Herb, I can think of occassions when a number would take a plural, as in "He threw two sevens in a row." (Maybe I'm confessing my social class.) But you have me convinced. For verbs, adding endings may be the simplest and purest test. I wonder why we don't do that in early grades. I wonder if syntax is hard to teach later precisely because we have avoided it for so long. Even at the college level, I still have students who haven't been told the difference between plural and possessive (or it hasn't taken; but it takes so easily, I can't help suspecting it just isn't always taught.) Are syntax and morphology hard to teach, or do we just avoid them? I have access to students in a K-4 charter school, so I may be trying a few things out. Craig Craig, > > I agree that the four open classes are the clearest, easiest to define > notionally, and probably the best to present at lower levels. As to > auxiliaries, "have", "do" and "be" are examples of words that can be in > two different classes, auxiliary and verb, and their behavior differs > depending on which class a particular example represents. Multiple > class membership and auxiliary are both items for later introduction, I > would think. > > As to the status of "numeral", number words do not inflect. Adjectives > do. Number words can take derivational suffixes like "-th" and "-some", > which adjectives cannot take. Notionally, they can't be comparative or > superlative. Number words must occur initially in a noun phrase or > between the determiner and any adjectives, so they are syntactically > distinct as well. They are like adjectives in that they are > post-determiner, pronominal, and are attributive and can, to a degree, > be predicative, as in the somewhat archaic "Now they were three", > indicating number, not age. Unlike nouns, they don't take plurals, and > when they are used as sole noun phrases, as in "I saw three on the > table", they are usually elliptical ("three books"). So there are both > morphological and syntactic criteria for considering numerals a word > class. However, it's one I'd present rather late in K12. > > Like you, I'm uncomfortable with "adverb". The distinctions among > sentence-modifying, verb phrase modifying, and adjective-modifying words > are too great, from my perspective, to allow them to be properties of > one word class. I would prefer at least distinguishing intensifiers, > like "very" and "sort of". But it's also a practical pedagogical > question, and I wouldn't oppose keeping the term as is. I would, later > on in K12, want to distinguish carefully among types of adverb, though. > > I'm not comfortable speculating on scope and sequence, since I don't > teach K12 and have no expertise in K12 curriculum. I would want such > decisions made by people who know those areas well. > > Herb > > -----Original Message----- > From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock > Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 8:42 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: Greenbaum's word classes > > Herb, > I think this is a wonderful place to start. A number of people have > suggested the four "open classes", and so maybe we can start with that > as a consensus position. (These also carry over from traditional > grammar.) Notional criteria seem the current way of going about it for > early grades, so I wonder if people think morphology and syntax are a > more mature perspective. I notice even with the NATE glossary (I don't > have it with me) they tend to oversimplify in the early grades. They > define "subject", for example, as "what carries out the action," which > seems a terrible mistake to me. > It's hard to imagine getting far without prepositions and > conjunctions. > For auxiliaries, you need to determine whether "have", "do", and "be" > verbs are verbs used as auxiliaries, which would mean it's a function > label and not just a category label (as it would be for the modals, I > presume.) What are the arguments for numeral as its own catgory and not > just noun or adjective? > I know we have talked a number of times on list about the category > "adverb" being too large. Do we want to add "qualifier"? It shows up > very early, I think, with "so" and "very". Unlike other "adverbs", they > can't head a phrase. > > I like the idea of "typical" or "prototypical", especially for > notional > definitions. Even in early stages, I would opt for presenting language > as very flexible. > These categories would have sub-categories, I assume. At what age > would > we assume that a typical child is ready for a full description? > > Craig > In a previous posting, I mentioned Greenbaum's treatment of word classes >> in The Oxford English Grammar (OUP 1996). I thought I'd summarize > what >> he lays out (pp. 90-95). >> >> >> >> He proposes four open classes (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) and > seven >> closed classes (auxiliary, conjunction, preposition, determiner, >> pronoun, numeral, and interjection) and notes that many words belong > to >> more than one class. In his treatment of the classes, he combines >> determiner and pronoun into one section because there is a great deal > of >> overlap between them, even though there are words, like "the" and > "she", >> that are clearly one or the other. (It's a good example of the fact >> that category boundaries are fuzzy.) In his two-page discussion of > the >> criteria that are used to determine word classes and their membership > he >> presents three types of criterion, notional, morphological, and >> grammatical (syntactic), with the combination of morphological and >> grammatical being the most useful where inflectional variants or > affixal >> characteristics are available. For word classes that don't have >> morphological variants, like prepositions and conjunctions, notional > and >> grammatical criteria work better. He "notes that notional criteria > are >> often a useful entry to a recognition of a class." He also touches on >> the notion "prototype", commenting that "some members of a class are >> central (or prototypical), whereas others are more peripheral", > pointing >> out that "tall" is a central member of the adjective class because it >> exhibits all the criteria of adjectives while "afraid" is peripheral >> since it can only be predicative. He points out also that members of > a >> class may contain more than one word, like "book review", "no one", or >> "in spite of", which are a compound noun, pronoun, and preposition, >> respectively. >> >> >> >> I'm not suggesting that we simply adopt Greenbaum's description but >> rather that it is a useful starting point for part of speech > terminology >> and concepts. Clearly any such system must be analyzed in terms of >> scope and sequence, deciding which criteria and which categories to >> present when and in which order. I'm also not suggesting that >> terminology be limited to parts of speech. Johanna's proposal is, I >> think, an excellent place to start for more comprehensive terminology. >> >> >> >> Herb >> >> >> 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/ > > 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/