Theoretical grammar of english

4. Principles of classification of words into parts of speech. Functional and notional parts of speech. The problems of parts of speech (interjection, statives, pronouns)
Parts of speech are lexical-grammatical word classes characterized by a general abstract grammatical meaning expressed in certain grammatical markers. It means that within certain classes of words certain grammatical features are common to all words of the class.
■ Functionally all parts of speech fall into two large groups: notional words and functional (form) words.
1. Notional. There are 6 notional parts of speech, 4 are the main ones: noun, verb, adjective, adverb.
They cover 93% of the English lexicon. They fill all the main positions in the sentence. These words are very often called autonomous, autosemantic, content words - means they possess an independent notional meaning. Plus usually grammarians refer pronouns and numerals to notional ps of sp.
Notional words are characterized by a clear-cut lexical meaning plus they also have a distinct gr meaning. They can perform various syntactic functions.
2.Functional. Other parts of sp serve as connectors between the main ones. They are often called syn-semantic, syntagmatic words. These dependent words are prepositions and conjunctions. Prepositions act within one clause, conjunctions may connect words, clauses, separate sentences.
So function words express relations but they never denote objects and notions. However, the relations they denote are not purely formal, because each preposition and conjunction has a definite lexical meaning.
- Their use is sometimes obligatory: depend on.
- They are never used alone in the sentence (without notional words). Sentences containing only notional words are possible: Mary came home late last night.
- The number of FWs is limited (150). They occur quite frequently.
٧The interjection clearly falls out of the system. Semantically they express emotions, the attitude of the speaker to the special situation. They are unpredictable and difficult to define. Functionally it's difficult to distinguish them from Ws and WCs.
Interjections are imitation of sounds, of nature, reflections of surprise, indignation. Sometimes
interjections draw from notional words: well, my.
The number of these elements is limited. Grammarians suggest terming them as emotional
elements, discourse particles, without specifying which part of speech they belong to.
٧ In general now there is a tendency to enlarge the traditional number of parts of speech by including some new items, for example: Words of the category of state: alive, ajar, asleep. These words are similar to adjectives which can express states and function as predicatives. Grammarians say that this is a subclass of adjectives limited to the predicative function.