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The Discourse Basis for Lexical Categories in Universal Grammar
Ist Teil von
Language (Baltimore), 1984-12, Vol.60 (4), p.703-752
Ort / Verlag
Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America
Erscheinungsjahr
1984
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Project MUSE
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Most linguists who have investigated linguistic categories from a universal viewpoint have accepted the existence of two basic parts of speech, NOUN and VERB. Other categories are found to be only inconsistently represented; thus ADJECTIVE is manifested in many languages as a class of stative verb. Furthermore, individual languages often have intermediate categories such as GERUND, which cannot be unambiguously assigned to a single category. We suggest here that the basic categories N and V are to be viewed as universal lexicalizations of the prototypical discourse functions of 'discourse-manipulable participant' and 'reported event', respectively. We find that the grammars of languages tend to label the categories N and V with morpho-syntactic markers which are iconically characteristic of these categories to the degree that a given instance of N or V approaches its prototypical function. In other words, the closer a form is to signaling this prime function, the more the language tends to recognize its function through morphemes typical of the category-e.g. deictic markers for N, tense markers for V. We conclude by suggesting that categoriality itself is another fundamental property of grammars which may be directly derived from discourse function.