[Lexicog] Nouns

[Ron Moe]

There are three types of complex forms--derivatives, compounds, and phrases.
(There are compound derivatives and derived compounds, but they are merely
complications.) Derivatives and compounds, like roots, have a part of
speech. But phrases, not being words, do not.

There are several problems, both theoretical and practical, in assigning a
part of speech to a multi-word lexical item. Some lexical phrases are fixed,
for example 'of course'. Although it looks like a prepositional phrase, it
is not. It functions as a conjunction (or perhaps as a pragmatic particle).
It cannot be affixed or modified in any way. Nothing can be inserted between
the two words. So you could label it a 'prepositional phrase' according to
its internal composition, or as a 'conjunction' according to its function. I
would prefer to call it neither. If I have to call it something, I would
prefer 'conjunction phrase', indicating that it functions as a conjunction
and is composed of more than one word. However 'of course' has other
problems. Phonologically it is a single word, like 'however' and
'nevertheless'. 'Of course' has the misfortune of being written
orthographically as two words, rather than a single word. So 'however' can
be simply labeled 'conjunction', but 'of course' has to be labeled
'conjunction phrase'. Unfair, but that's how the world is.

Other lexical phrases are not fixed. Take, for example, the idiom 'have a
fit':

He had a fit (over the unfairness of the situation).
We were all having fits (over the unfairness of the situation).

The verb 'have' can be inflected for tense and aspect. The noun 'fit' can be
inflected for number. The article 'a' can be omitted according to syntactic
rules. In other words 'have a fit' is a sequence of words syntactically, but
a single unit semantically. 'Have a fit' is a semantic event, but it is not
a syntactic verb. 'Have' is a verb.

Some theories of syntax confuse the situation by calling 'grits' a NP.
Sorry, but it is not a phrase. A phrase by definition consists of more than
one word. Ask anyone on the street (or consult Crystal 'A Dictionary of
Linguistics and Phonetics'). 'Grits' is a noun word. 'Grit' is a noun root.
'Lots of grits' is a noun phrase. Just because Chomsky stuck the label 'NP'
on a particular node in a syntactic tree doesn't suddenly make 'grits' a
noun phrase. Chomsky should have searched for a better label.

So what do we call something like 'have a fit'? Obviously it is not a word.
'Part of speech' is a function of words. Therefore it has no part of speech.
In the part of speech field you could call it a 'clause fragment' or 'idiom'
or 'lexical phrase' or phrasal lexeme', but please don't call it a 'verb'.

And don't call 'hot dog' a 'noun phrase', 'compound', or 'noun'. Like 'of
course', it is phonologically a compound, but written as two words. Compare
hotbed, hot-blooded, hot cake (cf. pancake), hotfoot, hothead, hothouse, hot
line, hot plate, hot rod/hotrod, hot seat, hotshot, hot spring, hotspur.
Phonologically and syntactically they are all compounds (spicy hot dog, *hot
spicy dog). If you call the ones written as phrases 'compounds', your parser
will choke. Your parser knows (even if you do not) that a space separates
words and that there is no such thing as a 'compound phrase'.

The difficulty in handling lexical phrases becomes painfully obvious when
you try to parse and/or interlinearize them. (In the following pretend that
capitalized words are glosses in a second language.)

\tx Of         course there     are other      considerations  [text line]
\mr of         course there     are other      consideration-s [morphemes]
\lx of.course> <      there.be> <   other      consideration-s [lexeme]
\gl HOWEVER>   <      EXIST>    <   ADDITIONAL FACTOR-PL       [morpheme
gloss]
\ps prep       n      adv       v   adj        n-n.sfx         [part of
speech]
\wg HOWEVER>   <      EXIST>    <   ADDITIONAL FACTORS         [word gloss]
\wc prep       n      adv       v   adj        n               [word
category]
\ft However additional factors exist. [free translation]

\tx We   were      all having          fits    over  the hot      dogs
\mr we   were      all hav-ing         fit-s   over  the hot      dog-s
\lx we   be        all have.a.fit>-ing <-s     over  the hot.dog> <-s
\gl 1.PL BE.PST.PL ALL GET.ANGRY>-PRTC <-PL    ABOUT DEF WIENER>  <-PL
\ps pro  aux       adj v-v.sfx         n-n.sfx prep  art adj      n-n.sfx
\wg WE   WERE      ALL GETTING.ANGRY>  <       ABOUT DEF WIENERS> <
\wc pro  aux       adj v               n       prep  art adj      n
\ft All of us were getting angry about the wieners.

