Mythbuster #1: Parts of speech

You have probably been taught that every word has something known as a part of speech. This concept has perhaps caused more trouble than any other aspect of learning English. Parts of speech are myths. They are merely inaccurate representations of the properties of words. The attempt to divide up the dictionary of English into classes of words with similar, predictable behavior is doomed to failure, because it is built on faulty assumptions. Some of these assumptions are:

1. The grammar of a word is based on its meaning.
2. There are a very small number of categories of words.
3. Words belong only to a single part of speech.

This is simply not true. There is a strong relationship between the grammar of some words, and their meaning, in an abstract sense, but there are so many exceptions that we cannot rely on such a broad generalization. You may recall being taught that a noun is a person, place or thing and that a verb is an action word. Neither statement is true. In fact, most persons and places are not nouns, but complete noun phrases, as we will quickly discover. First, however, we need some definitions to guide our discussion.

We won’t use the term part of speech to describe the grammatical function of a word, because we want to toss out that discredited notion. Instead, we need to isolate five different dimensions of language that will be used in our discussion.

The meaning of each word is something that can be described at many different levels. We are not concerned here with the actual content, for example chair as opposed to couch, but rather with how the words are used to make up the logical structure of a statement or question. It is enough for us to identify the role of such words in the meaning of the entire statement. We can call this type of meaning, technically known as logico-semantics or predicate-object structure, the logical structure. In the sentence Jerry bought a new guitar. We have three major components (Jerry) (bought) (a new guitar). In the logical structure, (Jerry) and (a new guitar). are called objects and (bought) is a predicate. The combination ((bought) (a new guitar) is a predicate phrase. Later on we will explore a few other items, but this will do for now.

The structure and order of words in a sentence is known as the syntax. The syntax of a sentence is the order of words and the structures formed by those words. Here we combine nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives and adverbs into phrases, which in turn make up a sentence. We’ll meet a number of different syntactic elements later, but for now let’s just meet one which is important for our discussion. We need a guiding principle to decide if two words share the same syntax. At the most basic level, two words belong to the same category if they can be substituted for each other. A noun (guitar) is an element that can be modified with an adjective (new), and when it combines with a determiner (we’ll explore this type later) such as a, or this, we get a noun phrase (a new guitar).

So far, we have just been talking about whole words, but it is also important to understand how words are composed of smaller elements, just as a molecule contains atoms which in turn contain subatomic particles. Morphology is the dimension of language where we can examine such things as prefixes and suffixes. We use suffixes in English to mark time relations in verbs, such as walking vs. walked, and to indicate that a noun is plural by adding -s (the - indicates that there is something that this item has to attach to) among other things.

The sound of each word is the phonology. The final dimension is discourse, which deals with the flow of information from a speaker to other participants in the conversation. We don’t need to deal with this in our discussion of parts-of-speech so we will catch up with them later.

We can now take the old notion of grammar being related to meaning and put it in clearer terms. The parts of speech believers claim that there is a relationship between the syntax of a word and its logical structure. A noun is described in terms of its meaning, often alleged to be a person, place, or thing. In fact, most people are described not by nouns, but by noun phrases! A noun can be modified by an adjective, but names cannot. If we write A talented Jerry played the guitar it looks and sounds strange. The Jerry played the guitar is even weirder. But if we compare the sentences A talented musician played the guitar with Jerry played the guitar it is clear that Jerry and A talented musician share the same grammatical function.

If we accept the parts of speech framework, then it follows logically that words that have approximately the same meaning ought to have the same syntax. That is clearly not the case. Consider the words likely, probably and seems. The meanings of the words are similar in their logical structure. Each word combines with a proposition and suggests a level of probability that the proposition is true. The following three sentences are very near in meaning:

1. The latest CD is likely to be available at Schmoe’s Records, because I saw an ad for it today.
1. The latest CD is probably available at Schmoe’s Records, because I saw an ad for it today.
2. The latest CD seems to be available at Schmoe’s Records, because I saw an ad for it today.

There is no doubt, however, that the three words belong to different syntactic categories. Likely is an adjective, probably is an adverb, and seems is a verb. Of course you may think that likely and probably belong to the same category because they both end in -ly, but even if they shared the same suffix, that is a matter of morphology, not syntax. In this case the resemblance is an accident of history. History has affected grammar greatly, but that’s a subject for another time.

Although even this brief discussion should be enough to raise suspicions about the validity of parts of speech, if not to throw it out altogether, there are many more criticisms of this approach. There is so much that does not fit into the part of speech system that two huge garbage dumps have been found necessary. One is the notion of "particle", which is essentially any small word which doesn’t fit into the verb-noun-adjective-adverb-verb classification. Words like if, such, oh, argh and yo! are tossed here. Just as useless is the grab bag of things called adverbs, which range from most words ending in -ly to words like not, all, how, thus.

Even if we somehow pared this category down to a core of -ly items, we can’t perform our substitution test on words like frankly, completely, slowly and others. We’ll devote an entire Mythbuster to adverbs later but for now, just try to see where each of the three words can be inserted in a sentence. You’ll find they have quite different properties!

Example: I want to rewrite the book.

How do these sentences sound to you? Keep in mind that a comma indicates that you should pause when reading.

1. Frankly, I want to rewrite the book.
2. I want to rewrite the book , frankly.
3. I want to rewrite the book frankly.
4. I want to frankly rewrite the book.
5. I frankly want to rewrite the book.
6. I want frankly to rewrite the book.

Notice that the word frankly has two different meanings depending on its position. In #1 and $5, the sentence means that speaking honestly, the person wants to rewrite the book. #3 is understood as the person wanting to rewrite the book in a more honest and forthcoming manner. #2 is ambiguous between the two. The remaining examples, #4 and #6 are decidedly odd.

We will examine the adverbs in much more detail later on. For the moment, just compare the results with your own intuitions on the following sets of sentences, where we substitute each of the other adverbs for frankly.

1. Completely, I want to rewrite the book.
2. I want to rewrite the book , completely.
3. I want to rewrite the book completely.
4. I want to completely rewrite the book.
5. I completely want to rewrite the book.
6. I want completely to rewrite the book.

1. Quickly, I want to rewrite the book.
2. I want to rewrite the book , quickly.
3. I want to rewrite the book quickly.
4. I want to quickly rewrite the book.
5. I quickly want to rewrite the book.
6. I want quickly to rewrite the book.

1. Probably, I want to rewrite the book.
2. I want to rewrite the book , probably.
3. I want to rewrite the book probably.
4. I want to probably rewrite the book.
5. I probably want to rewrite the book.
6. I want probably to rewrite the book.

So we see that there are several kinds of adverbs, some of which have different meanings in some positions.

We have to step back from assuming a tight connection between i the form and the meaning of a word. This is not to say that there are no links between form and meaning. Correspondences between syntax, semantics and morphology are quite common. There is a relationship between typical adjectives and logical properties, for example. But the correspondence cannot be relied on, for there are many, many exceptions. Rather than trying to memorize exceptions, it is better to keep in mind that there is just a general tendency for each syntactic category to correspond to some logical structure.