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Since the immanent feature is expressed by essentially independent grammatical forms, and the reflective
feature, correspondingly, by essentially dependent grammatical forms, all the forms of the first order
(immanent) should be classed as "declensional", while all the forms of the second order (reflective) should be
classed as "conjugational".
In accord with this principle, the noun in such synthetical languages as Russian or Latin is declined by the
forms of gender, number, and case, while the adjective is conjugated by the same forms. As for the English
verb, it is conjugated by the reflective forms of person and number, but declined by the immanent forms of
tense, aspect, voice, and mood.
CHAPTER IV
GRAMMATICAL CLASSES OF WORDS
§ 1. The words of language, depending on various formal and semantic features, are divided into
grammatically relevant sets or classes. The traditional grammatical classes of words are called "parts of
speech". Since the word is distinguished not only by grammatical, but also by semantico-lexemic properties,
some scholars refer to parts of speech as "lexico-grammatical" series of words, or as "lexico-grammatical
categories" [, 1957, 33; 1959, 100].
- It should be noted that the term "part of speech" is purely traditional and conventional, it cannot be taken as in
any way defining or explanatory. This name was introduced in the grammatical teaching of Ancient Greece,
where the concept of the sentence was not yet explicitly identified in distinction to the general idea of speech,
and where, consequently, no strict differentiation was drawn between the word as a vocabulary unit and the
word as a functional element of the sentence.
In modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of the three criteria: "semantic",
"formal", and "functional". The semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of the generalized meaning,
which is characteristic of all the subsets of words constituting a given part of speech. This meaning is
understood as the "categorial meaning of the part of speech". The formal criterion provides for the exposition of
the specific inflexional and derivational (word-building) features of all the lexemic subsets of a part of speech.
The functional criterion concerns the syntactic role words in the sentence typical of a part of speech. The said
three factors of categorial characterization of words are conventionally referred to as, respectively, "meaning",
"form", and "function".
§ 2. In accord with the described criteria, words on the upper level of classification are divided into
notional and functional, which reflects their division in the earlier grammatical tradition into changeable and
unchangeable.
To the notional parts of speech of the English language belong the noun, the adjective, the numeral, the
pronoun, the verb, the adverb.
The features of the noun within the identificational triad "meaning - form - function" are, correspondingly,
the following: 1) the categorial meaning of substance ("thingness"); 2) the changeable forms of number and
case; the specific suffixal forms of derivation (prefixes in English do not discriminate parts of speech as such);
3) the substantive functions in the sentence (subject, object, substantival predicative); prepositional
connections; modification by an adjective.
The features of the adjective: 1) the categorial meaning of property (qualitative and relative); 2) the forms of
the degrees of comparison (for qualitative adjectives); the specific suffixal forms of derivation; 3) adjectival
functions in the sentence (attribute to a noun, adjectival predicative).
The features of the numeral: 1) the categorial meaning of number (cardinal and ordinal); 2) the narrow set of
simple numerals; the specific forms of composition for compound numerals; the specific suffixal forms of
derivation for ordinal numerals; 3) the functions of numerical attribute and numerical substantive.
The features of the pronoun: 1) the categorial meaning of indication (deixis); 2) the narrow sets of various
status with the corresponding formal properties of categorial changeability and word-building; 3) the
substantival and adjectival functions for different sets.
The features of the verb: 1) the categorial meaning of process (presented in the two upper series of forms,
respectively, as finite process and non-finite process); 2) the forms of the verbal categories of person, number,
tense, aspect, voice, mood; the opposition of the finite and non-finite forms; 3) the function of the finite
predicate for the finite verb; the mixed verbal - other than verbal functions for the non-finite verb.
The features of the adverb: 1) the categorial meaning of the secondary property, i.e. the property of process
or another property; 2) the forms of the degrees of comparison for qualitative adverbs; the specific suffixal
forms of derivation; 3) the functions of various adverbial modifiers.