The traditional classification of words into parts of speech has a long history. More recently, many attempts have
been made to refine it. One of the most significant attempts, in our opinion, was the introduction of a trichotomous
division of words within a part of speech into significant words, functional words and inserts, or discourse satellites.
Many discourse satellite words, for example, please, hi, good-bye and a number of other words remained outside
the classification. In this article, we attempt to justify their place in the classification system of the English vocabulary.
The status of certain parts of speech, traditionally considered to be significant words, such as pronouns and numerals,
is subjected to revision, and the authors expound their views to this effect.
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