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Table 5

Verb, Noun, Adjective Codes

Position 1		Position 2			Position 3			Position 4
Code	Meaning	Code	Meaning	Example	Code	Meaning	Exam-ple	Code	Meaning	Exam-ple
1 2 3 4 5 6 7	V N V/N A V/A N/A V/N/A	0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9	No suf- fix Past Present parti- ciple Past parti- ciple Past/ past parti- ciple Present tense/ past parti- ciple Present tense/ past/ past  parti- ciple Compara- tive –er Superla- tive –est Genitive –‘s	brief took dancing taken briefed run set nicer   blacker nicest man’s	0 1 2 3 4 5 6	No suf- fix Verb –s N Plural V/N –s N sing- ular or plural A -ly N accu- sative	took takes boys men dances fish truly him	0 1 2 3 4 5	Nondetermined N or A Intransitive V, Nondetermined N or A Two-object V; Non-determined N or A Determined N Completely determined N	death simple walk long brief give make light John’s John he, his

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the verb suffixes, so that dances, for example, may be either a plural noun or a present tense verb requiring a singular, third-person subject. But homography is also present within the verb inflections themselves. Set is not only ambiguously a noun or a verb, as a verb it is ambiguously an infinitive, a present tense form requiring a plural subject, a past tense, or a past participle.

Compare:

    The set of all objects.      The sets of all objects.

    They set it.                         He sets it.

and,        They wanted to set the     They wanted to go there.

                table.

                They set the table every      They go there every day.

                day .

               They set it yesterday.             They went there yesterday.

               They have set it.                      They have gone there.

The homography within the verb form is coded in second positions the remaining homography of verb with noun is then coded in third position.

Verbs and nouns are subclassified in third position according to the presence or absence of the -s suffix. A zero means that it is absent, a 1 that it is present in an unambiguous verb (lOlx), a 2 that it is present in an unambiguous noun (2x2x), a 3 that it is present but the stem is ambiguously noun or verb (3x3x); a 4 that it is absent

relegated to problems of style.