|
COPYRIGHT 2004 Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN)
This article provides a definition of lexical categories, that is, Noun, Adjective, Verb, Adposition, and Adverb, which complies with the descriptive (morphological) and explanatory (semantic) requisites for the establishment of the domains of the layered structure of the clause in functional theories of language, more specifically, in Functional Grammar and Role and Reference Grammar. In this sense, it is observed that the semantic properties of reference, attribution, and predication provide a definition of the categories Noun, Adjective, and Verb; the notions of prototipicality and semantic-syntactic domain are needed for the definition of adpositions; finally, for the Adverb a semantic analysis has to be made in terms of its pseudo-deictic and quasi-referential properties.
Key words: lexical categories, functional theories, reference, attribution, predication.
1. Introduction
The purpose of this article is to offer a definition of lexical categories that is compatible with functional theories of language like Functional Grammar, henceforth FG (Dik 1997a, b), and Role and Reference Grammar, hereafter RRG (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997). More specifically, we aim at defining the lexical categories Noun, Adjective, Verb, Adverb, and Adposition in such a way that: (i) the explanatory (semantic) requisites for the definition of the domains of the layered structure of the clause are satisfied; (ii) the descriptive (morphological) requisites for the definition of the lexical items of a dynamic functional lexicon are satisfied. Ultimately, we take a further step in the analysis of the level of the word (and, indirectly, the inflectional and derivational processes that the word undergoes), a task to which little attention has so far been given in theoretical frameworks of functional inspiration, and which seems unavoidable, given that the development of a morphological theory is at the core of the current linguistic debate both in the FG and the RRG community. Recent works in functional morphology include Bakker (2001) and Everett (2002). (1)
This journal article is organized as follows. Section 2 defines the lexical categories Noun, Adjective, Verb, and Adposition by means of the semantic properties of reference, attribution, and predication. Section 3 is devoted to the Adverb, and pays special attention to the semantic properties of deixis and reference in time and place adverbs that may be predicative. The summary and conclusions of the article are offered in section 4. The language of reference and exemplification is English.
2. The functional definition of the Noun, the Adjective, the Verb, and the Adposition
The topic of the definition of categories has received uneven attention in the literature of functionalism: whereas functionalist authors like Foley and Van Valin (1984) and Hengeveld (1989) set the pace in the definition of grammatical categories as operators that attach at different levels of the layered structure of the clause, the definition of lexical categories was not a priority of functional theories of language until morphology was placed high on the agenda of theories like FG and RRG a few years ago. This position was coherent with one of the cornerstones of functional syntax, namely that syntactic categories are not maximal projections of lexical or functional heads, as in the Chomskian tradition. Even though functional models do not link headedness and category so explicitly as formal models (that is, syntactic categories in FG and RRG are not endocentric but exocentric), it is undeniable that lexical categories play a role in derivational morphology, which is usually defined, as in FG (Bakker 2001), for instance, as involving some degree of transcategorization (Dik 1997a: 196). Moreover, one of the basic explanatory distinctions of RRG is head-making vs. dependent marking, which obviously involves the notion of headedness, categories being, at least partially, related to headedness. Therefore, from the perspective of morphology and syntax, it is high time the question was addressed of how to define lexical categories in a way that is suitable for the development of a theory of functional morphology.
In FG, which has engaged in the discussion of lexical categories more deeply than RRG, all lexical items of a language (the Noun, the Verb, and the Adjective, in Dik's view) are analysed as predicates (Dik 1997a: 54). The descriptive consequence of this claim is that the FG lexicon includes a category label in the information provided by the predicate frame of each lexical item. Mackenzie (2001) enlarges the inventory of lexical categories to include the Adverb and the Adposition, which has the same impact on lexical description as the inclusion of the other lexical categories. Mairal and Cortés (2002) consider derivational affixes lexical elements and, consequently, represent them in the lexicon as full predicates. Throughout this article the stance on the definition of lexical categories is that they constitute not only descriptive labels but also explanatory resources of the theoretical apparatus of a functional grammar.
In order to define lexical categories, it is necessary, to begin with, to distinguish them from grammatical categories in such a way that notional and heavily theory-dependent definitions are avoided. By notional definition of categories we mean, for instance, Givón's, for whom:
The cluster of experiential features that are typically coded as nouns tend to be relatively complex (multi-featured), concrete (physical), compact (packed together in space). Above all, they are time-stable (slow-changing) ... The experiential phenomena typically coded as adjectives tend to be relatively simple (single-featured) attributes of prototypical nouns; that is, inherent, concrete, time-stable qualities ... The experiential phenomenon typically coded as verbs tend to...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
