[Lexicog] part of speech for phrases
Chinedu Uchechukwu
neduchi at HOTMAIL.COM
Mon Jan 19 14:38:55 UTC 2004
The Igbo language also has the same form of "verb + noun = verb".
While some might stress the point that the two do not amount to a
verb, as with the English "take a walk" or "run a race", it needs to
be pointed out that English, German and many European languages have
two forms: (1) a simple verb (2) phrasal verb (light verb etc).
The Igbo language, and some other African languages, have only ONE
form for expressiing these predicates. Just an example:
-gbá oso = (run/run a race)
"oso" simply means 'running/race', and it is an indepentent morphem
in the language. Though I have not counted the form, as I am still
working on a corpus to use in doing it, I presently assume that about
80% of the verbs of the language are constructed that way.
SOme of the dictionaries have tried to find a way of making this
obvious. FOr example, the form I cited above has -gbá as the verbal
part of the "verbal complex" (that's what it is called in Igbo
linguistics). The verbal part can give the following combinations:
-gbá egwú (dance)
-gbá osó (run)
-gbá àma (reveal a secret)
and so on.....
WHat the dictionaries did was to build clusters of these verbs that
are built with -gbá and other similary verbs. They thereafter devide
the verbs into different groups, with each group having its own
alphabetical order. FOr example, one has -gbá 1; -gbá 2; gbá 3; and
so on. And each of them has its own internal alphabetical order.
The method is confusing to a learner of the language,as the person
has to be sure of the sub-group he is searching for before he can
even find the word. That is, if the person knows something of the
word in the frst place.
A possible solution is to list ALL the forms as head words so as to
make it easy for looking up words.
Chinedu Uchechukwu
Otto-Friedrich University, Bamberg
Germany.
--- In lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com, "Ron Moe" <ron_moe at s...>
wrote:
> RE: [Lexicog] part of speech for phrasesVery well put, Rich.
>
> Even English has some exotic forms:
> unseen adj.
> unheard-of adj.
> dying adj.
> dressed adj.
> undoing n.
> wannabe n.
> hasbeen n.
> foundling n.
>
> go v.
> going n. adj.
> go-ahead n.
> go-getter n.
> gofer n.
> goner n.
> bygone adj.
> bygones n.(pl.)
> on the go phr.
> a going over phr.
> goings on phr.
>
> Ron
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rrhodes at c... [mailto:rrhodes at c...]
> Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 7:21 PM
> To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: RE: [Lexicog] part of speech for phrases
>
>
> John,
> I'm not sure I agree with the end of your argument. The
fact that
> the English word saw is both noun and verb without any derivational
marking
> doesn't require that you point that out in either of the entries.
> This question touches on the relationship between
morphology and
> syntax. The usual principle is that dictionary entries list the
part of
> speech that is reflective of the EXTERNAL syntax of the cited form.
That a
> particular form happens to have the INTERNAL morphology of
different part of
> speech is irrelevant. That is the assumption behind the answer John
Roberts
> gave Ron Moe in the exchange about part of speech for phrases
(quoted
> below).
> The choice to assign part of speech on the basis of
external
> syntax is not arbitrary. It is dictated by languages with little
internal
> morphology like English and Chinese. There is only the external
syntax to
> tell us what the part of speech is.
> Where the confusion arises is that the typological norm
for
> morphologically complex languages is that particular morphologies
are
> aligned with the external syntactic word class. As such, in normal
case you
> can infer the external syntactic class on the basis of the
morphology. But
> it ain't necessarily so. The fact that a language has verb forms
that can be
> used as syntactic nouns without being overtly derived means that
they are
> nouns. (There's a parallel argument about languages that treat nouns
> predicatively, but I'll pass on that for now.)
>
>
> As far as the dictionary goes, one way to do it is to
list the
> most "neutral" nominalization and make a note that sends you to the
grammar
> to see how such deverbal nominals are treated. So I'd argue
your
> version
>
>
> i'base vt cut with
> we'base n saw
>
>
> is a principled way to do it, and not an uncomfortable compromise
you were
> "driven to".
