noun correlates with the common case (cat – cat’s), the definite article determination correlates with the indefinite article determination (a cat – the cat), etc.
The generalized meaning rendered by paradigmatically correlated grammatical forms is called “categorial”. Category is a logical notion denoting the reflection of the most general properties of phenomena. Categorial meanings in grammar are expressed by grammatical paradigms. For example, within the system of the English noun the generalized, categorial meaning of “number” is expressed grammatically through the paradigmatic correlation (or, opposition in a paradigm) of two members, of two grammatical forms, each with its own grammatical meaning: the singular (e.g., cat) and the plural (cats).
Thus, the definition of grammatical category is as follows: grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalized categorial meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms. In other words, it is a unity of a generalized grammatical meaning and the forms of its expression.
Paradigmatic correlations, as shown above, are exposed by “oppositions” of grammatical forms - the members of a paradigm. Oppositions are analyzed linguistically with the help of a special method known as “oppositional analysis”. N. S. Trubetzkoy, a member of the Prague Linguistic Circle, developed it at the turn of the 20th century for the purposes of phonological research; later it became widely employed in the analysis of grammatical categories. Opposition members are characterized by two types of features: common features and differential features. Common features serve as the basis for uniting the grammatical forms within the same paradigm; in the example above, the two forms, cat and cats, are paradigmatically united as forms of one and the same word, sharing the categorical grammatical meaning of number. Differential features serve to differentiate the members of an opposition; for example, the grammatical form of the plural, cats, has an inflection, or a grammatical suffix, which the form of the singular, cat, has not.
On the basis of various combinations of common and differential features, several types of oppositions are distinguished. The prevalent type in English grammar is a binary privative opposition. The term “binary” means, that the opposition consists of two members, or forms; besides binary oppositions, there are oppositions, that may include more than two members (‘ternary’, ‘quaternary’, etc.). The term “privative” means that the members of the opposition are characterized by the presence/absence of a certain differential feature, which serves as the formal mark of one of its members; in the example above, cat – cats, the ending of the plural is its formal mark. The member of the opposition characterized by the presence of the differential mark is called “marked”, “strong”, or “positive” (commonly designated by the symbol +). The other member of the opposition, characterized by the absence of the differential feature, is called “unmarked”, “weak”, or “negative” (commonly designated by the symbol -). In the category of number the strong, marked member is the plural form, because it possesses a special formal mark (either the productive suffix -(e)s, or other formal means, such as -en in children, etc.), the weak, unmarked member of the opposition is the singular form, which possesses no special mark. To stress the negative marking of the weak member it is also defined in oppositional theory with “non-”terms: e.g., the singular is referred to as “non-plural”.
Besides the differences in the form, there are also regular semantic differences between the members of the privative oppositions: the meaning of the weak member is always more general and more abstract, while the meaning of the strong member is always more particular and concrete. Due to this difference in meaning, the weak member of the opposition is used in a wider range of contexts than the strong member and it can even regularly substitute the strong member in certain contexts. For example, the singular form of the noun can be used generically to denote all the objects belonging to a certain class: The rose is my favourite flower = (All) Roses are my favourite flowers.
Besides privative oppositions, there are gradual and equipollent oppositions, which are minor types in morphology. Gradual oppositions are formed by a series of members which are distinguished not by the presence or absence of a differential feature, but by the degree of it. A gradual morphological opposition in English can be identified only in the plane of content in the category of comparison, cf.: big – bigger - biggest. Equipollent oppositions are formed by members, which are distinguished by a number of their own features. An equipollent morphological opposition in English can be identified in the plane of expression in the paradigms of suppletive forms, for example, in the correlation of the person and number forms of the verb be: am – are – is (was – were).
There are two basic types of means with the help of which grammatical forms are built: synthetical and analytical. Synthetical (synthetic) grammatical forms are built by means of the morphemic composition of the word. This includes the morphemic means, which were described in the previous unit: outer inflexion with the help of adding grammatical suffixes to the stems of the words, e.g.: cat - cats; inner inflexion, or vowel interchange inside the root, e.g.: goose - geese; and suppletivity, when different roots are combined within the same paradigm, e.g.: go – went. Analytical grammatical forms are built by the combination of the notional word with auxiliary words, e.g.: come - have come. Analytical forms consist of two words which together express one grammatical meaning; in other words, they are grammatically idiomatic: the meaning of the grammatical form is not immediately dependent on the meanings of its parts. Analytical grammatical forms are intermediary between words and word-combinations. Some analytical forms are closer to a word, because the two parts are inseparable in their grammatical idiomatism; for example, the forms of the perfect aspect: come - have come. The components of some other analytical forms are more independent semantically, and they are less idiomatic grammatically; for example, the degrees of comparison: beautiful - more beautiful – most beautiful. Such combinations of an auxiliary component and a basic component are treated by some linguists as free word-combinations, but as they are correlative members of grammatical paradigms and express some specific grammatical meaning, they should be recognized as analytical grammatical forms too. Some lexical means regularly involved in the expression of common grammatical meanings can also be regarded as marginal cases of suppletivity or specific analytical forms, e.g.: the use of quantifiers with uncountable nouns or repetition groups – a bit of joy, the last two items of news, thousands and thousands, etc.
