The essence of the Theory of Three Ranks

Ranks	Word
Primary	Secondary	Tertiary
Essence	The main word in an expression	A word that directly defines a primary word	A word that subordinates to a secondary word
Patterns	A dog	A barking dog	A furiously barking dog

 

BUT morphological classification, syntactic function and theory of three tanks used together bred some confusion.

For example:

In the expression a dinner table the word table is regarded as a primary word.

Though in an expression a table lamp the word table becomes a secondary word.

 

3. Charls Freez (19^th-20^th century), an American linguist

The Structure of English

The main principle of classification:

Position of a word in a sentence (Syntactic Function) can indicate a Part of Speech.

In English there are three main positions – of the Subject (1), of the Predicate (2) and of the Object (3).

Three types of pseudo sentences:

1. Woggles ugged diggles. First words are subjects; consequently their property is to

2. Uggs woggled diggs. present objects or things. Second words are predicates;

3. Woggs diggled uggles. they indicate actions. Third words are objects; they

indicate things or objects of an action.

Three test frames to test and explain his classification:

1. The concert was good (always).

2. The clerk remembered the task (suddenly).

3. He went there.

 

Limited by the frames he defines main positions that are characteristic for English. In each frame he uses the Method of Substitution. He affirms that all the words that can be put in a definite syntactic position present/form a certain positional class of words.

Due to the method of substitution he singled out four positional classes of words and fifteen groups of function words.

BUT the research had led to a certain confusion – the same very word could be included into several classes.

 

4. Lev Scherba (1880-1944), a Russian (Soviet) linguist,

a head of the Leningrad Phonological School

Explicitly formulated three principles of classification of lexical-grammatical classes

 

Three principles of classification:

1) Lexical Meaning (lexical meanings of words allow to analyze a common property of a class of words and thus to single out generalized Grammar Meaning, for example, the one of the Noun, of the Adjective, etc.);

2) Morphological Form (each part of speech has a common way of word-building and changing);

3) Syntactic Function (each pert of speech can take an appropriate position in a sentence).