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:
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- 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)
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- 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
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