Peter,
   I would venture that what we mean by words is not a simple definition,
but a whole lifetime of knowledge. From a cognitive perspective, the
meaning of any word is more encyclopedic than dictionary like. So to
explore the nature of "word" takes considerable time.
   The dictionary makers face this word class problem all the time, so a
quick look at a dictionary will tell us someone's judgement. If you
look at the OED, you can sometimes see what word class a word started
in and then how its meanings changed and grew. Many words, snow
included, will be listed as both noun and verb.
   A noun modifies a noun differently than an adjective does. Most
adjectives are gradeable. "A stony silence" means something like
"stonier than normal." >"A stone house" is different though. "A table
lamp" is a kind of lamp and a "lamp table" is a kind of table. We can't
say "your lamp is tabler than mine". When verb forms modify nouns, they
also have a different kind of meaning. "A stoning silence" is different
from a "stoned silence" which is different from "stony silence," and at
least some of that is carried in the grammar. The determiner system
helps ground the noun phrase within a discourse context. All of these
elements have an order of operations within the houn phrase. There's
even a comma rule that recognizes this: we put commas between
coordinate adjectives, not between an adjectivce and a noun modifier or
betweern a determinetr and an adjective.
   We can call them all adjectives, and I suppose this would be easier,
but it would be a terrible disservice and very misleading. It might be
like calling everything that flies a bird, which is fine until you want
to fly to Chicago.

Craig

Herb,
>
> Thanks for your thoughtful response.  Now we seem to have three
> possibilities: either lexical classes don't exist, or they exist and
> words belong exclusively to one of them even though they might be
> used in another under strict conditions, or words can belong to more
> than one lexical class in such a way that a words class can be
> determined only in a particular context.  You make clear that you
> prefer the second formulation, but why you prefer it to the third.
>
> Peter
>
>
> On Feb 22, 2008, at 2:47 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
>
>> And would
>>
>> (4) Ellen and Gail get stoned as often as they can.
>>
>> be a fourth instance?  Or would it be a separate lexical item?  It
>> probably started out as a metaphorical extension of the active
>> voice “to stone,” but then took on other cultural and semantic
>> trappings, giving us words like “stoner,” which is not a person who
>> stones others (I’m showing my 1960s roots).  At some point the word
>> splits into different words whose relationship can be traced only
>> by careful, dogged etymological work.  If past participles are the
>> same word as the verb they are formed from, and they’re certainly
>> part of the same lexeme, then at some point meaning change in
>> “seethe” vs. “sodden” led them to become totally distinct words.
>> Etymologically “sodden” is the past participle of Old English
>> seothan “to boil,” from which we get Modern English “seethe” by
>> regular sound change.  But the two words are no longer related as
>> far as speakers of English are concerned.
>>
>> On another topic, the form/function distinction is important
>> precisely because it allows us to deal with grammatical variation
>> in word use that falls short of the seethe/sodden extreme.  Edmund
>> has raised the very difficult question of whether there is such a
>> thing as a lexical class, and there are languages for which the
>> answer almost certainly has to be no, but given the rich
>> derivational morphology of English I’m less willing to say that we
>> don’t have lexical classes and that most words don’t clearly belong
>> to one while they can be used, under strict conditions, as members
>> of another.  There are, granted, words for which we cannot make a
>> clear argument as to which class is their primary home, but the
>> problem is not a statistical one as Edmund suggests; it’s a matter
>> more of prototype theory.  A word belongs to a class to the extent
>> that it has the traits that are prototypical of that class.  “May”
>> has some properties of verbs, but not as many as “hit” has, and
>> this has led some grammarians to the position that modals are a
>> separate class in English.  I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it’s
>> clear that “may” is one of the least verb-like of verbs.  But this
>> is more a matter of prototype theory than of statistics.
>>
>> There are some fairly abstruse definitions of the category “word”
>> in the various texts on morphology, but the one I like best and
>> find most teachable to undergraduates is Leonard Bloomfield’s,
>> going back to his Language (1933), where he defines word as “a
>> minimal free form.”  That means that a word is the smallest piece
>> of an utterance—remember Bloomfield was a linguist and worked on
>> speech, not writing—that can be said by itself.  So in a spoken
>> sentence like
>>
>> The ball’s in play.
