Aspect

Parts of speech
Phrases
Lexical and functional categories

Nouns
The notional definition
Nouns have been defined function of several criteria:
The Notional Criterion: nouns are words that refer to
people, animals, things places.
(1)

Jim, dog, aeroplane, teacher, chair

Q: The notional criterion sees nouns as a list. Is a list

definition good enough?
A: No, because a simple list definition does not tells us
what it is that a list includes certain items but not others.

Nouns
The morphological definition
The Morphological Criterion: nouns are those words that
(i) can be affixed; (ii) bear plural markers; (iii) bear case
markers.
(2) alliance, defiance, reliance
bachelorhood, fatherhood, childhood
abolition, demarcation, indication
darkness, kindness, wildness
lectureship, tutorship, studentship
Affix: prefix, suffix

Nouns
The morphological definition
(3)

actor actors
door doors
lamp lamps

(4)

man mans
pub pubs
sister sisters

Q: Is the morphological definition good enough?

A: No, not all nouns are affixed, some nouns have
irregular plural forms and others bear no case marking.

Nouns
The distributional definition
Distribution: the syntactic contexts in which an item occurs.
The Distributional Criterion: nouns are those words that can
be preceded by (i) determiners such as the, a, this/these,
that/those, which, whose, many and (ii) adjectives such as
nice, difficult, strong, etc.
(5)

(6)

the/a camera
which neighbour
difficult problem / strong box

Noun Phrase (NP)

It is quite rarely that nouns occur on their own in a sentence,
i.e. as bare singulars:
(7) I hate rabbit.
He lacks courage.
It is usually the case that nouns are accompanied by
determiners, quantifiers, adjectives.
(8) the boy
the blue-eyed boy
the blue-eyed boy in my class

Noun Phrase (NP)

In (8) the central element is the noun boy:
The determiner tells us that a certain individual belongs to
the class of boys.
The adjective/prepositional group tells us that a certain boy
has two properties, i.e. he is blue-eyed and belongs to my
class.
This nominal central elements is called a Head.
Noun Phrase = strings of words built around a noun head.

Adjective Phrase (AP)

The Morphological Criterion gives us a few clues about
adjectives.
First, there are typical adjectival affixes:
(9) beautiful, constructive, careless
unsavory, irreparable
Second, adjectives are gradable, i.e. they co-occur with
words such as very, extremely
(10) very helpful, extremely nasty

Adjective Phrase (AP)

Third, adjectives occur with comparative and superlative
endings
(11) great greater greatest
full fuller fullest
Objection 1: not all adjectives are gradable. Those that
refer to nationality and those that denote materials are
surely not gradable.
(12) *a very Romanian remark
*a very golden ring

Adjective Phrase (AP)

Objection 2: not all adjectives form their comparative
and superlative by means of er, -est
(13) good better best
bad worse worst
The Distributional Criterion tells us that adjectives may
occupy two types of positions, the attributive and the
predicative position.

Adjective Phrase (AP)

(14) red dragon, mischievous boy
(15) The dragon was red.
This fabric feels soft.
The music sounds great.

Attributive
Predicative

Adjective Phrase = string of words built around an

adjective head
(21) happy
extremely happy / so happy

Adjective Phrase
Q: What do we have in (16), an NP or an AP?
(16) the happy actor
A: We have an NP because the central element is the noun.
Q: But what about the adjective, is it just an adjective or an
AP?
A: Its an AP, we can fit in a word such as extremely
(17) [the [extremely happy] actor]

Adverbial Phrase (AdvP)

The Morphological Criterion tells us some things about
adverbs as well.
First, they occur with typical suffixes such as ly, -wards,
-ways, -wise
(18) merrily, extremely
homewards, sideways, clockwise
Second, adverbs occur with comparative and superlative
endings
(19) fast faster - fastest

Adverbial Phrase (AdvP)

Objection 1: not only adverbs take the ly ending,
adjectives may have it too
(20) friendly boy, lively girl, woolly rhinocerous
Objection 2: not all adverbs are formed with the abovementioned suffixes: hard, often, always, etc.
The Distributional Criterion tells us that adverbs modify
(i) adjectives, (ii) verbs, (iii) other adverbs.

