29 xxvi.
John told Jack that Mary was waiting for him. In the example xxvi, the pronoun him might refer to John or Jack. Therefore, the
sentence becomes referential ambiguous.
4. Theories of Parts of Speech
The term parts of speech is also known as word classes. They refer to a system of word classification Aarts, 1997, p. 24. Finch 2000 states that in the
language acquisition, parts of speech are important since they enable the language user to construct sentences with maximum economy p. 133. For example, people
who learn English would understand that the incomplete sentence I _____ dogs can only be completed by a verb. Aarts 1997 suggests the classification of words
as follows.
a. Noun
Traditional grammar defines nouns as words that represent people, animals, things, or places. Based on the traditional grammar definition, the word
baby, chair, dog, hospital, and soon are nouns. However, in modern linguistics, such definition is regarded as too weak since there are a lot of unaccounted words.
Such words as death and advices that show the abstract idea, love and happiness that denote feelings, and others are not taken into account. Therefore, in order to
label a word based on its parts of speech, people need to understand the word behaviour Finch, 2000, p. 109. Crystal 1988, p. 92 lists three criteria to
recognize a noun. The first criteria is that the words meaning and use are decided by the existence of determiners. The second one is that the word is functioning as
30 the head of the noun phrase. The last factor is that the word changes form to
express singular and plural, or the genitive case.
b. Determiner
Previously, it is stated that determiner could be an indication of nouns. Determiners such as the, a, that, those, and soon precedes nouns. Its function is to
specify more precisely the meaning of the noun they precede. xxvii. I saw a dog on my way home. I felt pity so I brought that dog
home. From the example xxvii, the changes of determiner that precedes the noun dog can
be seen. In the first sentence, the speaker uses determiner a to show that there was one dog. In the second sentence, the speaker uses determiner that in order to
specify more precisely the particular dog the speaker refers to.
c. Adjective
Adjectives are used to specify the attributes of nouns, such as a beautiful dress, some naughty kids, and soon. The words beautiful and naughty are the
examples of adjectives. Some adjectives can be identified by the occurrence of adjectival affixes such as –full, -less, -ive, and un-. Most of adjectives are
gradable, and can be preceded by very, more, extremely, and soon. However, the adjectives that denote material and nationality are the exceptions. Some adjectives
can also have comparative and superlative endings, such as long-longer-longest. Adjectives occupy two positions in English: the attributive and the predicative
position. The example given previously is the example of attributive position,
31 which means that adjective precedes nouns. The example of adjectives in
predicative position can be seen in a sentence which uses linking verb or copula.
d. Verb