>>
>> there are two words, “ball” and “play” (I’m staying clear of the
>> phonological vs. morphological word distinction).  “The,” “’s,” and
>> “in” are not words because they are unstressed and therefore cannot
>> be pronounced by themselves, that is, if you try to pronounce them
>> you get something that sounds different from what’s in the
>> utterance above because to isolate them in English you have to
>> stress them, and that changes them.  This leads to a somewhat
>> different description of English morphology than we’re used to, and
>> it makes heavy use of the category “clitic.”  A clitic is a form
>> that is unstressed and so cannot be pronounced alone.  It attaches
>> to a phrasal category rather than to a lexical category, so “the”
>> attaches to a noun phrase, not to a noun.  That makes clitics
>> different from affixes.  The –s in “balls” is a suffix; the –‘s in
>> “ball’s” is a clitic.  On the scale of morphological units, clitic
>> sits between affix and word, sharing some but not all of the
>> properties of each.
>>
>> Clearly this is a somewhat more technical definition of word than
>> our students are used to.  They tend to assume that a word is
>> anything you write with spaces around it, a definition that doesn’t
>> get us very far in linguistic analysis.  You can present the
>> “minimal free form” definition without getting into the sort of
>> complexity I’ve just wallowed in, but it also allows students to
>> begin to ask some interesting questions.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Adams
>> Sent: 2008-02-22 12:38
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Adverb?
>>
>> This form vs function discussion is fascinating and frustrating.
>> My difficulty with it is illuminated by Bruce's comment: "I think
>> that the nouns tomorrow, and today are often adverbial in nature
>> (as in your examples), and that the adverb now is sometimes used as
>> a noun (as in 'Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
>> of their party.')"  I don't understand what it means to say that a
>> word, in this case, tomorrow is "a noun that is adverbial in nature."
>>
>> Why wouldn't a more elegant solution be to say that words can
>> belong to more than one word class and that which class a word is
>> belongs to in a particular utterance can only be determined in
>> context.  For example, stone is a word that can be a noun, a verb,
>> an adjective . . . perhaps more.  In sentence (1) below it is a
>> noun, in (2) it is a verb, and in (3) it is an adjective.
>>
>> To me, this analysis is more intuitive and would, therefore, make
>> teaching these concepts to young (or old) students easier.
>>
>> (1) Ellen picked up a stone.
>> (2) Ellen and Gail stone their enemies whenever they can.
>> (3) It is fortunate that Ellen lives in a stone house rather than a
>> glass one.
>>
>> But all this leads me to a really basic question: what is a word?
>> Is stone the same word in these three sentences or three different
>> words?  In fact, I wonder about a sentence like (4) below:
>>
>> (4) This suitcase is heavier than the suitcase I carried yesterday.
>>
>> Does (4) have ten words or nine, with one used twice?  What do we
>> mean by the word word?
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>> On Feb 21, 2008, at 3:05 PM, Bruce Despain wrote:
>>
>>
>> Geoff & Dick,
>>
>> May I respond?
>>
>> 1) When I said "licensed by the verb" in my post, I was referring
>> to just such verbs as "arrive" that require the temporal adverbial,
>> expressed or understood.  It seems that with this understood it is
>> possible to state it as a precondition on your movement of the
>> temporal adverbial to the fore: that complements be provided after
>> it.  (These are all quite distinct from the adverbial adjunct.)
>> 2) I think that the nouns tomorrow, and today are often adverbial
>> in nature (as in you examples), and that the adverb now is
>> sometimes used as a noun (as in "Now is the time for all good men
>> to come to the aid of their party."
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>> >>> Geoffrey Layton <[log in to unmask]> 02/21/08 12:43 PM >>>
>> Craig -
>>
>> I'd like to put this question into the context of an issue that we
>> seem to continually (although sometimes it seems continuously)
>> confront - the impact of grammar instruction on writing.  From my
>> perspective, teaching students whether (and how) these phrases
>> function adverbially would fall under the "grammar instruction has
>> no effect and perhaps even a negative effect on writing" dictum.
