Classic

Distributional Two kinds of

Parts of Speech Definitions of
Definitions distribution
P.O.S

Morphological

Parts of Speech distribution

Syntactic
distribution
Parts of Speech
NOUNS, VERBS, ADJECTIVES, PREPOSITIONS,
ADVERBS (ETC.)

1-THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF SENTENCES

A-THE [(N)SUN] SHINES TOO BRIGHTLY IN TUCSON
B-*[(V)WILL GLOW] SHINES TOO BRIGHTLY IN
TUCSON
ALSO CALLED: SYNTACTIC
CATEGORIES
 Noun (Person, place, or thing)
Classic
Definitions of
P.O.S Verb (Action, occurrence or state
Classic of being)
Adjective (Modifier that
expresses quality, quantity or
extent.)
 Adverb (Modifier that expresses manner,
Classic quality, place, time, degree, number,
Definitions of cause, opposition, affirmation or denial)

P.O.S

Preposition (Modifier that indicates

location or origin.)
 We determine the P.O.S of a word by the affixes
that are attached to it and by the syntactic
context (where in the sentence) it appears in.

The definition of P.O.S is distributional

Distributio
nal
Definitions Distributional means we look for the context in
which the word appears.

Because they are distributional, POS definitions

are language specific
Two kinds of distribution
Morphological distribution
affixes –prefixes, suffixes etc.– which appear on(
)the word

Syntactic distribution
).position relative to nearby words(
Morphological distribution
:The inflectional suffixes differ from the derivational suffixes in the following way

 They do not change the part of speech. Examples: sled, sleds (both nouns)
cough, coughed (both verbs)

 They come last in a word. Examples: shortened, industrializing)

 They go with all stems of a given part of speech. Examples: eats, drinks, dreams

 They don’t pile up; only one ends a word. Examples: working, higher,
goes
Morphological distribution
Derivational Suffixes With derivational suffixes, the new word has a new meaning, and is usually
a different part of speech. But the new meaning is related to the old meaning - it is ‘derived’
.from the old meaning

In many cases, but not all, a derivational suffix changes the part of speech of the word to
which it is attached.
act (n) → active (adj) → activate(v)

Derivational suffixes usually don’t close off a word; that is, after a derivational suffix one can
sometimes add another derivational suffix and can frequently add an inflectional suffix.
fertile (adj) → fertilize (v) → fertilizer (n) → fertilizers (n)
after determiners such as the, those, these, (e.g.,
these peanuts) can appear after adjectives (the
big peanut).

Syntactic
follow prepositions (in school). distributi
on
subject of the sentence or as the direct object
negated by no