Abstract
A distinction must be made between classes and functions: classes are defined in terms of functions. Each unit has a functional potential, that is, a set of (syntactic and semantic) functions it can have in the constructions of the language. And units are classified according to their functional potential. Functional potentials are best described as bunches of properties, and two units belong to the same class if they share the same functional potential. The notion “class” only makes sense when a descriptive objective is stated, so that two units can be members of the same class or not, according to the descriptive objective that is considered.
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Notes
- 1.
As will become clear in what follows, this is not an innovation, but rather a principle adopted, more or less explicitly, and more or less consistently, in most of linguistic research.
- 2.
The analogy with phonology is clearly stated in Chomsky (1965, p. 80).
- 3.
Schlesinger’s case corresponds to what is called here semantic role.
- 4.
In the transitive construction; in the ergative, the subject is the Patient (the paper folded/crumpled).
- 5.
This very useful term was introduced, to my knowledge, by Huddleston (1984).
- 6.
- 7.
Cf. Saussure (1916, p. 170 ff); paradigmatic relations are called “associative” in Saussure’s text.
- 8.
Round may be the only item in the language to have this particular functional potential.
- 9.
See Chap. 10 for a definition of NP head, and the process through which it is identified.
- 10.
Not to mention etymological, orthographic, stylistic, and other features.
- 11.
Or something equivalent. Many linguists are skeptical about the need for a VP node, but this is not important here: I refer to the predicate head (a syntactic function). In Mimi is a cat, according to this analysis, the predicate head is not cat, but is.
- 12.
Webster (1971) gives a verb cat, apparently belonging to nautical jargon; but I am sure very few English speakers use this word in this function nowadays.
- 13.
In the following exposition, I take a consonant to be a [−syllabic] segment, a vowel a [+syllabic] one.
- 14.
More precisely, as head of a subject NP.
- 15.
Isso ‘this’ is grammatically masculine, because one must say isso é perigoso ‘this is dangerous [masc.]’. The so-called masculine gender is actually the unmarked one, as shown by Martin (1975).
- 16.
Huddleston’s work is taken as an example because of its high degree of lucidity and coherence; with usual school grammars the subject is treated in a most obscure way.
- 17.
I consider “adverbs” more at length in Chap. 12.
- 18.
These ideas were first presented in Perini (1999).
- 19.
Calling such readings “metaphorical” explains nothing: first, because one must choose one reading, arbitrarily, as the “basic” one, from which so-called metaphors are derived; and, second, because it is based on an incorrect concept of metaphor, since uses like this plane flies to Madrid rely on a reading of fly previously encoded in the language, not on one improvised on the spot, which would be a true metaphor.
- 20.
See Sect. 3.2.5 for the notion of elaboration.
- 21.
Or lemma.
- 22.
The figures are to be read left to right; but this does not entail any claim about the way they are processed in real time: this is only a way to represent knowledge to which the language user has global and simultaneous access.
- 23.
Of course, the fact that the two readings of sound represent two distinct etymological units is not relevant here, since we are concerned with the synchronic use of the language.
- 24.
To avoid complicating the text, I use the term “word classes” as including lexeme classes, whenever no confusion can arise.
- 25.
The semantic feature in question is “restriction of the reference of the head of its construction”. Using RR for “reference-restrictive” would be confusing, since I already use R, so I use Q, although these items are not always qualificative.
- 26.
This detail is recognized in traditional Portuguese grammar, which distinguishes between “substantive pronouns” and “adjective pronouns”.
- 27.
Note that Canadá does accept the article; a similar case in English is England versus the United States, the Gambia.
- 28.
There are contexts in which Portugal occurs with an article; but this is not relevant here, because our point is that these words are different, and barulho accepts the article where Portugal does not.
- 29.
The feature [–Article] for sufocante is redundant, because it is valid for all [−R] items.
- 30.
Let us adopt the convention that when a feature has a signal (+R, −Q) we are dealing with the potential of the unit; when it has no signal (R, Q), we refer to the feature composition of the unit in the context given. That is, ‘+R’ means “has the potential of being R”; ‘R’ means “is R in the present structure”.
- 31.
“Adjective phrase” and “adverbial phrase” are also taken here in an informal way, roughly corresponding to the traditional use.
- 32.
This definition excludes so-called coordinating conjunctions, which in fact have a very different grammatical behavior (see Chap. 11). A nominal clause is an NP which contains a sentence, and analogously an adverbial clause is an adverbial phrase containing a sentence.
- 33.
The word que has a host of other functions; to keep things simple, let us limit our consideration to its conjunctional function.
- 34.
I use ‘~’ for ‘before, and in construction with’, instead of the more usual, but inelegant, underline ‘_’.
- 35.
The two functions of como are distinguished in English: since versus like.
- 36.
The set of all diatheses a verb can occur in is its valency.
- 37.
Here I take only these three diatheses into account; some of these verbs also occur in other diatheses.
- 38.
- 39.
It can be argued that Portugal cannot appear with an article. But the same phenomenon can be observed with personal names, which can optionally appear with the article: Roberto trabalha demais, or o Roberto trabalha demais, both ‘Roberto works too much’.
- 40.
Among the names of countries that never take an article are Portugal, Honduras, Israel, Cuba, Angola, and Madagascar.
- 41.
By inheritance; see 15.1.
- 42.
See the difference explained in note 31 of this chapter.
- 43.
It is attributive, according to Donnellan (1966).
- 44.
Darwin, internet. Letter to George Waterhouse, July 31, 1843.
- 45.
This restriction is not an exclusive characteristic of grammatical description, but functions for classification in general. To mention a particularly obnoxious example, in a set of questions given as part of a public contest for a job as a janitor, one of the questions was:
Which of the alternatives belongs to a DIFFERENT group from the others?
A) China B) Japan C) Korea D) France
[IDECAN 2015]
Now, how can someone find the aberrant item, if the basis for the classification is not given? I can imagine several correct answers: (i) France (it is the only European country, all the others being in Asia); (ii) Japan (it is the only insular country, all the others being continental; also, it is the only monarchy in the set); (iii) Korea (it is the only country currently divided into two nations); (iv) China (it is much larger than the others, in extension and population). The question itself makes no sense, since the descriptive objective is not explicit. As for the relevance of this information for applicants to a janitorial job, I leave it to the reader’s imagination (this question is translated from a test given by the authorities of São José da Lapa, a town in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil).
- 46.
And besides, as pointed out to me by Gabriel Othero, these verbs are frequently used as regular ones, so that the category “defective verb” tends to disappear from the spoken language.
- 47.
More precisely, urbs appears as the head of a subject NP, and so on.
- 48.
There are some problems specific to morphological units, mainly because suffixes often represent more than one category at the same time—for instance, −o in falo characterizes the first person singular, but also the present indicative. These problems are discussed in works on morphology; for the Portuguese verb, see Camara (1969) and Pontes (1972).
- 49.
Traditional grammar defines a small set of such classes: intransitive, transitive, copulative, and so on. We have found a far more complex picture in our work on Portuguese verbs.
- 50.
Here, and in other points, I may seem to assume a distinction between cognitive and linguistic features; of course, this is not strictly correct, since knowledge of language is part of cognition. I only use this distinction as an abbreviation for “cognitive, but nonlinguistic” as against “cognitive, linguistic”.
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Perini, M.A. (2021). Word Classes. In: Function and Class in Linguistic Description. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78173-6_4
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