Analytical grammatical forms are prevalent in English; modern English is an analytical type of language.
Grammatical oppositions can be reduced in some contextual circumstances, when one member of the opposition is used with the meaning of the other member, or, in other words, substitutes its counter-member. This phenomenon in the theory of oppositions is treated as “oppositional reduction” or “oppositional substitution”.
Two types of oppositional reduction can be distinguished in grammar: neutralization and transposition. Neutralization takes place when the grammatical form, which is used, loses its own functional meaning and acquires the meaning of its counter-member; in other words, it becomes functionally equivalent with its oppositional counter-member. This type of oppositional reduction is stylistically indifferent (neutral); in most cases it happens when the weak member of the opposition is used in the meaning of the strong one, e.g.: The rose is my favourite flower (=Roses are my favourite flowers) - the singular, the weak member of the number category opposition, is used instead of the plural, the strong member. Transposition takes place in cases where one member of the opposition preserves to a certain extent its original functional meaning alongside the meaning of its counterpart; the two functional meanings are actually combined. This type of oppositional reduction is stylistically marked. Because of the combination of meanings and the additional stylistic colouring created, transposition can be treated as a grammatical mechanism of figurativeness, or a grammatical metaphor. In most cases it happens when the strong member of the opposition is used with the meaning of the weak one. E.g.: the waters of the ocean, the sands of the desert – the plural, the strong member of the number category opposition, is used instead of the singular, the weak member.
Grammatical categories are subdivided into several types. “Immanent”categories render the meaning innate (or, natural) for the words of a particular lexical class; for example, the category of number is innate for nouns since the referents denoted by nouns can potentially be counted. “Reflective” categories serve as a sign of formal correlation or agreement between the words in an utterance: in English the verbal number formally reflects the number characteristics of the noun or of the pronoun with which the verb corresponds in the utterance; in other words, the verbs agree with the nouns or pronouns in the category of number, e.g.: The man goes - The men go. For verbs the category of number is not immanent; it is reflective. Immanent categories can be either “transgressive” like the category of number, which transgresses the borders of the noun, or they can be “closed”, confined within the word-class; for example, the category of gender of nouns is not reflected by any other word-class in English, so it is a closed category. Another distinction is based on the changeability of the categorial feature. “Variable feature categories” are categories realized in changeable grammatical forms of words, e.g.: the category of number is a variable feature category, because most nouns have two forms, the singular and the plural, cat – cats. “Constant feature categories” reflect the classification of the words according to certain unchangeable categorial features, e.g.: the category of gender in English is a constant feature category - the noun woman is of feminine gender, substituted only by the feminine pronoun she, man is of masculine gender, invariably substituted by he, and tree - of neuter gender, substituted only by it.
6. Grammatical classes of words (parts of speech).
The traditional term “parts of speech” was developed in Ancient Greek linguistics and reflects the fact that at that time there was no distinction between language as a system and speech, between the word as a part of an utterance and the word as a part of lexis. The term “parts of speech” is accepted by modern linguistics as a conventional, or “non-explanatory” term (“name-term”) to denote the lexico-grammatical classes of words correlating with each other in the general system of language on the basis of their grammatically relevant properties.
There are three types of grammatically relevant properties of words that differentiate classes of words called “parts of speech”: semantic, formal and functional properties. They traditionally make the criteria for the classification of parts of speech. The semantic criterion refers to the generalized semantic properties common to the whole class of words, e.g.: the generalized (or, categorial) meaning of nouns is “thingness”, of verbs process, of adjectives substantive property, of adverbs non-substantive property. The formal criterion embraces the formal features (word-building and word-changing) that are characteristic for a particular part of speech, e.g.: the noun is characterized by a specific set of word-building affixes, cf.: property, bitterness, worker, etc., and is changed according to the categories of number, case and article determination: boy-boys, boy – boy’s, boy – the boy – a boy, etc. Combinability is also a relevant formal feature for each particular part of speech; for example, verbs can be modified by adverbs, while nouns cannot (except in specific contexts). The functional criterion is based on the functions that the words of a particular class fulfill in the sentence, e.g.: the most characteristic functions of the noun are those of a subject and an object; the only function of the finite form of the verb is that of a predicate; the adjective functions in most contexts as an attribute; the adverb as an adverbial modifier.
