(^16) Chapter 2 A rapid overview
Not all lexemes show inflectional variation of this kind. For those that don't, the
distinction between word and lexeme is unimportant, and we will represent them in
ordinary italics, as with the, and, very and so on.
5 Word and lexeme categories: the parts of speech
The traditional term 'parts of speech' applies to what we call categories
of words and lexemes. Leaving aside the minor category of interjections (covering
words like oh, hello, wow, ouch, etc., about which there really isn't anything inter
esting for a grammar to say), we recognise eight such categories:
[ 7 ] NOUN The dQg barked.
ii VERB The dog barked.
iii ADJECTIVE He 's very old.
iv DETERMINATIVE The dog barked.
v ADVERB She spoke clearly.
vi PREPOSITION It's in the car.
vii COORDINATOR I got up and left.
viii SUBORDINATOR It 's odd that they
were late.
That is Sue.
It iJ. impossible.
It looks Q11Jl1Y..
I need some nails.
He 's ffa old.
I gave it to Sam.
Ed or la took it.
I wonder whether
it's still available.
We saw �.
I have a headache.
I've got a new car.
All things change.
I almost died.
Here's a list Q,[ them.
It's cheap but strong.
They don 't know if
you 're serious.
This scheme has much in common with the traditional one, but there are also some
important differences that we will point out in the brief survey below.
The two largest and most important categories are the noun and the verb, the two
that we have already introduced. The most basic kind of clause contains at least one
noun and one verb and, as as we have seen in [2] above, may contain just a noun and
verb.
The first six categories in list [7] can function as the head of corresponding
phrases (noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, etc.). The other two can't. The
very small coordinator and subordinator classes do not function as head but serve
as markers of coordination and subordination (we'll explain those terms below).
An NP with a coordinator added to it (such as or la) is still a kind of NP; and when
you add a subordinator to a clause (as with that they were late), you get a kind of
clause. There are no such things as 'coordinator phrases' or 'subordinator phrases'.
5.1 Nouns
In any language, the nouns make up by far the largest category in terms
of number of dictionary entries, and in texts we find more nouns than words of any
other category (about 37 per cent of the words in almost any text).(a) Meaning
Noun is the category containing words denoting all kinds of physical objects, such as
persons, animals and inanimate objects: cat, tiger, man, woman, flower, diamond,