(Q15633)

The property that identifies the grammatical class of a word. The main 'parts of speech' recognized by most school grammars derive from the work of the ancient Greek and Roman grammarians, primarily the noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, conjunction and interjection, with article, participle, and others often added. Because of the inexplicitness with which these terms were traditionally defined and the restricted nature of their definitions, it has become preferable to use such terms as word-class or form-class, where the grouping is based on formal criteria of a more universally applicable kind. [Crystal 1997: 280]