CHAPTER IV

THE GLOBAL
STRUCTURE OF THE
LEXICON
BY
GROUP III
ANITA BASRAH TAMBAK
NURHAMDIAH SIPAHUTAR
 ORIENTATION
Word Classes
Morphological, Syntactic and Semantic
Classes
Relationships Between Word Classes
and Meanings
Word Subclasses
Word Class Systems Across Languages
 A. WORD CLASSES
word class means a set of words whose members share
one or more aspects of their morphological or syntactic
behavior. e.g;
 Morphological property; I laugh, I was laughing.
The English words eat and laugh can be said to belong to
the class of verbs, because they can both be conjugated to
indicate the time of the action).
 Syntactic property; Beautiful scenery and A new book.
The words beautiful and new can be said to be adjectives
because they can both modify a noun, but not a verb
(answer beautiful, dress new).
 KINDS OF WORD CLASSES

 open classes ; open classes is gain and lose members relatively

rapidly, and that word class consist of ; nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs.

 closed classes ; closed classes is tend to remain constant through

time, and that word class consist of ; articles, pronouns,
prepositions, conjunctions.
B. MORPHOLOGICAL, SYNTACTIC,
AND SEMANTIC CLASSES
 Morphological class :
morphology was the first domain to be analyzed systematically, at least in
the Western tradition, which is grounded on the study of classical languages
with rich morphology such as Latin.
 Syntactic class :
Syntax-based classifications, on the other hand, have been usually obtained
in two ways:
 A. by examining the set of words, a word may combine with (this is the
classification obtained on a distributional basis) and
 B. by investigating the kind of modifications a word may undergo (this is the
classification obtained on a syntactic basis.

 Semantic classes :
 suchas Lyons (1977) have suggested that an adequate
basis for semantic classification of words is the
ontological correlate. According to this view, words may
be grouped into coherent semantic classes by looking at
the category of things they refer to (the so-called
ontological category).
 C. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
WORD CLASSES AND MEANING
 There appear to be striking correspondences between
the formal properties of words (their morphological
and syntactic properties) and the type of meaning they
express, though at a rather general level.
 These correspondences attest the close relationship that
exists between conceptual/ontological categorization
and linguistic encoding, and several linguists over time.
 Lyons (1977: 439–52) for example proposed a three-output classificatory
system of ontological categories (called entities) based on their so-called
order. These entities consist of different types of “things
Table 4.1. Types of entities on the basis of their order
 According to Lyons’ proposal, people, animals, places and things (first
order entities) are entities that exist in time, and are relatively constant as
to their perceptual properties; actions, events, processes, situations (second
order entities) are entities that occur in time, rather than exist in time;
possible facts (third-order entities) are entities located outside of time and
space:we can, therefore, say that they are “true” rather than “real”
(beliefs, judgments, expectations, and so on).
 Let us now focus on first- and second-order entities and examine how they
relate to the parts of speech. The most obvious observation is the one we
made at the beginning of the section; first-order entities tend to be coded as
nouns, while second-order entities tend to be coded as verbs. These
generalizations are summarized in below.
 Let us now focus on first- and second-order entities and examine how they relate to the
parts of speech. The most obvious observation is the one we made at the beginning of the
section; first-order entities tend to be coded as nouns, while second-order entities tend to be
coded as verbs. These generalizations are summarized in Table .
Table. Types of entities and parts of speech

 According to Lyons, semantic/ontological classifications of parts of speech

should aim at defining not the whole class, but the distinguished (focal)
subclass of the total class.
 D. WORD SUBCLASSES
There are two word subclasses, corresponding to more
refined in the lexicon, they are;
 Verb Classes
1. Transitivity And Intransitivity
 Transitivity; a verb that is transitive is one that requires a direct object complement.
e.g; John fixed the roof (“John fixed” is not, in fact, a meaningful expression).
 Intransitivity; a verb that is intransitive is one that is not able to take such a
complement.
e.g; the guest arrived the gift
2. Valency Structure
In linguistics, verb valency or valence refers to the number of
arguments controlled by a verbal predicate. It is related,
though not identical, to verb transitivity, which count only object
arguments of the verbal predicate. Verb valency, on the other hand,
includes all arguments, including the subject of the verb.
There are any types of valency, they are;
 Impersonal (a valent);
 An impersonal verb has no determinate subject, e.g. It rains. (Though it is
technically the subject of the verb in English, it is only a dummy subject, that is
a syntactic placeholder - it has no concrete referent. No other subject can
replace it. In many other languages, there would be no subject at all.

 Intransitive (monovalent);
 An intransitive verb takes one argument / one-slot verb, e.g;
 A baby girl (1) was born / Paul (1) coughed loudly.

 transitive (=divalent);
 a transitive verb takes two arguments / two-slot verbs, e.g;
 Sara (1) rented a car (2) / Mark (1) lives in Rome (2).
 Ditransitive (trivalent):
 a ditransitive verb takes three arguments / Three-slot Verbs, e.g;
 Lynda (1) put the keys (2) in the bag (3) / Lisa (1) dedicated her
book (2) to her father (3).

 There are a few verbs that take four arguments. Sometimes bet is
considered to have four arguments in English, as in the e.g;
 The company transferred the money from one bank account to
another ( are controversial classes and will not address them here).
3. Aktionsart;

 Aktionsart is a property of (mostly verbal) predicates. It concerns

the internal temporal constituency of a (type of) situation denoted
by a given predicate. The (originally German) term aktionsart is
approx. equivalent to the English terms lexical aspect and kind of
action.
4. The Root
 Noun Classes
1. Entity Nouns ;
2. Event Nouns
E. WORD CLASS SYSTEMS ACROSS
LANGUAGES