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The analytical grammar forms are traditionally considered to be a combination of an auxiliary and a basic word, and it’s one of the most typical ways of form-building.

Grammatical Classes of Words. Parts of Speech. Principles of differentiation

The entire vocabulary of the English language, like in all Indo-European languages, is divided into certain lexico-grammatical classes, called parts of speech ( Ivanova, 1989).

Prof. A.I.Smirnitsky calls these classes of words “lexico-grammatical categories”. The term “part of speech” is purely traditional and conventional, it was introduced in Ancient Greece. The theoretical study of language in the history of science began with the attempts to identify and describe grammatical classes of words called "parts of speech". The fi rst classifications were made by ancient philosophers of Ancient Greece. They were hardly based on any clear criteria, it was a natural classification reflecting the result of the cognitive activity of a person. The grammatical system of European languages was formed on the basis of the grammatical teaching of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

The existence of such lexico-grammatical classes has never been a debatable issue among the linguists, although there are different views on the principles of classifications. The representative of the English scientific grammar H. Sweet stressed the need to take into account the meaning, form and function of words, but he emphasized the priority of the form over the other criteria. The representative of structuralism Ch.Fries emphasized the priority of the function (syntactic criterion).

In modern linguistics parts of speech are also differentiated either by a number of criteria, or by a single criterion.

Traditional classification

The polydifferential ("traditional") classification of words is based on the three criteria: semantic, formal, and functional. The semantic criterion presupposes the evaluation of the generalized (categorial) meaning of the words of the given part of speech. The formal criterion provides for the exposition of all formal features (specific inflectional and derivational) of all the lexemic subsets of a particular part of speech. The functional criterion concerns the typical syntactic functions of a part of speech. Contractedly the set of these criteria is referred to as "meaning, form, function" (Blokh, 2000).

In accord with the traditional criteria of meaning, form, and function, words on the upper level of classification are divided into notional and functional.

Prof. Blokh calls the notional parts of speech the words of complete nominative value; in the utterance they fulfill self-dependent functions of naming and denoting things, phenomena, their substantial properties (Prof. Blokh). Opposed to the notional parts of speech are the functional words which are words of incomplete nominative value, but of absolutely essential relational (grammatical) value. In the utterance they serve as all sorts of mediators (Blokh, 2000).

To the basic functional parts of speech in English are usually referred the article, the preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal word, the interjection. Functional words are limited in number. On the lines of the traditional classification they are presented by the list, each of them requiring its own, individual description.

The syntactic (monodifferential) classification of words is based on syntactic featuring of words only. The syntactic classification of words, in principle, supplements the three-criteria classification specifying the syntactic features of parts of speech. For the Russian language the basic principles of the syntactic classification of words were outlined in the works of A.M. Peshkovski. In English the syntactico-distributional classification of words was worked out by structuralists L. Bloomfield and his followers Z. Harris and Ch. Fries. The syntactico-distributional classification of words is based on the study of their combinability by means of substitution tests. As a result of this testing, a standard model of four main syntactic positions of notional words was built up. These positions are those of the noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. Pronouns are included into the corresponding positional classes as their substitutes. Words incapable to occupy the said main syntactic positions are treated as functional words.

The noun as a part of speech

The noun as a part of speech has the categorical meaning of “substance. The noun is characrerised by the syntactical function of a subject, object, predicative, adverbial modifier, attribute. Typical of nouns is the prepositional combinability with another noun, with adverb, and adjective. The noun is characterized by the following grammatical categories: gender, number, case and article determination (prof. Blokh).

English nouns are divided into several subclasses.

Prof. Blokh states that the order in which the subclasses are presented is chosen by convention: the given set of subclasses cannot be structured hierarchically.

The category of gender

There are two approaches to the category of gender:

1. There is no grammatical gender in English, as there are no special grammatical forms to express it. This point of view is expressed by Profs. A.I. Smirnitsky, B.A. Ilyish, I.P. Ivanova, and others.

2. Other linguists (Strand, Blokh) recognize the grammatical category of gender in English nouns because it is possible to substitute a noun by a personal pronoun indicating sex.

According to Prof. Blokh, the category of gender is oppositional. It’s formed by two oppositions related to each other on a hierarchical basis:

The scholar proves that the category of gender exists in the English language, but is is purely semantic, as different from the socalled “formal gender” synthetic languages (Russian, German).

There are some nouns in English which are referred to as nouns of common gender – they are capable of expressing both feminine and masculine person genders (person, friend, cousin, doctor, president). There are some nouns which can show the sex lexically: either by means of being combined with certain notional words used as sex indicators or by suffixal derivation: boy friend – girl-friend, he-bear -she-bear, lion-lioness, widower-widow, tom-cat – pussy-cat.

Sometimes we can come across grammatical personifying transposition (олицетворение).

Thus, according to Prof. Blokh, gender can be considered a lexicogrammatical category.

The category of number

The category of number is expressed by the binary privative opposition of the plural form of the noun to the singular form. The strong member of the opposition is the plural; its formal mark is the suffix – (e) s. It correlates with the absence of the suffix in the singular form.

In the cases of oppositional reduction we have Pluralia Tantum and Singularia Tantum nouns. The Pluralia tantum nouns have only plural form.