I am not recommending the above as a method of interlinearizing lexical
phrases. I merely wish to point out the difficulties in 'glossing' lexical
phrases. We can handle the affixes perfectly easily as long as each word is
handled as a separate word. But handling the multi-word nature of lexical
phrases causes lots of problem. Essentially the problem is that linguistic
structure is heirarchical and multi-dimensional, and therefore cannot be
adequately handled in a two-dimensional display.

Unfortunately the study of lexical phrases is not as well developed as the
morphology and syntax of single words. Someone needs to write the definitive
book on the subject. (Or is there a good book out there?) In the meantime I
would recommend that you leave the part of speech field for lexical phrases
empty or simply assign them to 'Phrase' (abbreviation: Phr.).

Ron Moe




-----Original Message-----
From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Mike Maxwell
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 6:36 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Nouns


Greg and Heather Mellow wrote:
> According to my "old fashioned" training, a noun is a plain word
> (whatever that might mean) and a noun phrase is the noun together with
> any combination of modifiers that lump together with the noun. (The
> secret of what defined a noun was never revealed to us.)

There are those linguists who claim that there is no universal
distinction between nouns and verbs.  While many languages lack
adjectives and other parts of speech that traditional grammars include
(and may include other POSs that traditional grammars lack, such as
postpositions), my personal opinion is that the distinction between noun
and verb is fairly clear in most--probably all--languages.  You find
clear cases (words for concepts like "dog", "house", "run", "throw"),
then find the language-particular morphosyntactic ways these are
distinguished.  But I digress (and I could digress a lot more...)

> The point is though, that combinations of words were thought to be noun
> phrases.
>
> Thus 'big dog' and 'hot dog' are both noun phrases.
>
> An alternative view is that there are things which we might call complex
> nouns. In this view 'hot dog' is a complex noun.

"big dog" is perhaps an NP, although in English you would normally get a
determiner ("a", "the", "this"...).  "Hot dog" is actually ambiguous; if
my dog lays out in the sun too long, he might be "a hot dog".  But the
food item is arguably a compound noun, along with things like "pickup
truck", "gun rack", "redneck".

In addition to a determiner and pre-modifying adjectives, English NPs
may have lots of other internal parts, such as prepositional phrase
modifiers ("the gun on that gun rack"), relative clauses ("the gun
that's in my gunrack"), possessive NPs acting as determiners ("my
pappy's corn squeezins") etc.  But all these components are optional
except for the head noun (e.g. "grits" can be an NP, in addition to
being a noun, in a sentence like "Grits is good").

BTW, in English things we call compound nouns often are not made up of
two nouns (like "gun rack" is), but rather of an adjective + noun ("hot
dog", "blackboard").

> So when label the part of speech for 'hot dog' in my dictionary, should
> I put n.phr or n ?

I would not think of the compound noun "hot dog" as an NP, but rather as
a compound noun.  A "compound noun" would be a sub-type of "noun", in
the sense that a compound noun can appear anywhere in syntax that a
plain noun might appear (assuming semantic compatibility).

Typically one writes lexical entries in a dictionary for compound nouns
if they are not compositional, that is, if you can't figure out their
meaning from the meaning of the two parts.  So "hot dog" would be listed
as a kind of food, but "hitchhiker story" would not be, because if you
know what a hitchhiker is, and you know what a story is, you can figure
out that the compound is a story by or about a hitchhiker.

As for the label, I would probably label "hot dog" as a compound noun,
simply because it's more descriptive than calling it a noun.
--

    Mike Maxwell
    CASL/ University of Maryland




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