The Typology of Parts of Speech Systems by Beck David

Author:Beck, David [David Beck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136069147
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Chapter 4

Types of lexical inventory

One of the most important aspects of the approach to defining parts of speech outlined in the previous chapter is the idea that parts of speech are neither strictly semantic nor strictly syntactic. Instead, lexical class specifications are features of words in the lexicon, which uses the semantic properties of meanings and syntactic information about the unmarked distribution of their expressions to subdivide words into various classes. Cross-linguistic variation in parts of speech systems can then be characterized in terms of variation in ways these criteria are, or are not, applied to the lexicon of a particular language. Languages that have a typical Indo-European style system with all three major lexical classes make parts of speech distinctions based on both semantic and syntactic parameters. Those languages that do not make the tripartite distinction between nouns, verbs, and adjectives, however, seem not to make use of both semantics and syntax in the organization of their lexical inventories. It will be the goal of this chapter to discover precisely how cross-linguistic variation in lexical classes is related to variation in the application of the semantic and syntactic criteria for lexical classification, and how these criteria may, and may not, be combined to generate different types of lexical inventories.

In terms of cross-linguistic variation in the three major parts of speech, there are four common inventory-types proposed in the literature (e.g. Schachter 1985; Croft 1991; Bhat 1994):

(62) full NAV inventory—the lexicon distinguishes between three open classes of words—noun, verb, adjective (e.g. English, Russian)

N[AV] inventory—the lexicon distinguishes only nouns and verbs, conflating property-concept words with verbs (proposed—Cora, Salish)

[NA]V inventory—the lexicon distinguishes only nouns and verbs, conflating property-concept words with nouns (proposed—Quechua, Totonac, Hausa)

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