To figure out the syntactic rules of a language, we will need to start with some basic concepts. Syntacticians often talk about things like nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives, etc. You are probably familiar with these concepts already. We have also seen them in the morphology module (e.g., we discussed how to break down the word recyclable, based on the fact that the English prefix re- can attach to verbs but cannot attach to adjectives.)
But what really is a noun, a verb, a preposition, etc.? How do we decide what's what? Go through the activities below to discover how.
What do you think is the difference between a noun and a verb?
(Don't use technical language or consult outside sources. I'm not looking for a formal or "correct" answer here, I'm looking to see what you yourself think. Explain your thoughts to me in plain language, rather than searching online for a "correct" answer.)
Let's change focus briefly to brainstorm about something else. (Don't worry, this is going to seem crazy at first but it become relevant to nouns and verbs soon.)
Do you think a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable? Why? (Again, no need for technical language or consulting outside sources. Just explain, in plain language, your own view.)
In the US, some people say a tomato is a fruit, because fruits have seeds (that's the definition of fruit) and tomatoes have seeds. (When I was a kid we also used this argument to try to justify eating pizza. In the 1980s and 1990s, the US health department promoted a "food pyramid" to teach kids that they should eat a certain amount of grains/carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits, meats, and dairy. We liked to claim (although somehow we never convinced our parents...) that pizza is the healthiest food, because it includes every food group; grain [the crust], meat [pepperoni], vegetables [peppers or something], dairy [the cheese], and fruit [the tomato sauce]. This argument depended on proving that tomatoes are a fruit. Of course, it was a stupid argument, and was part of the reason the food pyramid was discontinued—pizza is obviously not very healthy, so any framework which suggests pizza is healthy is probably not a very good framework.)
Other people say a tomato is a vegetable, because tomatoes are used as a vegetable in cooking (e.g. in salads). (This is slightly different from the Chinese context, where tomatoes can also be used as a fruit, e.g. on a fruit plate at the end of dinner.)
Some people say a tomato is both: it's a "biological fruit" (because it meets the biological definition of what fruit is) but a "culinary vegetable" (because in cuisine it's used in the same way as other vegetables.)
Now let's consider some other things: soy milk (as well as newer, fancier, cooler things like almond milk and oat milk), and apple wine.
Soy milk is not technically milk: it doesn't come out of an animal's boobs. (In some varieties of Chinese it's not even called milk, it's called 豆浆 (literally, "bean sauce"); but in other varieties it's called 豆奶 ("bean milk"), just like English.)
Likewise, apple wine is not technically wine. Wine is made from fermented grape juice; that's the definition. (This has actually been a big legal and political controversy in some areas of Europe, such as Germany. The government gives subsidies to producers of wine, and there was some debate over whether vineyards that produce apple wine should also get money. People who make "true" wine, with grapes, opposed giving those government funds to makers of apple wine; on the other hand, people who make apple wine of course supported getting funding. A similar legal battle recently took place in Ireland over whether or not the bread on Subway sandwiches is bread.)
So, why do we call soy milk milk? Why do we call apple wine wine? And what does this have to do with the point I made about tomatoes? (Again, you don't need to use technical language or consult any other sources. I just want to see your own logic about this issue.)
These things are all being labelled based on their function, rather than their inherent characteristics.
Why did we have this extended digression to talk about food? Why do you think I asked these weird questions about tomatoes and soy milk? How do you think this is connected to the topic of nouns and verbs?
Let's switch our focus back to nouns and verbs.
We can't distinguish nouns and verbs based on their inherent features or meanings. People often say (and I was taught in primary school) that "a noun names a person, place, or thing" (e.g., "student", "restaurant", and "finger" are all nouns), and "a verb names an action" (e.g., "kick" is a verb). But this does not work. Consider the following examples:
Here, kick is a noun. But it's describing an action. This proves that actions aren't always verbs.
Here, record is used twice, and it means something very similar each time, but one time it's a verb and one time it's a noun. This proves that the distinction between noun and verb is not based on meaning alone.
Is 胖 a verb or an adjective here? In English, "fat" is an adjective. If 胖 is being used as a verb here, that would imply that words with the same meaning (fat and 胖) are an adjective in one language and a verb in the other language.
The above stuff demonstrates that meaning is not what makes something a noun or an verb (or an adjective, preposition, conjunction, etc.). A noun is not a noun because its meaning is the meaning of a thing; a verb is not a verb because it describes an action; etc.
Instead, this is determined by the function of the word, i.e., the way it is used. Nouns are nouns because they do the things that nouns can do. Verbs are verbs because they do the things that verbs can do. For example, in Chinese, we know that 們 (the plural suffix) is a suffix which can attach to nouns but not verbs; and we know that 了 (the perfective aspect marker) is a suffix (or particle) which can attach to verbs but not nouns. So how do we know that 朋友 ("friend") is a noun and not a verb? Because we can say 朋友們 ("friends") and not *朋友了 ("friended"; while this is said in English in the context of social media, it's not said in Chinese, in Chinese people say "I added you" rather than "I friended you"). Likewise, how do we know that 批評 (criticize) is not a noun but is a verb? Because we can't say *批評們 (criticize-plural) but we can say 批評了 ("criticized").
Hopefully the parallel with tomatoes, soy milk, and apple wine is clear. In all of these cases, we can classify things by how they are used, rather than what they're made of.
As we saw before with report, one word can have multiple functions: in different situations, it can play the role of a verb, or play the role of a noun, or play the role of an adjective, etc.
For example:
Or another example:
How is 病 being used in each of these sentences?
When you have finished these activities, continue to the next section of the module: "Constituency".
by Stephen Politzer-Ahles. Last modified on 2021-04-23. CC-BY-4.0.