Classifications in general may be based either on one criterion (such classifications are called homogeneous, or monodifferential), or on a combination of several criteria (such classifications are called heterogeneous, or polydifferential). The traditional classification of parts of speech is polydifferential (heterogeneous); it is based on the combination of all the three criteria mentioned above: ‘meaning – form – function’.
Traditionally, all parts of speech are subdivided on the upper level of classification into notional words and functional words. Notional words, which traditionally include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and numerals, have complete nominative meanings, are in most cases changeable and fulfill self-dependent syntactic functions in the sentence. The noun, for example, as a part of speech, is traditionally characterized by 1) the categorial meaning of substance (“thingness”), 2) a specific set of word-building affixes, the grammatical categories of number, case and article determination, prepositional connections and modification by an adjective, and 3) the substantive functions of subject, object or predicative in the sentence. In the same way, all the other notional parts of speech are described. Functional words, which include conjunctions, prepositions, articles, interjections, particles, and modal words, have incomplete nominative value, are unchangeable and fulfill mediatory, constructional syntactic functions.
The employment of the three criteria combined, in present-day mainstream linguistics, was developed mainly by V. V. Vinogradov, L. V. Scherba, A. I. Smirnitsky, B. A. Ilyish and others.
There are certain limitations and controversial points in the traditional classification of parts of speech, which make some linguists doubt its scientific credibility. First of all, the three criteria turn out to be relevant only for the subdivision of notional words. As for functional words – prepositions, conjunctions, particles, interjections, etc. – these classes of words do not distinguish either common semantic, or formal, or functional properties, they are rather characterized by the absence of all three criteria in any generalized form. Second, the status of pronouns and the numerals, which in the traditional classification are listed as notional, is also questionable, since they do not have any syntactic functions of their own, but rather different groups inside these two classes resemble in their formal and functional properties different notional parts of speech: e.g., cardinal numerals function as substantives, while ordinal numerals function as adjectives; the same can be said about personal pronouns and possessive pronouns. Third, it is very difficult to draw rigorous borderlines between different classes of words, because there are always phenomena that are indistinguishable in their status. E.g., non-finite forms of verbs, such as the infinitive, the gerund, participles I and II are actually verbal forms, but lack some of the characteristics of the verb: they have no person or number forms, no tense or mood forms, and what is even more important, they never perform the characteristic verbal function, that of a predicate. Equally dubious is the part-of-speech characterization of auxiliary verbs, intensifying adverbs, conjunctive adverbs and pronouns, and of many other groups of words which have the morphological characteristics of notional words, but play mediatory constructional functions in a sentence, like functional words. There are even words that defy any classification at all; for example, many linguists doubt whether the words of agreement and disagreement, yes and no, can occupy any position in the classification of parts of speech.
These, and a number of other problems, made linguists search for alternative ways to classify lexical units. Some of them thought that the contradictions could be settled if parts of speech were classified following what was seen as a strictly scientific approach, a unified basis of subdivision; in other words, if a homogeneous, or monodifferential classification of parts of speech were undertaken.
It must be noted that the idea was not entirely new. The first classification of parts of speech was homogeneous: in ancient Greek grammar the words were subdivided mainly on the basis of their formal properties into changeable and unchangeable; nouns, adjectives and numerals were treated jointly as a big class of “names” because they shared the same morphological forms. This classical linguistic tradition was followed by the first English grammars: Henry Sweet divided all the words in English into “declinables” and “indeclinables”. But the approach which worked well for the description of highly inflectional languages turned out to be less efficient for the description of other languages.
The syntactic approach, which establishes the word classes in accord with their functional characteristics, is more universal and applicable to languages of different morphological types. The principles of a monodifferential syntactico-distributional classification of words in English were developed by the representatives of American Descriptive Linguistics, L. Bloomfield, Z. Harris and Ch. Fries.
