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Frame A. The concert was good (always).
Frame B. The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly).
Frame C. The team went there.
The parenthesised positions are optional from the point of view of the structural completion of sentences.
As a result of successive substitution tests on the cited "frames" the following lists of positional words
("form-words", or "parts of speech") are established:
Class 1. (A) concert, coffee, taste, container, difference, etc. (B) clerk, husband, supervisor, etc.; tax, food,
coffee, etc. (C) team, husband, woman, etc.
Class 2. (A) was, seemed, became, etc. (B) remembered, wanted, saw, suggested, etc. (C) went, came,
ran,... lived, worked, etc.
Class 3. (A) good, large, necessary, foreign, new, empty, etc.
Class 4. (A) there, here, always, then, sometimes, etc. (B) clearly, sufficiently, especially, repeatedly, soon,
etc. (C) there, back, out, etc.; rapidly, eagerly, confidently, etc.
All these words can fill in the positions of the frames without affecting their general structural meaning
(such as "thing and its quality at a given time" - the first frame; "actor - action - thing acted upon - characteristic
of the action"-the second frame; "actor-action-direction of the action "-the third frame). Repeated
interchanges in the substitutions of the primarily identified positional (i.e. notional) words in different
collocations determine their morphological characteristics, i.e. characteristics referring them to various
subclasses of the identified lexemic classes.
Functional words (function words) are exposed in the cited process of testing as being unable to fill in the
positions of the frames without destroying their structural meaning. These words form limited groups totalling
154 units.
The identified groups of functional words can be distributed among the three main sets. The words of the
first set are used as specifiers of notional words. Here belong determiners of nouns, modal verbs serving as
specifiers of notional verbs, functional modifiers and intensifiers of adjectives and adverbs. The words of the
second set play the role of interpositional elements, determining the relations of notional words to one another.
Here belong prepositions and conjunctions. The words of the third set refer to the sentence as a whole. Such are
question-words (what, how, etc.), inducement-words (lets, please, etc.), attention-getting words, words of
affirmation and negation, sentence introducers (it, there) and some others.
§ 7. Comparing the syntactico-distributional classification of words with the traditional part of speech
division of words, one cannot but see the similarity of the general schemes of the two: the opposition of
notional and functional words, the four absolutely cardinal classes of notional words (since numerals and
pronouns have no positional functions of their own and serve as pro-nounal and pro-adjectival elements), the
interpretation of functional words as syntactic mediators and their formal representation by the list.
However, under these unquestionable traits of similarity are distinctly revealed essential features of
difference, the proper evaluation of which allows us to make some important generalizations about the structure
of the lexemic system of language.
§
8. One of the major truths as regards the linguistic mechanism arising from the comparison of the two
classifications is the explicit and unconditional division of the lexicon into the notional and functional parts.
The open character of the notional part of the lexicon and the closed character of the functional part of it (not
excluding the intermediary field between the two) receives the strict status of a formal grammatical feature.
The unity of notional lexemes finds its essential demonstration in an inter-class system of derivation that
can be presented as a formal four-stage series permeating the lexicon and reflected in regular phrase
correlations. Cf.:
a recognizing note-a notable recognition-to note recogniz-ingly - to recognize notably, silent disapproval -
disapproving silence - to disapprove silently - to silence disapprovingly, etc.
This series can symbolically be designated by the formula St (n.v.a.d.) where St represents the morphemic
stem of the series, while the small letters in parentheses stand for the derivational features of the notional word-
classes (parts of speech). Each stage of the series can in principle be filled in by a number of lexemes of the
same stem with possible hierarchical relations between them. The primary presentation of the series, however,
may be realized in a four-unit version as follows:
strength - to strengthen - strong - strongly peace - to appease - peaceful - peacefully nation - to nationalize -
national - nationally friend - to befriend - friendly - friendly, etc.
This derivational series that unites the notional word-classes can be named the "lexical paradigm of
nomination". The general order of classes in the series evidently corresponds to the logic of mental perception
of reality, by which a person discriminates, first, objects and their actions, then the properties of the former and