Part of speech
I wonder if the traditional classification of words by part of speech (nouns, verbs etc.) isn't too coarse to explain the syntax rules of a language. What if a certain syntactic construction if only possible with a limited number of words, but not with others, even if it makes sense semantically?
Dutch has an example of this in "ik zit naar de sterren te kijken" (I sit and watch the stars). This construction is possible with only FIVE verbs (known so far), but not with others. Viz. walk, sit, stand, lie and hang can be used, but not ride, run, creep, etc.
If this occurs often in a language, it will be an obstacle for computer translation, because just a list of words and their part of speech won't do, you must also record "can be used with this and that construction".
Examples in English (from "A Practical English Grammar", Thomson & Martinet, 4th edition):
The most useful verbs which can be followed directly by the infinitive are: agree, aim, appear ... (list of some 50 verbs, some are which are specially marked for an extra ability to be used with a that-clause, and/or a "that ... should" construction. (Paragraph 241).
And paragraph 251:
A number of nouns can be followed directly by the infinitive. Some of the most useful are: ability, ambition, etc.
Some comments over 30 years later, 18 March 2026:
- This one is in Google Groups as a Usenet post to the group
sci.lang. In hindsight, using “coarse” may not have been the best of choices. I must have been thinking of Dutch ‘grof’, which I still think is the appropriate word in that language. But I was writing in English. That will always remain difficult to do right. Part of the reason why I now often use Interlingua as my international language, for music and other topics. But that too isn’t as easy as some people think.
What I meant by “too coarse” was: not accurate and detailed enough, not sufficiently fine-grained. I won’t venture into proposing a better English word, but I leave it as it is, and to the reader. (What a clumsy combination! Sorry.)
What is often called a “paragraph” in English, is an ‘alinea’ in Dutch: One or more sentences followed by a full stop, which together are closed by a newline (or an explicit of implicit </p> in HTML 3, 4 and 5), which causes some extra whitespace between the paragraphs, more than between the lines.
When referring to the grammar, I’d better have used the word ‘section’. The book itself does that too, e.g. on page 7, where is says: “References are to sections, unless otherwise stated”. Those other references explicitly refer to pages.
After I first put a first version of this page online, my Simple Word Indexer Siworin sent me the traditional list of words now used but never before. And that list contained “Thomson” without a ‘p’. So I thought I must have been less careful than I always try to be more recently, and I was ready to make the correction. Or leave it as it is, for being a historical quote of myself.
But first check, of course. And to my amazement I found that almost 31 years ago, I had it right, and that in May 2021 (twice), and on 12 February 2025 I had not properly checked the name, and had blindly assumed it had a letter ‘p’ in it. But it hasn’t. The names of the authors of “A Practical English Grammar” are actually A. J. Thomson and A. V. Martinet. I know because I have the book here, lying next to me.
I’ll correct it where it was wrong.