[Lexicog] part of speech for phrases

List Facilitator lexicography2004 at YAHOO.COM
Tue Jan 20 19:02:45 UTC 2004


----- Original Message -----
From: "John Roberts" <dr_john_roberts at sil.org>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 17, 2004 3:39 AM
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] part of speech for phrases


> 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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