{"id":201,"date":"2019-06-10T10:12:56","date_gmt":"2019-06-10T10:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engp13.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=201"},"modified":"2019-06-12T07:02:14","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T07:02:14","slug":"categories-and-constituents","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp13\/chapter\/categories-and-constituents\/","title":{"rendered":"Categories and Constituents"},"content":{"raw":"
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Learning outcome<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

In this module one is expected to learn the definition of category and various views on how categorization is described by the linguists. Alongside, the notion of part of speech and the short comings of the traditional classification system are shown. The current view about categories and categorization draw much insight from the morphology of a particular language at one hand and syntax on the other.<\/p>\r\n

This idea also has given prominence to the fact that sentences of any language are not mere summation of words. Rather a group of words within a sentence acts like a unit which is called a constituent. Finally, some diagnostic tests are represented to prove the existence of the constituents in natural languages.<\/p>\r\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

This module focuses on categories and constituents as part of the paper 13 e.g. Introduction to Linguistics and Phonetics. These two components are an integral part of Syntax which deals with phrase and clause formations in any language or languages in general. The organization of the module is as the following. At the onset the definitions pertaining to the categories is given in Section 16.1. The idea of category and categorization is discussed in 16.2. Various views on categories are noted in sections 16.2.1-16.2.4. Part of speech and glitches of the traditional part of speech are described in 16.3. Section 16.4 introduces two sets of rules to understand the categories and section 17 narrates the idea of constituents and tests for their identification. Finally, a summary is represented in section 18.<\/p>\r\n

What is a category?<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

A category is a minimal unit in syntax that selects a particular word or lexical item to be put under it. For example N (oun)s and V(erb)s are called categories as they allow a proper noun or a pronoun to be inserted under the first one and only a verb under the latter.<\/p>\r\n

In other words, a category comprises of a set of features which are responsible for distinguishing the words into the traditional word classes of Noun, Verbs, Adjectives etc. (Adger, 2002).<\/p>\r\n

Category and categorization<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

In this section, I am going to discuss the process of categorization in human languages and various views about the categories that are an integral part of the human cognition. According to (Rauh, 2010), \u2018Categorizing is a fundamental aspect of how humans process reality and the formation of categories gives structure to the enormous amount of sensory input.\u2019<\/p>\r\n

Lexical items that share properties are combined into the same category. So a category essentially helps to capture the generalization of a particular type. By this means John, him, assassination would all be classified as nouns and reading, putting and sleeping be classified as verbs. This enables a child to acquire a language effectively and an adult learner to learn a second language.<\/p>\r\n

It is also argued that because of their generalizing properties, categories are indispensable in any area of scientific study. (Rauh, 2010) notes that \u2018forming categories and describing the relations between them\u2019 yields a structure and give us \u2018insights into the object of study.\u2019<\/p>\r\n

However, there is no uniformity in the analysis of the categories by linguists. Instead a variety of terminologies can be found including the terms \u2018parts of speech\u2019, \u2018word classes\u2019, \u2018form classes\u2019, \u2018lexical categories\u2019, \u2018grammatical categories\u2019, and \u2018syntactic categories\u2019.<\/p>\r\n

Typological explanations on categories<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

(Haspelmath, 2001) classifies the Word Classes or the Parts of Speech by listing ten traditional categories, namely Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, Pronoun, Preposition\/Ad position, Conjunction, Numeral, Article, and Interjection.<\/p>\r\n

The term part of speech has originated from Latin \u2018pars orationis\u2019 and often largely used by linguists to denote categories. On the other hand, the term word class was introduced in the first half of the twentieth century by the structural linguists. According to Bloomfield, the term \u2018word class\u2019 refers to the relationship between parts of speech and word classes in the following sense i.e. the maximum quantity of word-classes of a given language are considered as the parts of speech of that language. This simply indicates that the sets of parts of speech and word classes are not identical.<\/p>\r\n

(Haspelmath, 2001) argues that the dispute arises due to the confusion between these terminologies. What one needs to understand is that not every language shows equal number of word class or part of speech. Some languages will have more of them compared to the others.<\/p>\r\n

The generalization can be captured as the following<\/p>\r\n\r\n