Lexical Categories Vs. Functional Categories
Many grammars draw a distinction between lexical categories and functional categories. This distinction is orthogonal to the distinction between lexical categories and phrasal categories. In this context, the term lexical category applies only to those parts of speech and their phrasal counterparts that form open classes and have full semantic content. The parts of speech that form closed classes and have mainly just functional content are called functional categories:
-
- Lexical categories
- Adjective (A) and adjective phrase (AP), adverb (Adv) and adverb phrase (AdvP), Noun (N) and noun phrase (NP), verb and verb phrase (VP), preposition and prepositional phrase (PP)
-
- Functional categories
- Coordinate conjunction (C), determiner (D), negation (Neg), particle (Par), preposition (P) and prepositional phrase (PP), subordinate conjunction (Sub), etc.
There is disagreement in certain areas, for instance concerning the status of prepositions. The distinction between lexical and functional categories plays a big role in Chomskyan grammars (Transformational Grammar, Government and Binding Theory, Minimalist Program), where the role of the functional categories is large. Many phrasal categories are assumed that do not correspond directly to a specific part of speech, e.g. agreement phrase (AgrP), focus phrase (FP), inflection phrase (IP), tense phrase (TP), etc. In order to acknowledge such functional categories, one has to assume that the constellation is a primitive of the theory and that it exists separately from the words that appear. As a consequence, many grammar frameworks do not acknowledge such functional categoriess, e.g. Head Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Dependency Grammar, etc.
Read more about this topic: Syntactic Category
Famous quotes containing the words categories and/or functional:
“Of course I’m a black writer.... I’m not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren’t marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call “literature” is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.”
—Toni Morrison (b. 1931)
“Indigenous to Minnesota, and almost completely ignored by its people, are the stark, unornamented, functional clusters of concrete—Minnesota’s grain elevators. These may be said to express unconsciously all the principles of modernism, being built for use only, with little regard for the tenets of esthetic design.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)