>
>
> Rich Rhodes
>
>
>
> On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Ron Moe wrote:
> > I agree that we need to look at lexical units using each of
the three
> > criteria. But my understanding is that 'part of speech' means
> 'inflectional
> > and/or syntactic class'.
>
> In dealing with Siouan languages I have been driven to conclude
that
> these
> are actually not quite the same thing. A lot of things that are
> morphologically verbs (or halfway in from being verbs) are used
> regularly
> in syntactic and lexical terms as nouns. For example, 'house'
might be
> 'he dwells' or 'he dwells there'. In some languages this might
be
> possessed with nominal schemes, while in others 'my house'
is 'I dwell
> there'. Similarly, 'saw' (the tool) might be 'he cuts things
with it'
> and
> 'my saw' might be 'my one cuts things with it' or '(the thing)
one cuts
> things with that I have' or 'I cut things with it'.
>
> There are pure noun forms, and nouns can be used as verbs to a
certain
> extent, but the only derivational mechanisms are verb
derivation and
> clausal syntax, so any derived form has to be a verb, or a
clause, the
> latter often reduced to a compound. There no specific mark of
> nominalization.
>
> Since many of these verbish nouns are quite lexicalized, and
may have
> mandatory "indefinite object" prefixes added that would only be
added to
> the verb when the object was specifically "indefinite," it's
not quite
> possible to do something like
>
> i'base vt cut with, n saw
>
> You would actually have to say something like
>
> i'base vt cut with
> we'base vt-indef cut things with, n saw
>
> But the vt-indef is productive and any vt can have that prefix,
so
> you're
> driven to
>
> i'base vt cut with
> we'base n saw
>
> But we'base is verbal in derivational morphology and may well be
> inflectable as a verb, so you're faced with something like
>
> i'base vt cut with
> we'base [vt-indef]n saw
>
> I'm inclined to conclude that noun and verb in morphological
terms is
> something different from noun and verb in syntactic and/or
lexical
> terms.
>
> (Exx. are Omaha-Ponca)
>
> JEK
>
>
>
>
> On 16 Jan 2004 John Roberts said:
>
>
>
> On 15 Jan 2004 Ron Moe said:
>
>
> So here's my question: Does anyone know of something written
on the
> subject
> of labeling the part of speech for multi-word lexical items?
Can
> anyone
> clarify the issue or give examples from your language? For
instance
> the MDF
> manual is good on principles for determining the parts of
speech of a
> language, but says nothing about phrases.
>
>
> The basic problem is that there are three sets of criteria that
you can
> appeal to in defining what a word is and these criteria are
independent
> of
> defining a unit's syntactic function. You can use phonological
> (phonological
> unit), morpho-syntactic (morphological unit) or lexico-semantic
(lexemic
> unit) to define a word unit. These do not always converge so
that all
> the
> criteria form a unit.
>
> For example, each of the English examples below are phrasal
> constructions of
> some type but they are all unitary lexemes. 'off duty' and 'by-
product'
> are
> phonological words but the others are not.
>
> an off duty policeman 'off duty' is a PP functioning as an
adjective
> 'by-product' is a PP functioning as a noun
> He worked round-the-clock. 'round-the-clock' is a PP
functioning as an
> adverb
> a hit-and-run accident 'hit-and-run' is a V and V phrase
functioning
> as
> an adjective
> 'pass up' is a V + P phrase functioning as a verb
> 'kick the bucket' is a V + NP phrase functioning as a verb
>
> On the other hand, they each function as a unitary part of
speech, such
> as
> adjective, adverb, noun or verb. They should also all be
entered in an
> English dictionary because they are unit lexemes.
>
> John Roberts
> Linguistics Consultant
> SIL WEG
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> ******************************************************************
>
> Richard A. Rhodes
> Department of Linguistics
> University of California
> Berkeley, CA 94720-2650
> Voice (510) 643-7325
> FAX (510) 643-5688
>
> ******************************************************************
>
>
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