Ch. Fries selected the most widely used grammatical constructions and used them as substitution frames: the frames were parsed into parts, or positions, each of them got a separate number, and then Ch. Fries conducted a series of substitution tests to find out what words can be used in each of the positions. Some of the frames were as follows: The concert was good (always). The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly). The team went there. All the words that can be used in place of the article made one group, the ones that could be used instead of the word “clerk” another, etc. The results of his experiments were surprisingly similar to the traditional classification of parts of speech: four main positions were distinguished in the sentences; the words which can be used in these positions without affecting the meaning of the structures were united in four big classes of words, and generally speaking coincide with the four major notional parts of speech in the traditional classification: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Besides these “positional words” (“form-words”), Ch. Fries distinguished 15 limited groups of words, which cannot fill in the positions in the frames. These “function words” are practically the same as the functional words in the traditional classification.
The syntactico-distributional classification of words distinguished on a consistently syntactic basis testifies to the objective nature of the classification of parts of speech. More than that, in some respects the results of this approach turn out to be even more confusing than the allegedly “non-scientific” traditional classification: for example, Group A, embracing words that can substitute for the article “the” in the above given frames, includes words as diverse as “the, no, your, their, both, few, much, John’s, twenty”, or one word might be found in different distributional classes. Thus, the syntactico-distributional classification cannot replace the traditional classification of parts of speech, but the major features of different classes of words revealed in syntactico-distributional classification can be used as an important supplement to traditional classification.
The combination of syntactico-distributional and traditional classifications strongly suggests the unconditional subdivision of the lexicon into two big supra-classes: notional and functional words. The major formal grammatical feature of this subdivision is their open or closed character. The notional parts of speech are open classes of words, with established basic semantic, formal and functional characteristics. There are only four notional classes of words, which correlate with the four main syntactic positions in the sentence: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They are interconnected by the four stages of the lexical paradigmatic series of derivation, e.g.: to decide – decision – decisive – decisively. The functional words are closed classes of words: they cannot be further enlarged and are given by lists. The closed character of the functional words is determined by their role in the structure of the sentence: the functional words expose various constructional functions of syntactic units, and this makes them closer to grammatical rather than to lexical means of the language.
As for pronouns and the numerals, according to the functional approach they form a separate supra-class of substitutional parts of speech, since they have no function of their own in the sentence, but substitute for notional parts of speech and perform their characteristic functions. The difference between the four notional parts of speech and substitutional parts of speech is also supported by the fact that the latter are closed groups of words like functional parts of speech.
The three supra-classes are further subdivided into classes (the parts of speech proper) and sub-classes (groups inside the parts of speech). For example, nouns are divided into personal and common, animate and inanimate, countable and uncountable, etc.; pronouns are subdivided into personal, possessive (conjoint and absolute), objective pronouns, demonstrative, reflexive, relative, etc.; numerals are subdivided into cardinal and ordinal, et
The field approach, which was outlined in the previous units, also helps clarify many disputable points in the traditional classification of parts of speech. The borderlines between the classes of words are not rigid; instead of borderlines there is a continuum of numerous intermediary phenomena, combining the features of two or more major classes of words. Field theory states that in each class of words there is a core, the bulk of its members that possess all the characteristic features of the class, and a periphery (marginal part), which includes the words of mixed, dubious character, intermediary between this class and other classes. For example, the non-finite forms of the verb (the infinitive, the gerund, participles I and II) make up the periphery of the verbal class: they lack some of the features of a verb, but possess certain features characteristic to either nouns, or adjectives, or adverbs. There are numerous intermediary phenomena that form a continuum between the notional and functional supra-classes; for example, there are adverbs whose functioning is close to that of conjunctions and prepositions, e.g.: however, nevertheless, besides, etc. Notional words of broad meaning are similar in their functioning to the substitutive functioning of the pronouns, e.g.: He speaks English better than I do; Have you seen my pen? I can’t find the wretched thing. Together with the regular pronouns they form the stages of the paradigmatic series, in which the four notional parts of speech are substitutively represented, cf.: one, it, thing, matter, way… - do, make, act…- such, similar same… - thus, so, there…
The implementation of the field approach to the distribution of words in parts of speech was formulated by the Russian linguists G. S. Schur and V. G. Admoni.

7. Non-traditional parts of speech (modal verbs, articles, particles).
According to the criteria of form, meaning and function, all words are
divided into notional and functional, which reflects their division in the earlier
grammatical tradition into changeable and unchangeable.
Functional words are characterized by incomplete nominative meaning, they
are non-self-dependent and they perform mediatory functions in the sentence.
On the principle of "generalized form" only unchangeable words are
traditionally treated under the heading of functional parts of speech. As for their
individual forms as such, they are simply presented by the list, since the number of
these words is limited, so that they don’t need to be identified on any general
scheme.
To the basic functional series of words in English belong the article, the
preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal word, the interjection.