Main principles and problems of cultur and language in teaching foreign language content: Introduction Chapter I. Principles of classification

Possible Ways of the Grammatical Classification of the Vocabulary.
The parts of speech and their classification usually involves all the four criteria mentioned and scholars single out from 8 to 13 parts of speech in modern English. The founder of English scientific grammar Henry Sweet finds the following classes of words: noun-words ( here he includes some pronouns and numerals), adjective-words, verbs 4 particles (by this term he denotes words of different classes which have no grammatical categories).
The opposite criterion - structural or distributional - was used by an American scholar Charles Freeze. Each class of words is characterized by a set of positions in a sentence which are defined by substitution test. As a result of distributional analysis Freeze singles out 4 main classes of words roughly corresponding to verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and 15 classes of function-words.
Notional and Functional Parts of Speech.
Both the traditional and distributional classification divide parts of speech into notional and functional. Notional parts of speech are open classes, new items can be added to them, we extend them indefinitely. Functional parts of speech are closed systems including a limited number of members. As a rule they cannot be extended by creating new items. 
Main notional parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Members of these four classes are often connected derivationally. Functional parts of speech are prepositions, conjunctions, articles, interjections & particles. Their distinctive features are:²
- very general & weak lexical meaning;
- obligatory combinability;


2.2. The function of linking and specifying words.
Pronouns constitute a class of words which takes an intermediary position between notional and functional words: on the one hand they can substitute nouns and adjectives; on the other hand they can be used as connectives and specifiers. There may be also groups of closed-system items within an open class (notional, functional and auxiliary verbs).
A word in English is very often not marked morphologically. It makes it easy for words to pass from one class to another. Such words are treated as either lexico-semantic phonemes or as words belonging to one class. The problem which is closely connected with the selection of parts of speech is the problem of conversion.
There are usually the cases of absolute, phonetic identity of words belonging to different parts of speech. About 45% of nouns can be converted into verbs and about 50% of verbs - into nouns. There are different viewpoints on conversion: some scholars think that it is a syntactic word-building means. If they say so they do admit that the word may function as parts of speech at the same time.
Russian linguist Galperin defines conversion as a non-affix way of forming words. There is another theory by French linguist Morshaw who states that conversion is a creation of new words with zero-affix. In linguistics this problem is called "stone-wall-construction problem".
Another factor which makes difficult to select parts of speech, in English is abundance of homonyms in English. They are words and forms identical in form, sounding, spelling, but different in meaning. Usually the great number of homonyms in English is explained by monosyllabic structure of words but it’s not all the explanation.
The words are monosyllabic in English because there are few endings in it, because English is predominantly analytical. We differentiate between full and partial homonymity, we usually observe full homonymity within one pan of speech and partial - within different parts of speech. If we have two homonyms within one part of speech their paradigms should fully coincide.

Homonyms can be classified into lexical, lexico-grammatical and purely grammatical. We should differentiate between homonymity and polysemantic words.

The notional parts of speech are the words of complete nomina­tive value; in the utterance they fulfil self-dependent functions of nam­ing and denoting things, phenomena, their substantial properties. Opposed to the notional parts of speech are the functional words which are words of incomplete nominative value, but of absolutely essential relational (grammatical) value. In the utterance they serve as all sorts of mediators.
To the basic functional parts of speech in English are usually re­ferred the article, the preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal word, the interjection. As has been stated elsewhere, function­al words are limited in number. On the lines of the traditional classi­fication they are presented by the list, each of them requiring its own, individual description.
3. Syntactic Classification of Words
The syntactic (monodifferential) classification of words is based on syntactic featuring of words only. The syntactic classification of words, in principle, supplements the three-criteria classification spec­ifying the syntactic features of parts of speech. For the Russian lan­guage the basic principles of the syntactic classification of words were outlined in the works of A.M. Peshkovski. In English the syntactico-distributional classification of words was worked out by L. Bloom-field and his followers Z. Harris and especially Ch.C. Fries.
The syntactico-distributional classification of words is based on the study of their .combinability by means of substitution tests. As a result of this testing, a standard model of four main syntactic positions of notional words was built up. These positions are those of the noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. Pronouns are included into the correspond­ing positional classes as their substitutes. Words incapable to occupy the said main syntactic positions are treated as functional words.
4. The Three-Layer Classification of Words (M. Blokh)
The evaluation of the differential features of both cited classifica­tions allows us to work out a classification of the lexicon presenting some essential generalizations about its structure (Blokh 2000: 44-48). The semantico-grammatical analysis of the lexicon shows that it is explicitly divided into two parts: the notional words and the func­tional words. The open character of the notional part and the closed character of the functional part have the status of a formal grammat­ical feature. Between these two parts there is an intermediary field of
semi-functional words.
The unity of the notional lexemes, as well as their division into four infinitely large classes, is demonstrated in the inter-class system of derivation. This inter-class system of derivation is presented as a four-stage series permeating the lexicon; it has been given the name of "Lexical Paradigm of Nomination". For example: "fancy - to fan­cy fanciful - fancifully".
As the initial position in a particular nomination paradigm can be occupied by a lexeme of any word class, one can define the con­crete "derivational perspective" of the given series in accord with a part of speech status of the constituent in the initial position. Thus, in the following paradigm of nomination the derivational perspec­tive is verbal (V —»): "to decide - decision - decisive - decisively".
The only category of nouns, which is generally accepted, is the category of number. Many scholars think that the notion of case applies to English pronouns, but not to nouns. Gender distinctions are not marked morphologically.
Nouns are related by conversion with verbs: to walk — a walk; an eye — to eye, and with adjectives: native. — a native.
Nouns are premodified by nouns in the possessive and in the common case: