Andrew Radford - Linguistics An Introduction [Second Edition]

Of course, the example we have chosen here is not exceptional and it illustrates the pervasive process of word formation. The word happiness is formed by

adding an ending, -ness, to happy (the spelling change is irrelevant here and has no effect on the pronunciation). Such a process is referred to as derivational morphology (because we derive a new word from the old one). Derivational

processes typically apply to nouns, verbs and adjectives, allowing us to change the

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category of the word, and we shall return to a more systematic discussion of such processes in section 10.

Functional categories

Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions are the major

word classes of English, and they are the sorts of words we find in dictionaries with meanings attached to them (cf. section 12). However, not all words are straightforwardly meaningful in this way, and this observation paves the way for extending the word classes which must be recognised in grammars for

languages. Consider the italicised words in the following example:

(92)

Bill thinks that Tom and Dick have been visiting Harriet to ask for help with one of the assignments which have to be finished for the next morphology

class

It is difficult to begin to ascribe a simple meaning to such words in the way that we often can for words in our major classes. For instance, imagine being asked by someone who doesn’t know English well what think or assignment means in (92).

Since major class words normally denote objects, ideas, events, states, properties and so on, native speakers of English can usually formulate answers of some kind to such questions. However, suppose that instead you are asked what that or of or to mean in (92), and it is unlikely that you will have an answer. A better way of thinking of these words is as fulfilling a particular function in the sentence.

For instance, that (in this usage) is traditionally regarded as a subordinating conjunction. It is attached to the beginning of the sentence Tom and Dick have been visiting Harriet … to indicate that the clause it introduces is a statement rather than a question. The word to in to ask signals that this was the purpose of Tom and Dick’s visits, while the to in to be finished is there simply because it appears to be part of English grammar that the verb have in its meaning of

‘obligation’ must be followed by to and the base form of a verb (notice that must, a synonym of this type of have, does not require this to; indeed, it would be ungrammatical to add it: the assignments which must be finished / *must to be finished). From a quite different perspective, which appears to be somehow

dependent on the assignments (they have to be finished) and to be devoid of

any meaning in its own right. The reader is invited to reflect on the remaining italicised words in (92).

Words such as the above, which do not denote objects, ideas, etc. are known

as function words and they belong to classes known as functional categories.

They are distinguished from nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions, which are often called content words. The distinction has proved important, not only in the description of individual languages, but also in the study of the acquisition of language and the study of language disorders (see sections 13, 24

and 26).

Word classes

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There is an important relationship between function words and content

words, in that very often the syntactic criteria for assigning words to lexical categories rely on specific types of function words. For example, above it

was pointed out that nouns can be preceded by a definite or indefinite article (the or a(n)). The function of the article is (very roughly) to make what the noun refers to either more or less specific. If you say I bought a car this

simply refers to a car-buying event on your part, without implying anything

about the car concerned, but if you say I bought the car, then you must be

assuming that your addressee already knows which car you are talking about

(for example, because you have described it earlier). We can be even more

specific with demonstratives, this or that. The articles the/a and the demonstratives belong to a class of function words called determiners (D). These

are often found before nouns, though the determiner may be separated from

the noun by one or more adjectives, e.g. a bright, shiny, new car).

Verbs can also be preceded by a type of function word, the auxiliary verbs

(AUX) such as can, will, must, have, be:

(93) a.

You can go to the ball

b.

Linguistics is developing rapidly

c.

Sam has lost the plot again

That auxiliary verbs behave quite differently from lexical verbs (V) can be seen by examining their role in forming questions:

(94) a.

Harriet is studying linguistics

b.

Is Harriet studying linguistics?

(95) a.

Tom can speak Urdu

b.

Can Tom speak Urdu?

Here we see that the formation of a question involves ‘moving’ an auxiliary verb to the initial position in the structure. Lexical verbs do not ‘move’ in this way in Modern English (see sections 21 and 22 for much more extended discussion): (96) a.

Harriet studies linguistics

b.

*Studies Harriet linguistics?

Furthermore, a sentence is negated by placing not (or n’t) after an auxiliary: (97) a.

Harriet is studying linguistics

b.

Harriet isn’t studying linguistics

Again, this is not possible with lexical verbs:

(98)

*Harriet studiesn’t / studies not linguistics

We can immediately see, then, not only that auxiliary verbs are useful in enabling us to assign lexical verbs to the appropriate class, but also that they have distinctive properties which justify the recognition of the separate functional category AUX.

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Another function word that often accompanies lexical verbs is the word to. This is added to the base form of a verb to form the infinitive: to be or not to be, to know her is to love her. In English, the infinitive is the citation form of a verb, that is, the form we use to name a verb (as in The most irregular verb in English is the verb ‘to be’). Although to usually comes immediately before the verb, it can be split from it by an adverb, and sometimes this is the only possible

construction: to really impress her, you have to be able to cook. Often, the split infinitive sounds cumbersome and for that reason it’s often avoided (especially outside the United States), but it’s always been possible to split infinitives in English (despite assertions to the contrary from people who know nothing about English grammar). A convenient label for the infinitive use of to is ‘INF’

(see section 19, p. 259, where a slightly different proposal on the status of infinitival to is adopted).

Another important type of function word is the pronoun (PRN). This is a group of words the members of which (roughly speaking) stand for a noun expression (like John, the president, a book of mine, etc.). The commonest pronouns are the personal pronouns, which can be (partially) described in terms of number

(singular/plural) and person (first person when the speaker is included, second person for the addressee when the speaker is excluded, and third person in other cases).

Table 14 shows that we/us is a first person plural pronoun, that he/him is a third person singular pronoun, etc. Nouns such as Tom, or apples can also be regarded as third person forms (singular and plural respectively) because they can be replaced by the corresponding personal pronouns he and them.

Another type of function word is illustrated in (92) by and. Such words are called co-ordinating conjunctions (CONJ) and further examples are shown in (99): (99) a.