LEXICAL CATEGORIZATION IN ENGLISH DICTIONARIES AND TRADITIONAL GRAMMARS

English grammar as presented to schoolchildren, university students, and the general public is in a state resembling what biology might be like if teachers had paid no attention at all to On the Origin of Species (1859) or anything that followed. In fact that may be an understatement: English grammar has been drifting along unrevised not just since Darwin published his magnum opus, but since before he was born. The main outlines of English grammar are presented in 2009 just as they would have been in 1909, when Jespersen produced the first volume of his magnificent but mostly ignored 7-volume grammar, or in 1809, the year of Darwin's birth. In this short article I lay out a small amount of the evidence for this claim, concentrating on the very basic topic of the 'notional' definitions of grammatical categories or 'parts of speech'.