Ronald, Johanna, Herb, and all:
I think that one problem with terminology is the term "parts
of speech." (I prefer to discuss "word classes"
rather than "parts of speech." After all, we could
also identify prepositional phrases and subjects and predicates as
"parts of speech.") Except for the terms "gerund"
and "participle," the Warriner type of traditional
school grammar ignores the concept of function in its descriptions.
For example, a noun that modifies a noun headword (the garbage
can, the college professor, the computer problem) is
labeled an adjective; a noun modifying a verb (I walked home;
He's coming Monday) will be called an adverb.
But considering both form and function, we would describe the
noun modifiers as nouns functioning adjectivally; the verb modifiers
as nouns functioning adverbially. The word class is one thing;
its function another.
(This problem also shows up in certain traditional test items,
when students are asked to "underline the nouns." Are
they looking for nominals only? Or do nouns functioning as
adjectives and adverbs also require the underline? The same
question applies to verb underlining. We need those -al
terms!)
In calling my and his and her determiners,
we are discussing their function. In form, I maintain that they
are pronouns. Pronouns should not be defined according to their
function, any more than adjectives should! And certainly, in
teaching school grammar, I would advocate describing the whole system
of personal pronouns: subjective, objective, and possessive forms.
The alternate possessive forms (mine, his, hers, theirs) function when
the noun headword is missing. And, by the way, a pronoun
can, indeed, take the place of a noun phrase--when that noun phrase is
functioning as a determiner: my big sister's cat =
her cat.
The problem with the traditional definition of "pronoun"
is that the term "nominal" is not in the traditional
vocabulary. A pronoun takes the place, not of a noun or even a
noun phrase, but of a nominal--no matter what its form: Exercising
regularly is vital to our health = It is vital to our
health.
I would mention, too, that I consider this, that, these,
and those pronouns: i.e., demonstrative pronouns. They,
too, take the place of nominals. And, unlike most personal
pronouns, they have no alternative form when the head is missing.
"I have have read all of these books; I have read all of these."
May descriptions of grammar call them "demonstrative
adjectives." (Let's save the term adjective for those words
that, for the most part, fit the formal description.)
I think it's very useful in teaching the concept of
"determiner," to remind students that when they use a
pronoun, especially this or that, without its headword,
ambiguity often occurs: The "antecedent" problem can
sometimes be explained better as a "lack of headword"
problem.
One more thought: I consider both 'determiner" and
"qualifier" as the names of word classes--a big, and
important, difference from traditional grammar, with its limited
"eight parts of speech." But in both cases, I
recognize that the terms straddle the line between form and function.
On the one hand, articles are straightforward determiners; however,
other word classes, such as possessive pronouns, also function as
determiners, as do pronouns of various subclasses. In other
words, both of these word classes--nouns and pronouns--also function
as determiners. In the case of "qualifier," we do
have very, the quintessential qualifier;and we have a few
others, like so and rather, that are usually
qualifiers. But then there are all those -ly adverbs that can
function as qualifiers: absolutely true! So they're not
really "closed classes," as conjunctions and prepositions
and auxiliaries are. But I think it's still useful to include
"determiners" and "qualifiers" as "structure"
classes, rather than "form" classes--with that
caveat--simply to make clear the special nature of nouns, verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs.
Martha
We've had some interesting discussions of
Part of Speech on this list,
and, while we don't all agree as to which ones and how many
English
grammar needs, there is broad agreement that they are defined on
morphological and syntactic grounds, as well as semantic.
School
grammars tend to offer much more notional classification reflecting
the
eight pars orationis of the Greco-Latin grammatical tradition.
I've used the "possessive pronoun" terminology consistently
throughout
my career, both as a linguist and as a grammar teacher. The
words
simply do not belong to the same lexical class (part of speech).
English adjectives may take the suffixes -er and -est, are preceded
by
number words and determiners (articles, demonstratives, possessive
pronouns), and may also be predicative without changing form.
Possessive pronouns, on the other hand, precede number words and
adjectives, are uninflectable except in that they are the
diachronic
product of inflecting a pronoun root, and may change form to be
predicative (mine, (thine,) hers, ours, yours, theirs).
"His" and "its"
don't show this inflection. And, of course, pronouns a closed
class of
function words while adjectives are an open class of content
words.
The standard reference grammars listed below pretty much agree on
this
treatment. I've used the Greenbaum as a text a number of times.
School
grammars tend to be more influenced by grammatical traditions.
Some standard reference grammars:
Biber, Douglas; Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and
Edward
Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written
English. London:
Pearson ESL.
Greenbaum, Sidney. 1996. The Oxford English grammar.
New York:
Oxford University Press.
Huddleston, Rodney D., and Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The
Cambridge
Grammar of the English Language. London: Cambridge
University Press.
Quirk, Randolph; Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan
Svartvik.
1985A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London:
Longman.
For historical purposes, I go to Jespersen's seven volume A Modern
English Grammar on Historical Principles, but modern reference
grammars
agree quite extensively with his grammatical analyses.
In short, I agree with Swan.
Herb
This may sound elementary but is anyone using a reference grammar
which
classifies 'my', 'your', 'her' etc. as 'possessive pronouns' and not
as
'possessive adjectives'?.
For example, Thomson and Martinet (A Practical English Grammar -
page
75)
classifies them as possessive adjectives.
On the other hand, Michael Swan's Practical English Usage (p. 416)
classifies them as possessive pronouns and states 'They are not
adjectives
though they are sometimes called 'possessive adjectives' in older
grammars
and dictionaries'.
Is there anyone on the List who follows Swan's classification?
Ron Sheen
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