Definition and categorization of word class: identifying a word class error in Oxford Advanced Learners' Dictionary

In this article, previous studies on defining and classifying word classes are discussed for correcting a mistake on word class tagging in multiple editions of Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (including the latest one). The studies discussed include the ways in which structuralist grammarians, cognitive linguists and psycholinguists define and categorize word classes. By comparing the data and the results of these studies the author concludes that multiple cues, including structural and semantic, should be taken into account in the identification and classification of a word’s part of speech. Data from the British National Corpus (CQP-web) are applied for a corpus analysis as an evidence for the word class mistake in Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary and as a solution to that error.