Versatility?

Batia Seroussi batia.seroussi at gmail.com
Mon Mar 21 09:34:48 UTC 2011


Hello all,
One of the research questions of my doctorate, performed on native speakers
of Hebrew in Tel-Aviv University under the supervision of Ruth Berman, dealt
with the degree of compositionality or parsability of Hebrew derived nouns
with respect to familarity/frequency. In line with Hay & Baayen, Bybee and
others for English, familiarity/frequency interacted with the degree of
compositionality, yielding the following equation: more familiar/frequent =
less reference to the root, less familiar/frequent = more refrence to the
root; Hebrew speakers who were asked to provide free associations, for
example, tended to rely on the root extensively when confronted with
unfamiliar/infrequent words whereas other types of associations (mainly
semantic-pragmatic) were given to familiar/frequent Hebrew derived nouns.
Batia Seroussi
2011/3/21 Joan Bybee <jbybee at unm.edu>

> I agree with Lise. Jennifer Hay has also done a lot of very good research
> on
> the loss of transparency of derivational morphology. Plus you can check my
> 2010 book, Language, Usage and Cognition, for both theory and data on these
> points. No need to rely on anecdotes.
>
> Joan
>
> On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 5:38 PM, Lise Menn <lise.menn at colorado.edu> wrote:
>
> > Gary Libben and his group have done a great deal of psycholinguistic work
> > on what people consciously and unconsciously know about compounds; it's
> not
> > necessary to rely on anecdote and introspection.  Check out the journal
> The
> > Mental Lexicon. Obviously no one has all the answers, but linguists
> > shouldn't ignore the very good science that has been done in this area.
> > Lise
> >
> >
> > On Mar 20, 2011, at 5:31 PM, Tom Givon wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Maybe it would be useful to add that among all the pieces of quaint
> >> exemplars lie some general principles that have to do with both the
> semantic
> >> & phonological changes that affect compound expressions. Once the two
> parts
> >> co-vary in all (or most) contexts, and once the meaning of the compound
> >> drifts away from the original composite meaning of the two parts, there
> is a
> >> growing semantic incentive to cease interpreting it as a composite,
> given
> >> that the predictability of the compound meaning from its parts gets
> lower &
> >> lower over time. In parallel, once two phonological sequences becomes
> fused
> >> as a single word, assimilation & reduction make the similarity to the
> two
> >> original parts less & less obvious. This is a typical "iconic
> conspiracy" in
> >> compounding & co-lexicalization. Ther rest is, as usual, history.  TG
> >>
> >> ====================
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On 3/20/2011 4:53 PM, dharv at mail.optusnet.com.au wrote:
> >>
> >>> I can attest that even in the aircraft industry plenty of people don't
> >>> realize that helicopter means helical or twisting wing.
> >>>
> >>> At 3:45 PM -0600 20/3/11, Sherman Wilcox wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 20 Mar 2011, at 15:26, Pamela Munro wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>  The first time the observation about the analyzability of /rooster/
> was
> >>>>> made here, I thought, sure, I know the ending -/ster/, but what is
> /roo/?
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I routinely ask my students to analyze helicopter. No one can.
> Everyone
> >>>> thinks the word has an -/er/ suffix. Some of them come up with /heli-/
> >>>> having to do with the sun, but then they can't figure out what the sun
> has
> >>>> to do with helicopters, or what -/copt/- might mean. Something that
> chops
> >>>> the sun's rays?
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Sherman Wilcox, Professor
> >>>> Department of Linguistics
> >>>> University of New Mexico
> >>>> Albuquerque, NM 871131
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> > Lise Menn                      Home Office: 303-444-4274
> > 1625 Mariposa Ave       Fax: 303-413-0017
> > Boulder CO 80302
> > http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/index.html
> >
> > Professor Emerita of Linguistics
> > Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Science
> > University of  Colorado
> >
> > Secretary, AAAS Section Z [Linguistics]
> > Fellow, Linguistic Society of America
> >
> > Campus Mail Address:
> > UCB 594, Institute for Cognitive Science
> >
> > Campus Physical Address:
> > CINC 234
> > 1777 Exposition Ave, Boulder
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Joan Bybee
> HC 66 Box 118
> Mountainair, NM 87036
> 505-847-0137
>



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