Functional Categories Jesús Payán Ayala
The five major categories. Noun Verb Preposition Adjective Adverb
Contentives Content words.
Language also contains
Functors or Function words
Words which serve primarily to carry information about the grammatical function of particular types of expression within the sentence. (e.g. information about grammatical properties such as person, number, gender, case, etc. )
ď‚— We can say that contentives (content words) have substantive lexical content whereas functors (function words) functional content.
ď‚— We can then conclude that nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions are lexical or substantives categories (because the words belonging to these categories have substantive lexical), whereas particles, auxiliaries, determiners, pronouns, and complementisers are functional categories (because words belonging to these categories have an essentially grammatical function).
Determiners and Quantifiers ď‚— Referential determiners are used to introduce referring expressions: the/a, this/these, that/those, which, whose. The village store is closed. This appalling behaviour has got to shop. That dog of yours is crazy.
Quantifiers. ď‚— A related class of words are those which belong to the category quantifier, and this is traditionally said to include items. Most good comedians tell some bad jokes. Many students have no money. Each exercise contains several examples.
Noun. ď‚— Pronominal-noun / refers back to the noun. ď‚— Prenominal. / noun-preceding.
Table of personal pronoun forms PERSON
NUMBER
GENDER
NOMINATIVE
ACUSATIVE
GENITIVE
1
SG
M/F
I
Me
My/mine
1
PL
M/F
We
Us
Our/ours
2
SG/PL
M/F
You
You
Your/yours
3
SG
M
He
Him
His
3
SG
F
She
Her
Her/hers
3
SG
N
It
It
Its
3
PL
M/F/N
They
Them
Their/theirs
Auxiliaries ď‚— Subdivision in the class of auxiliaries. a)Modal auxiliaries. b)Aspectual auxiliaries. c) The passive auxiliary be. d)The dummy auxiliary do.
Modal auxiliaries. Modals are always finite (they carry tense). Most of the modal verbs have past tense forms. Will/Would, Can/Could, May/Might, Shall/Should, etc.
Aspectual auxiliaries: be - have These verbs encode aspect, a concept which refers to the way the meaning of the main verb is viewed in time. The main categories of aspect in English are progressive aspect and perfective aspect. Progressive aspect – ongoing process or time (certain duration) Perfective aspect – current relevance (still relevant)
The passive auxiliary: be “be” this auxiliary is always followed by a main verb (the past participle form of the verb)
The dummy auxiliary: do
“do” NICE properties.
1. The process of inserting do is called dosupport in the linguistic literature. Negative enclitic particle not. 2. The inversion process is called: subjectauxiliary Inversion. Invert with the subject.
The dummy auxiliary: do
“do” NICE properties.
3. The auxiliary occurs without its main verb. This property has rather been referred to a Code. The other auxiliary types also displays the phenomenon of code: 4. e.g. Does John cycle to work every day? He does. 5.
John cycles to work all the way to work every day, and so does Tim.
The dummy auxiliary: do “do” NICE properties. There is a fourth use of the dommy auxiliary, and that is in so-called Emphatic contexts. e.g. Imagine a situation in which someone has just denied the truth of the sentence John cycles to work every day. If we are nevertheless convinced that this statement is truth we might respond by saying
John DOES cycle to work every day!
The dummy auxiliary: do
“do” NICE properties.
What distinguishes auxiliaries from main verb is that they can:
1)
Carry the
Negative enclitic particle not.
2) Invert with the subject. 3)
Manifest
4)
Carry
Code.
Emphatic stress.