>> Of more interest to me is the rhetorical effect of starting or
>> ending the sentence with adverbials, particularly those that
>> communicate WHEN information.  For example, ending the sentence
>> with a WHEN adverbial ("He arrives a week from Thursday.")
>> effectively ends the sentence, whereas starting the sentence with
>> an adverbial almost forces the writer to continue writing.  For
>> example, a sentence that starts with WHEN information ("A week from
>> Thursday he arrives") sounds very unfinished and awkward, but it
>> has the benefit of forcing the writer to expand the sentence with
>> WHERE and WHY information:  "A week from Thursday, he arrives from
>> San Francisco to perform as the piano soloist with the Chicago
>> Symphony."  This is how I like to use grammar.
>>
>> Geoff
>> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:49:59 -0500
>> From: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Adverb?
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Craig,
>>
>> Would all of these be noun phrases functioning adverbially? (This
>> is a genuine question, not a challenge.)
>>
>> He arrives a week from Thursday.
>> He arrives Thursday.
>> He arrives this afternoon.
>> He arrives tomorrow.
>> He arrives today.
>> He arrives now.
>>
>> The first three seem to be noun phrases, but what about the last
>> three?
>>
>> Dick Veit
>> ________________________________
>> Richard Veit
>> Department of English
>> University of North Carolina Wilmington
>> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf OfCraig Hancock
>> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 12:42 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: Adverb?
>>
>> Bruce,
>>    I wonder about the confusion that might be caused by 3b) below:
>> "A noun phrase referring to a time period may be called an
>> "adverbial phrase."" My own tendency would be to say that it is a
>> noun phrase functioning adverbially within this context. It is also
>> possible for the same phrase (though it refers to a time period) to
>> act in a different role. "Last summer was hot." (Last summer as
>> subject). "I hated last summer." (Last summer as direct object
>> complement of "hated".) I don't think a noun like "summer" is an
>> adverbial noun outside of context.
>>    He left  home. He went home. The first is transitive, the second
>> intransitive. The verb has an influence on the functional role.
>>    We also have adverb phrases, like "so quickly" or "too often." I
>> would call them "adverb phrases" because an adverb functions as head.
>>    To me, a "phrase" would refer to the internal structure of the
>> word group. Function (like adverbial) would be somewhat independent
>> of that.
>>
>> Craig
>>
>> Bruce Despain wrote:
>> Janet,
>>
>> I think that explaining "last summer" in your sentence needs to
>> point out a number of relationships.
>>
>> 1) It is a phrase, in that it consists of more than a single word.
>> 1a) The (operational) limiting adjective "last" modifies the noun
>> "summer" designating a seasonal part of a year.
>> 1b) "Summer" is one of those nouns that refers to a time period.
>> 2) The phrase functions in the predicate as temporal modification.
>> 2a) Temporal modification may be carried out by single words, which
>> are then called "adverbs."
>> 2b) Temporal modification carried out by phrases are called
>> "adverbial phrases."
>> 3) A noun that refers to a time period may often be used in the
>> predicate by itself as temporal modification.
>> 3a) Such nouns are often called adverbial nouns.
>> 3b) A noun phrase referring to a time period may be called an
>> "adverbial phrase."
>>
>> The adverbial phrase in this case "last summer" is modifying the
>> whole subject-predicate combination "Reports of flying saucers were
>> frequent."  Such phrases have been called "adverbial adjuncts" in
>> the sense that they are not licensed by the verb phrase, as many
>> adverbial phrases are.  Such phrases are more freely attached to
>> the sentence, much like sentence adverbs (never, sometimes, always,
>> immediately, etc.) regularly are.
>>
>> Bruce
>>
>> >>> "Castilleja, Janet" <[log in to unmask]> 02/20/08 4:27
>> PM >>>
>> How do you guys handle this kind of a sentence:
>>
>> Reports of flying saucers were frequent last summer.
>>
>> Do you call ‘last summer’ a noun phrase functioning as an adverb or
>> do you just call it an adverb phrase?
>>
>> Janet Castilleja
>> Heritage University
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