In at least one use of numerals, they act as quantifiers (and so as determiners):

· There were many/some/three students.

· I saw many/some/three on the table.

________________________

Richard Veit

Department of English, UNCW

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stahlke, Herbert F.W.
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 8:24 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Greenbaum's word classes

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

> more than one class. In his treatment of the classes, he combines

> determiner and pronoun into one section because there is a great deal

> 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

> 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

> 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

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