D. V. Demidov

part of speech. The said three factors of categorial characterization 
of words are conventionally referred to as, respectively, 
―meaning‖, ―form‖, and ―function‖. 
3. A comprehensive approach to the discrimination of 
parts of speech. 
The complex approach to the problem of parts of speech 
classification was introduced by academician L. V. Shcherba, who 
proposed to discriminate parts of speech on the basis of three 
criteria: semantic, formal and functional. By the semantic 
criterion he understood the generalized meaning or general 
grammatical meaning, which is characteristic of all the words, 
constituting a given part of speech, i.e. categorial meaning of parts 
of speech (e.g. the general grammatical meaning of nouns is 
substance; verbs – verbiality, i.e. the ability to express actions, 
processes or states; adverbs – adverbiality, i.e. the ability to 
express qualities or properties of actions, processes or states; 
adjectives – qualitiativeness, i.e. the ability to express qualities or 
properties of substances). 
Taken separately, the semantic criterion cannot be 
sufficient for word class discrimination, as there are lexemes of a 
part of speech, which acquire the general meaning of the other 
part of speech (e.g. action – a noun, which expresses verbiality, 
sleep – a noun, which expresses process, blackness – a noun, 
which expresses quality). Thus, the general grammatical 
categorial meaning is important for part of speech classification, it 
is the intrinsic quality of a part of speech, it predetermines some 
outward properties of its lexemes but it cannot play the role of a n 
absolute criterion of word classification.

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The formal criterion provides for the exposition of the 
specific inflexional and derivational (word-building) features of 
words of a part of speech and deals with the morphological 
properties of words, which include: 1) the system of inflexional 
morphemes of words, typical of a certain part of speech; 2) the 
system 
of 
derivational 
lexico-grammatical 
morphemes, 
characteristic of a part of speech.
Each part of speech is characterized by its grammatical 
categories, manifested in the paradigms of lexemes (e.g. nouns – 
have the categories of number and case; verbs – have the 
categories of mood, tense, aspect, voice, person, number; 
adjectives – have the category of degrees of comparison). Thus, 
the paradigms of words, belonging to different parts of speech are 
different and these paradigms show to what part of speech the
word belongs. 
As words of different classes are also characterized by a 
specific system of derivational morphemes, the presence of a 
certain lexico-grammatical morpheme in the word signals its part 
of speech reference. Many of these derivational morphemes are 
regularly used to form the words of a part of speech, other stem-
building elements are of little significance as distinctive features 
of a part of speech because they are not systematic and may be 
found within separate lexemes of a class (e.g. : food – feed; 
blood-bleed; full – fill). Thus, the morphological composition or 
stem- structure is one of the criteria employed for part of speech 
classification but it cannot function separately in order to 
classify words. Many English words of different classes consist 
only of roots and have no derivational morphemes in their 
structure. 
The functional criterion concerns the syntactic properties 
of a part of speech, which are of two kinds: combinability and 
syntactic functions in the sentence. The combinability is the ability 

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of words of a given part of speech to be in syntactic connection 
with other words in the sentence. A word has different syntactic 
connections. 
These connections are not equally significant for parts of 
speech reference. But the connection of the noun with the verb is 
less significant than its connection with the adjective. Owning to 
the lexico-grammatical meaning of nouns (substance) and 
prepositions (relation to substance) these two parts of speech often 
form up word combinations. The article is characterized by 
unilateral right- hand connections with different classes of words. 
Thus, the combinability of a word, its connections in speech help
to show to what part of speech it belongs. Parts of speech perform 
certain syntactic functions in the sentence: nouns – of the subject 
and object, verbs – of predicates; adjectives – attributes) but the 
subject may be expressed not only by nouns and nouns can 
perform practically all syntactic functions. Thus, due to the little 
significance of the syntactic function of a word in identifying its 
class reference, this criterion is the least helpful.
None of the above mentioned criteria is sufficient to be an 
absolute principle of word discrimination. Only all of them taken 
together give a fully satisfactory basis for part of speech 
classification. Thus, a part of speech is a set of words 
characterized by identical properties: 1) general grammatical 
meaning; 2) lexico- grammatical morphemes (derivational or stem-
building); 3) grammatical categories; 4) combinability; 5) 
functions in the sentence. As the dominant criteria in parts of 
speech classification are grammatical, it is reasonable to refer to 
word classes, traditionally called ―parts of speech‖ as grammatical 
word classes. 

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