Peter,

Webster's Unabridged defines "speech* as:

1.the faculty or power of speaking; oral communication; ability to 
express one's thoughts and emotions by speech sounds and gesture: 
Losing her speech made her feel isolated from humanity.

2.the act of speaking: He expresses himself better in speech than in 
writing.

3.something that is spoken; an utterance, remark, or declaration: We 
waited for some speech that would indicate her true feelings.

4.a form of communication in spoken language, made by a speaker 
before an audience for a given purpose: a fiery speech.

5.any single utterance of an actor in the course of a play, motion 
picture, etc.

6.the form of utterance characteristic of a particular people or 
region; a language or dialect.

7.manner of speaking, as of a person: Your slovenly speech is holding 
back your career.

8.a field of study devoted to the theory and practice of oral 
communication.

All these definitions restrict the meaning of *parts of speech* to 
the spoken language, or utterances. But speech is only one part of 
language. The other part is writing. Also, when grammarians refer to 
*parts of speech* they actually mean different morphological classes 
of words. For these reasons I believe that *word classes* defines 
much better the items grammarians refer to than *parts of speech.*

Eduard   



On Wed, 26 Jul 2006, Peter Adams wrote...

>
>In a message dated 7/26/06 10:46:14 AM, [log in to unmask] 
writes:
>
>
>> 
>> Parts of Speech if fine for me.  It recognizes the more primary 
aspect of 
>> language as Speech.  The ability to analyze all Speech (not just 
writing) is 
>> what grammar offers. 
>> 
>
>But wouldn't phrases and clauses and, for that matter, paragraphs 
also 
>qualify as parts of speech?   It seems to me that "word classes" 
captures much more 
>precisely the meaning we intend.   I fear that parts of speech 
doesn't only 
>"recognize the more primary aspect of language as speech," but it 
could be 
>understood as applying only to speech, which, of course, is not the 
case.   "Word 
>classes" more accurately captures the fact that what we are talking 
about is a 
>feature of both speech and writing.   I would love to see the 
term "word 
>classes" used more widely.
>
>
>
>Peter Adams
>
>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web 
interface at:
>     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>and select "Join or leave the list"
>
>Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/