Chapter 6: word classes

Question 1

What is a noun?

Answer 1

= differs in number, case, gender –> inflectional categories
= subtypes: count nouns (a car); proper/common nouns; mass nouns

Question 2

What is an adjective?

Answer 2

two basic uses:

• attributive = The big book
• predicative = The book is big
• gradable in plan, comparative and superlative (e.g. funny - funnier- funniest)

Subtypes:

• circumstances = run quickly
• degree = very old
• sentential = Unfortunately,…

Adverb type:

• manner adverb = How? (e.g. well, nicely, cleverly)
• place adverb = Where? (e.g. here, there, everywhere)
• direction adverb = Where to?, Where from? (e.g. up, back, forward, home)
• time-when-adverb = When? (e.g. then, once, tonight, soon)
• duration adverb = How long? (e.g. long, briefly, always)
• frequency adverb = How often? (e.g. always, often, usually)

Question 3

What defines the verbs?

Answer 3

inflectional categories:

• tense = Present vs. Perfect
• aspect = Simple vs. Progressive
• voice = active vs. passive

Subtypes:

• transitive - take, hit, see
• intransitive - walk, sleep, die
• ditransitive - give, send, offer

Regular verbs:
walk-walked-walked

irregular verbs:
sing-sang-sung
buy-bought-bough
run-ran-run

tenses:

• present = plays
• present perfect = has played
• past = played
• past perfect = had played
• future 1 = will play
• future 2 = will have played
• passive voice = is played; has been played; was played; had been played; will be played; will have been played

tensed forms (= finite): preterite, 3rd sg present, plain present 
non-tensed forms (=nonfinite): platform; present participle; past participle --> meed 2end word (e.g. should fly --> for together)

Question 4

Basic concepts of syntax

Answer 4

Syntax = the study of how sentences are composed

Linguistic structure can be analyzed along tow dimensions:

• snytagmatic = combination of smaller parts into longer ones; horizontal dimension
• paradigmatic = word that belong to one word class; vertical dimension

–> picture in notes

Question 5

sentence types

Answer 5

declarative sentence (Aussagesatz) = Peter went to school.
imperative sentence (Aufforderungssatz) = Close the door.
WH question (W-Fragen) = What time is it?
Yes/No question = Is this your bag?
Exclamative sentence (Ausrufsatz --> directive functions) = What a beautiful day!

Question 6

What defines the word classes?

Answer 6

= parts-of-speech + lexical categories

Criteria defining word classes:

• semantic = like verbs, nouns, adjectives
• morphological = word form (e.g. plural “s”)
• distributional = dedicates the place of the word in a sentence

–> Word classes tend to have particular meaning, but there is no direct correspondence between meaning + grammatical category

(pic in notes)

Question 7

What defines the constituents?

Answer 7

= sentences are build up from smaller parts (sentence –> phrase –> phrase –> word –> morpheme)

different categories:

• noun phrase = my uncle, a busy road
• verb phrase = saw a movie, give him a cigar
• adjective phrase = very proud, eager for further news
• adverb phrase = quite separately, extremely fast
• prepositional phrase = between the lines, to the market

simple sentence:
We left Jena after the game.

complex sentence:
We left Jena after the game ended.

Question 8

What defines the syntactic functions (grammatical relations)?

Answer 8

categories:

• subject = left Jena.
• object = He saw .
• adverbial = She met my father .