[Lexicog] part of speech for phrases

[Chinedu Uchechukwu]

ROn,
The development in ENglish lexicography might be of interest. The
OXFORD publishers have recently come out with an "Oxford Collocations
Dictionary for Students of English". Some of the examples given by
John do fall within this group, though not all. But the fact of
making a dictionary specifically for this constructions points to not
only the difficulty it constitutes for the language learner, but also
to the need for one to also think of the collocational patterns of
words, and their lexicographic relevance.

One can for example have a lexical entry, with its additional
collocational derivatives as multi-word sub-entries. But in a
language like Igbo, the collocational derivatives would simply mean
additional verbs, which would need their own full entries. However,
in terms of idiomatic multi-word expressions "Phr." or also "idiom"
or "prov" (for proverb) can apply.

So for Igbo "Verb + Noun = Verb" would pass for the mean entries,
while this would mean a phrasal verb in English or German; while
multi-word expressions would range between "idioms, proverbs and so
on." But they would all have the same or similar structure of
"verb + noun = verb  +(additional lexical items).


Chinedu Uchechukwu
Otto-Friedrich University, Bamberg
Germany.

--- In lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com, "John Roberts"
<dr_john_roberts at s...> wrote:
> Ron Moe said:
>
> > What I've been hoping for is a set of criteria for
subcategorizing various
> > types of idiomatic phrases. They can be distinguished by their
internal
> > structure. They can be distinguished by their degree of setness
(can the
> > constituents be reordered, can other words be inserted, can any
of the
> words
> > be replaced, can any of the words be inflected, etc.). They can
also be
> > distinguished according to their semantics, but this is like
assigning the
> > part of speech 'verbal noun' to 'death', or 'verbal adjective' to
> 'morbid'.
> > Are there any other ways they can be subcategorized? I'm currently
> assigning
> > all idiomatic phrases the part of speech 'phr.', since I have no
well
> > motivated way of further categorizing them.
>
> But you do want to categorize idioms according to their syntactic
function
> as well as their internal structure. They are not just phrases, but
phrases
> that function as 'phrasal verbs', 'phrasal adjectives', 'phrasal
nouns',
> etc.
>
> So I would say that _pass up_ and _kick the bucket_ are both
phrasal verbs
> on the basis of their internal structure. Both _pass_ and _kick_
can be
> inflected for tense, for example, and both have objects. _going
over_ is a
> phrasal noun. You can pluralise the nominal in this phrase, as
in 'they gave
> him several goings over' (this identifies the lexical class) and
you can
> modify the expression with an adjective, as in 'they gave him a
good going
> over' (this identifies the syntactic function).
>
> John




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