One cannot but notice that there is no rigid boundary between parts of speech. For example, if one takes numerals, one will arrive at the conclusion that cardinal numerals are similar to adjectives in their syntactic functions, whereas ordinal numerals obviously have much in common with nouns: they may appear in a sentence as subjects [...]

Field structure of parts of speech – Parts of speech as discourse-cognitive classes – Part 1 The modern state of cognitive science has resulted in the hypothesis put forward by Russian linguist Elena Kubryakova. She suggested considering parts of speech as discourse-cognitive classes of words rather than lexico-grammatical ones. The cognitive approach presupposes that a [...]

As we have seen, all the attempts to work out a vocabulary classification based on one criterion only have failed. The main principles of ancient as well as modern wordstock classifica­tions were explicitly formulated by Russian academician Lev Shcherba. These are 1) semantic criterion; 2) morphological criterion, and 3) syntactic criterion. As it has been [...]

The traditional approach to wordstock classification is in great length criticized in modern British and American linguistic studies. As some scholars state, “the definitions in traditional grammars vary between authors, but they share a vagueness and inconsistency of approach. As David Crys­tal points out, the general intent behind the traditional definitions is clear enough; but [...]

Morphological theory in the 20th-century Western linguistics – Part 1 Whereas the first four parts of speech possess three distinctive features, the fifth group is formed only on the ground of morphological indeclinability of these words. The linguist claims that traditional division of “particles” exaggerates their difference and diminishes their obvious similarity. For ex­ample, in [...]

Morphological theory in the 20th-century Western linguistics – Part 1 Morphological theory in the 20th-century Western linguistics – Part 2 Another structuralist, Henry Gleason, criticizes school definitions of parts of speech, grounded on the semantic criterion. However, in doing so, he does not notice that the criticized classification is implicitly based not so much on [...]

During the Middle Ages scholastic philosophers working on linguistic topics (known as “speculative” grammarians or the Modistae) took over Priscianic categories which they assumed to be valid for all languages al­though, in accordance with their ideals of science as a search for universal causes, they devoted a great deal of attention to the logical motivation [...]

The first two extant attempts to categorize words were undertaken in two different parts of the world, in Ancient Greece by Plato and in Ancient India by Panini, author of the oldest Sanskrit grammar. In Indian grammatical tradition, the ability to inflect, that is morphological characteristic, was taken as the basic criterion dividing words into [...]

Morphological classifications in Ancient Indian and Latin grammars – Part 1 Although the Alexandrians and the Stoics were rivals, their classifications are similar in many respects. Both made use of three kinds of criteria: mor­phological, syntactic and semantic. Whereas the Stoics divided Aristotelian conjunctions into case-inflected (grouping together pronouns and articles) and case-uninflected (grouping together [...]

The issue of parts of speech is a problem of grammatical division of the wordstock in a language. But at the same time the issue of dividing words into certain classes is one of the principal questions of morphology because this division is connected with word structure and paradigms, peculiar to words. The parts-of-speech problem [...]