2015-09-06
12982
Parts of speech are traditionally subdivided into notional & functional ones. Notional parts of speech have both lexical & grammatical meanings (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, statives, pronouns, modal words). Functional parts of speech are characterized mainly by the grammatical meaning while their lexical meaning is either lost completely or has survived in a very weakened form.
Functional parts of speech—the article, the preposition, the conjunction. Notional parts of speech are characterized by word-building & word-changing properties; functional words have no formal features & they should be memorized as ready-made units (but, since, till, until). Another most important difference between functional & notional parts of speech is revealed on the level of sentence. Where every notional word performs a certain synthetic function while functional words have no synthetic function at all. They serve as indicators of a certain part of speech (to + verb; a, the + noun). Prepositions are used to connect 2 words & conjunctions to connect 2 clauses or sentences.
Ilyish => Some grammarians think that words should be divided into two categories on the following principle:
notional words denote things, actions and other extra-linguistic phenomena
functional words denote relations and connections between the notional words
This view is shaky, because functional words can also express smth extra-linguistic:
e.g. The letter is on the table.
The letter is in the table. (diff. prepositions express different relations between objects)
The match was called off because it was raining. (the conjunction because denotes the causal connection between two processes).
Some words belonging to a particular part of speech may perform a function differing from that which characterizes the p/of/sp as a whole.
e.g. I have some money left. (have – a notional word)
I have found a dog. (have – an auxiliary verb used to form a certain analytical form of the verb to find, i.e. it is a functional verb)
