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===Western tradition=== A century or two after the work of Yāska, the [[Classical Greece|Greek]] scholar [[Plato]] wrote in his [[Cratylus (dialogue)|''Cratylus'' dialogue]], "sentences are, I conceive, a combination of verbs [''rhêma''] and nouns [''ónoma'']".<ref>Cratylus 431b</ref> [[Aristotle]] added another class, "conjunction" [''sýndesmos''], which included not only the words known today as [[Conjunction (grammar)|conjunctions]], but also other parts (the interpretations differ; in one interpretation it is [[pronoun]]s, [[preposition]]s, and the [[article (grammar)|article]]).<ref>''The Rhetoric, Poetic and Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle'', translated by Thomas Taylor, London 1811, p. 179.</ref> By the end of the 2nd century BCE, grammarians had expanded this classification scheme into eight categories, seen in the ''[[Art of Grammar]]'', attributed to [[Dionysius Thrax]]:<ref>[[Dionysius Thrax]]. τέχνη γραμματική (Art of Grammar), [http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/graeca/Chronologia/S_ante02/DionysiosThrax/dio_tech.html#11 ια´ περὶ λέξεως (11. On the word)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150315015105/http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/graeca/Chronologia/S_ante02/DionysiosThrax/dio_tech.html#11 |date=2015-03-15 }}: :λέξις ἐστὶ μέρος ἐλάχιστον τοῦ κατὰ σύνταξιν λόγου.<br />λόγος δέ ἐστι πεζῆς λέξεως σύνθεσις διάνοιαν αὐτοτελῆ δηλοῦσα.<br />τοῦ δὲ λόγου μέρη ἐστὶν ὀκτώ· ὄνομα, ῥῆμα,<br /> μετοχή, ἄρθρον, ἀντωνυμία, πρόθεσις, ἐπίρρημα, σύνδεσμος. ἡ γὰρ προσηγορία ὡς εἶδος τῶι ὀνόματι ὑποβέβληται. :A word is the smallest part of organized speech.<br />Speech is the putting together of an ordinary word to express a complete thought.<br />The class of word consists of eight categories: noun, verb,<br />participle, article, pronoun, preposition, adverb, conjunction. A common noun in form is classified as a noun.</ref> * 'Name' (''ónoma'') translated as 'noun': a part of speech inflected for [[grammatical case|case]], signifying a concrete or abstract entity. It includes various ''species'' like [[noun]]s, [[adjective]]s, proper nouns, appellatives, collectives, ordinals, numerals and more.<ref>The term ''[[wikt:onoma|onoma]]'' at [[Dionysius Thrax]], ''Τέχνη γραμματική'' (Art of Grammar), [https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/Τέχνη_Γραμματική#14 14. Περὶ ὀνόματος] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220910222435/https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/%CE%A4%CE%AD%CF%87%CE%BD%CE%B7_%CE%93%CF%81%CE%B1%CE%BC%CE%BC%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE#14 |date=2022-09-10 }} translated by Thomas Davidson, [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_grammar_of_Dionysios_Thrax#10 On the noun] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200804023008/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_grammar_of_Dionysios_Thrax#10 |date=2020-08-04 }} : καὶ αὐτὰ εἴδη προσαγορεύεται· κύριον, προσηγορικόν, ἐπίθετον, πρός τι ἔχον, ὡς πρός τι ἔχον, ὁμώνυμον, συνώνυμον, διώνυμον, ἐπώνυμον, ἐθνικόν, ἐρωτηματικόν, ἀόριστον, ἀναφορικὸν ὃ καὶ ὁμοιωματικὸν καὶ δεικτικὸν καὶ ἀνταποδοτικὸν καλεῖται, περιληπτικόν, ἐπιμεριζόμενον, περιεκτικόν, πεποιημένον, γενικόν, ἰδικόν, τακτικόν, ἀριθμητικόν, ἀπολελυμένον, μετουσιαστικόν. : also called ''Species'': proper, appellative, adjective, relative, quasi-relative, homonym, synonym, pheronym, dionym, eponym, national, interrogative, indefinite, anaphoric (also called assimilative, demonstrative, and retributive), collective, distributive, inclusive, onomatopoetic, general, special, ordinal, numeral, participative, independent.</ref> * [[Verb]] (''rhêma''): a part of speech without case inflection, but inflected for [[grammatical tense|tense]], [[grammatical person|person]] and [[grammatical number|number]], signifying an activity or process performed or undergone * [[Participle]] (''metokhḗ''): a part of speech sharing features of the verb and the noun * [[Article (grammar)|Article]] (''árthron''): a declinable part of speech, taken to include the definite article, but also the basic [[relative pronoun]] * [[Pronoun]] (''antōnymíā''): a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for a person * [[Preposition]] (''próthesis''): a part of speech placed before other words in composition and in syntax * [[Adverb]] (''epírrhēma''): a part of speech without inflection, in modification of or in addition to a verb, adjective, clause, sentence, or other adverb * [[Grammatical conjunction|Conjunction]] (''sýndesmos''): a part of speech binding together the discourse and filling gaps in its interpretation It can be seen that these parts of speech are defined by [[morphology (linguistics)|morphological]], [[Syntax|syntactic]] and [[Semantics|semantic]] criteria. The [[Latin grammar|Latin]] grammarian [[Priscian]] ([[floruit|fl.]] 500 CE) modified the above eightfold system, excluding "article" (since the [[Latin language]], unlike Greek, does not have articles) but adding "[[interjection]]".<ref>[penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/1B*.html This translation of Quintilian's ''Institutio Oratoria'' reads: "Our own language (Note: i.e. Latin) dispenses with the articles (Note: Latin doesn't have articles), which are therefore distributed among the other parts of speech. But interjections must be added to those already mentioned."]</ref><ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/quintilian/quintilian.institutio1.shtml |via=The Latin Library |title= Quintilian: Institutio Oratoria I|access-date= 2015-09-18|archive-date= 2012-01-20|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120120203103/http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/quintilian/quintilian.institutio1.shtml|url-status= live}}</ref> The Latin names for the parts of speech, from which the corresponding modern English terms derive, were ''nomen'', ''verbum'', ''participium'', ''pronomen'', ''praepositio'', ''adverbium'', ''conjunctio'' and ''interjectio''. The category ''nomen'' included [[substantive]]s (''nomen substantivum'', corresponding to what are today called nouns in English), [[adjective]]s ''(nomen adjectivum)'' and [[Numeral (linguistics)|numeral]]s ''(nomen numerale)''. This is reflected in the older English terminology ''noun substantive'', ''noun adjective'' and ''noun numeral''. Later<ref>See for example Beauzée, Nicolas, ''Grammaire générale, ou exposition raisonnée des éléments nécessaires du langage'' (Paris, 1767), and earlier Jakob Redinger, [https://books.google.com/books?id=C7BeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA11 ''Comeniana Grammatica Primae Classi Franckenthalensis Latinae Scholae destinata ...''] (1659, in German and Latin).</ref> the adjective became a separate class, as often did the numerals, and the English word ''noun'' came to be applied to substantives only.
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