Adverbial Phrase (AdvP)

(21) He went out of the house surreptitiously.
John was extremely happy about the arrangement.
They work very hard.
Adverbial phrase = string of words built around an
adverbial head

Prepositional phrase (PP)

Prepositions do not have morphological endings, case
markers or degrees of comparison.
Prepositions combine with NPs
(22) [on [the way]]
[through [the looking glass]]
The NP that go with prepositions are Prepositional
Objects.

Prepositional Phrase (PP)

Prepositions denote a relationship between an entity (a
Figure) and a certain location (a Ground). This
relationship may be metaphorical as well.
(23) The wine glass is in the sink.
Jane is in trouble.
Prepositional phrase = a string of words built around a
preposition head

The Verb Phrase (VP)

(24) Everyday our Head of Department devourS 3
pizzas.
(25) The builders workED for many days.
(Aarts, p.34)
The underlined forms are called verbs.
The Morphological Criterion tells us that verbs have
particular endings such as s and ed.

The Verb Phrase (VP)

Q: What do the highlighted endings in (24) and (25) refer
to?
A1: First, the endings in (24)/(25) refer to tense
information, i.e. present and past.
Tense represents the chronological order of events in time
as perceived by the speaker at the moment of speech.
Tense is a formal category associated with finite verbs.

The Verb Phrase (VP)

A2: The endings in (24) and (25) contain agreement
information, i.e. agreement between the subject and the
predicate.
In (24), the third person singular subject agrees with the
verb.
Agreement is a formal category associated with finite
verbs.
Non-finite verbs do not carry Tense and Agreement
information.

The Verb Phrase (VP)

The verbs in (24) and (25) are lexical verbs, they can
occur on their own in a sentence and they have a
meaning.
Not all verbs are lexical. Consider (26):
(26) Jeremy is laughing.
(27) The ship had completely sunk when the rescuers
arrived at the place of the incident.

The Verb Phrase (VP)

The lexical verbs in (26) / (27) are: laugh and sink.
They are not on their own, though. Is and had
accompany these verbs.
Moreover, laugh ends in ing and sink has assumed its
past participle form.

The Verb Phrase (VP)

The verbs be and have in (26) / (27) are called auxiliary
verbs, from Latin auxiliari, to help.
Q: What do auxiliary verbs help with?
A: They give us more information on how the event
denoted by the verb is viewed. This means that laugh in
(26) is understood as being in progress/ongoing at
present. It also means that sink in (27) is understood as
having happened before the arrival of the rescuers and
that sink happened at some point in the past.

Auxiliary Verbs

A. Modal auxiliaries: can/could, may/might, must,

will/would, shall/should, ought to
B. Aspectual auxiliaries: be, have
C. Passive auxiliaries: be, get
D. Dummy auxiliary: do

Aspectual auxiliaries
(28) Mr. Jourdain is asking for help.
(29) Shelley has broken two wine-glasses.
Aspectual auxiliaries encode Aspect (keep in mind that
these auxiliaries also carry Tense info).
Aspect is a formal category associated with both finite
and non-finite verbs.

Aspectual auxiliaries
Aspect describes the internal temporal structure of an
event. The main aspectual categories in English are the
progressive (see 30) and the perfective (see 31).
Q: Are be and have below auxiliary verbs?
(30) He is friendly.
(Aarts, p.36)
(31) Larry has 94 CDs.
(Aarts, p.38)

Aspectual Auxiliaries
A: No, they are not auxiliary verbs.
they occur on their own in the sentences whereas
auxiliaries help with bringing in additional info.
BE and HAVE may be either lexical verbs or auxiliary
verbs, depending on the context.

Functional categories
Case, number, gender, and determination characterize
nouns.
Tense, aspect, mood, number and person characterize
verbs.
Person, number and in some cases gender
characterize pronouns.
Adjectives and adverbs are characterized by comparison.

Functional vs Lexical Categories

Lexical categories: Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb
Functional categories: Determiner, Tense/Inflection,
Degree of comparison, Complementizer
Lexical categories = an open class
Functional categories = a closed class

Lexical vs Functional Categories

Lexical categories = classes with descriptive/semantic
content (N, V, A, Adv) containing indefinitely many
items and which allow conscious coining, borrowing etc
Functional categories include free morphemes:
determiners, quantifiers, pronouns, auxiliary verbs,
complementizers etc. and bound morphemes/inflectional
affixes: inflections for tense, aspect, agreement/number

Functional Categories

closed class
never occur alone
have an unique complement
lack descriptive semantic content

Lexical Categories

open class
may occur alone
dont need a unique complement
have descriptive semantic content