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Given the following sentence:

Don't listen to those other people.

Are those and other adjectives or determinatives? Both? Which makes more sense?

Context:

I am prefixing the words in some phrases with abbreviations. Some of the words are giving me trouble in classification. (The message is supposed to be an implicit proof of why adding prefixes to table names in a database is terrible. But I'd like to get it right.)

Here's the full set of sentences for your amusement. However, please restrict your comments to the stated question, for the most part.

  1. com-Don't ver-Listen prep-To adj-Those adj-Other nou-People.
  2. pro-You aux-Should adv-Always ver-Use nou-Prefixes prep-With pro-Your adj-Table nou-Names.

  3. pro-I aux-Have adv-Even ver-Started ver-Using pro-Them prep-In adj-Normal nou-Writing.

  4. com-See adv-How adj-Effective pr-It ver-Is?

  5. nou-People aux-Can ver-Understand pro-Your nou-Writing adv-Better!

(where com means command verb)

This question is part of 3 related questions:

  1. This question
  2. Nouns vs. nouns used as adjectives
  3. Verbs vs. gerunds vs. something else

It originally came from this closed question

Community
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ErikE
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  • Determiners reference; adjectives describe. Does that help? – deadrat Nov 14 '16 at 08:13
  • Possible duplicate or closely related: Determiner vs. Determinative. –  Nov 17 '16 at 16:37
  • @Araucaria Why is the determinative that considered an adjective and not a determiner in You don't have to go that* fast*? – deadrat Nov 18 '16 at 19:30
  • @deadrat Nice question. Well, although we don't want to put too much wieght on semantic issues when we are trying to determine syntactic things, this word seems to be a degree word. It also seems to be deictic. Like other deictic degree words that normally have modifying functions, it seems to be able to take a clause or phrase that can act as a kind of index to indicate the degree involved. So we can say for example "You don't have to go that fast [that you aren't able to stop for pedestrians]". When that has this degree meaning, it is normally modifying an adjective or determinative ... – Araucaria - Him Nov 18 '16 at 22:29
  • @deadrat ... and those are functions normally done by adverbs. And the previous qualities mentioned are typical of avderbs and adjectives. Very few other types of word seem to be able to modify adjectives apart from prepositions and adverbs. However, all of that is just thinking off the top of my head - and I'm currently at the pub and have had a beer, so ... I would need to actually do some homework to answer your question properly. Maybe the most important point is that determiatives very rarely modify adjectives, if they ever do at all. Nice question :) – Araucaria - Him Nov 18 '16 at 22:45
  • @deadrat Oh! I read that as adverb, because that in that big is normally considered an adverb, not an adjective. The adverb that seems to mean to X degree, where X is given by the context. Erm, but there may be good reasons (I haven't heard them articulated) to say that that in that man and that in that big are the same word. I don't suppose that it's out of the question. – Araucaria - Him Nov 18 '16 at 22:46

2 Answers2

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Since you're in charge of the tag set, you can call them anything you want. If you want to say (as some do) that determiners can be classed under 'adjective', then so be it. If not, then so be that.
It's just tagger output, after all, and it doesn't mean anything without a matching parser, which is likely to be just as eccentric in its terminology, depending on which constructions it's set to notice.

Grammatical terminology all depends on who is using it and what they want to use it for. There is no ISO standard for Parts Of Speech. Though the phrase "ISO POS" is enchantingly bizarre.

John Lawler
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  • Now, you have brought up a fascinating point. Please see this answer to one of the related questions which says "All this part-of-speech assignment and detection of higher level syntactic relations is something that folks in the NLP (natural language processing) community have been doing for a long with the field of Computational Linguistics. You probably want to use their work instead of creating your own." It sounds like some people think there is some semi-authoritative source for terminology? – ErikE Nov 18 '16 at 21:44
  • I do kind of like the idea of just saying, "hey, it's my classification system, so too bad!" This could actually play into my point of why classifying things with name prefixes is a bad idea. – ErikE Nov 18 '16 at 21:45
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    He doesn't mention that they all do it differently, using different standards and terminology and tag sets. By all means use their software, but it's just another file format. – John Lawler Nov 18 '16 at 21:46
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    @JohnLawler Tha adjective analysis of words like those from traditional grammar is, well, erm, old traditional grammar. However, the word other is a different kettle of fish. It looks and feels like a word that is functioning as a modifier of the noun people. It doesn't seem as if it is in determiner function - and indeed it isn't. Many current grammars which recognise determinatives as a class of word still regard other as an adjecive there. Yet it is classified as a determinative by modern grammars such as CamGEL/ OMEG – Araucaria - Him Nov 18 '16 at 23:26
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    Like I said, they all do it different. "Look and feel", not to mention "functioning as a modifier", are matters of individual judgement for individual purposes. There isn't any universal definition of "modify" or "adjective", so arguing about it is at least pointless. – John Lawler Nov 19 '16 at 00:01
  • I'm blown away that there isn't a universal definition of adjective. I did not expect that! – ErikE Nov 19 '16 at 15:21
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    The Eight Parts of Speech didn't used to contain Adjective. The Romans treated adjectives as a kind of noun, since they took the same endings as nouns and could be used as nouns. It wasn't until the Middle Ages that Participle slipped off the Big Eight and Adjectivum (from Nomen Adjectivum, the genderless noun) was snuck in. In many languages, they work like nouns, but in many other languages, they work like verbs. That's why there isn't a universal definition of adjective. – John Lawler Nov 19 '16 at 16:05
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    Thanks, John. I don’t completely understand what the asker wants to do with these word classes of his, but I suspect his question was prompted by his surprise at being told that modern linguists often use word classes that Donatus never knew, and not just for the closed classes. I’ve thought of showing him tests to help him determine inclusion or exclusion in this or that lexical category, but I don’t think he realizes how inherently arbitrary and "needs-based" all such classification is—let alone how messy and full of exceptions natural languages are in this. Too big a topic. – tchrist Nov 19 '16 at 19:24
  • I thought I was getting near an analysis that I was happy with. I now realise that the identifier (as opposed to the classifier or descriptor) role/usage ('Pass me that book ...no, the blue one') overlaps to a large degree with the role of the determin... and probably argues for a gradience approach. Assuming that we're not banned from considering that 'how a word functions in a given situation' may be at least a contributory consideration in judging its POS. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 20 '16 at 14:42
  • When the role shifts so easily, the question of POS becomes equally slippery. And much less valuable; any pronouncement about the POS of a given word in a given English sentence is about as important as what color shirt you're wearing today. – John Lawler Nov 20 '16 at 15:10
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I actually think that "those"and "other" are adjectives qualifying "people" unlike determinants such as "a", "an", and "the". Merriam-Webster. Thank you.

FKS
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