[Lexicog] Nouns

[Mike Maxwell]

Ron Moe wrote:
> 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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