Mark Honegger
 

            Formal and functional linguists give competing explanations for lexical categories, the latter in terms of meaning and use, the former in terms of syntax. The following arguments show that both approaches are only partially correct, because lexical categories are categories of the entire sign, the form-meaning pairing, and not reducible to a single component of language. This allows distinctions in one component to be neutralized.
            Functional accounts like Hopper and Thompson 1984, Givon 1984, and Croft 1991 characterize lexical categories on the basis of prototype-structure and semantic qualities: nouns typically denote things, adjectives typically denote states or properties, and verbs typically denote events. However, these generalizations are not rigorous enough to define the categories. A sneeze is neither permanent nor thing-like, and the verb exist could denote a permanent state but is not an event. Likewise, categories need not exhibit prototype-organization. Nouns like honesty, quark, and destruction are not related in a network of similarities.
            Formal accounts also have not been able to give a completely consistent formulation. In the most developed, Baker 2003, verbs are defined as the category that requires a specifier. However, there are verbs such as ada in Malay that lack subjects in certain constructions. Subject-less ada-sentences correspond to there-sentences in English (1).
            Baker also defines adjectives as an elsewhere category resulting from syntactic necessity, i.e. it fills positions in a syntactic structure that exclude both nouns and verbs. However, there are syntactic positions where both nouns and adjectives occur, such as the complement of be-verbs. They also occur there with different meanings, contrary to Baker’s claim that cognate nouns and adjectives differ syntactically rather than semantically (2-3).
            The largest missing piece to past discussion is the (phonological) form differences based on category. Languages do distinguish lexical categories by form. For example, Classical Hebrew distinguished nouns from verbs on the basis of vowel patterns. The /E E/ of Segholate nouns never occurs in verbs (4).
            Even English, where we might not expect it, shows these differences in its intonation patterns. Thus, in prefixed words, we find the primary stress on the last syllable of verbs but the first syllable of nouns: outDO (verb) vs. OUTlook (noun), and overLOOK (verb) vs. Overalls (noun). There are also the well-known differences for cognates such as PROject vs. proJECT.
            In addition, languages have words that are ambiguous with respect to categories, such as fun in English, which shows properties of being both a noun and an adjective (5-6).
            This suggests that words are matched to rich, non-derivable lexical categories rather than categories exclusively being matched to either syntactic structure or human perception and the external world.
            This account explains how categorization can be neutralized with respect to one language component but not all simultaneously. Syntactic differences are neutralized in (2-3) though the semantic difference remains. Semantic differences can be neutralized, thus the difficulty in making meaning distinctions between pairs like “hunger” and “hungry.” Likewise, it predicts the existence of lexemes that may be neutral w.r.t. lexical category (the ambiguity of gerunds in English between nouns and verbs) and the existence of syntactic positions that are neutral w.r.t to lexical category. For example, in Malay the transitive verbal prefix meN can be attached to verbs, nouns, adjectives and prepositions (7-10).

(1)   Ada         beberapa   jenis buah yang     dijual  di     kedai itu.
       be/have    several      kind  fruit  rel pro   sold    prep shop  dem
     “(There) are several kinds of fruit that are sold in that shop.”
 

(2)   The water is ice.
(3)   The water is icy.
(4) mElEk   “king”        malQk   “(he) reigned”
(5) The party seems fun.           [fun as adjective]
(6) They had fun at the party.    [fun as noun]
(7) tinggal       (v.  “to stay”)                meninggal         (v. “to leave”)
(8) rokok         (n. “cigarette”)              merokok           (v. “to smoke”)
(9) besar         (adj. “big”)                    membesar        (v. “to enlarge”)
(10) dalam       (prep. “in”)                   mendalam         (v. “to deepen)