[Lexicog] Defining verbs, etc.

[Hayim Sheynin]

Dear Mike--

I think the picture of verb origins is more complex than you think. First of all
different languages have different systems of verb formation.  E.g.  Semitic
languages have a root as an original element from which verbs are derived, and in 
each formation of a verb there are templates for nouns, adjectives, adverbs or adverbials, etc. In Slavic and Romance languages it is clear that verbs are primary to nouns, while denominative verbs also exist. It seems to me that in English exist both the "primeval" and denominative verbs, while statistically nominal and denominative verbs take greater place.
I think it is also possible to treat the nouns identical with verbs as substativation (nominalization) of the verb. The traditional treatment of verb in Linguistics (in greater part based on Indo-European languages) pointed to verb as the most important part of speech from which all other parts are derived (of course with exclusion of particles, pronouns, etc.

What do think?

Hayim Sheynin
 
Mike Maxwell <maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu> wrote:                                  David Tuggy wrote:
 > How about a verb such as "elbow", or "knife", or ... ? Would you *not* 
 > derive it from the noun? It seems quite reasonable to me to say that 
 > these are monomorphemic, yet still derived. ...
 > (Zero-derivation or zero morpheme becomes a bit of notational variation, 
 > as far as I can see.)
 
 I guess I don't have an opinion.  Etymologically, clearly the verb is 
 derived from the noun.  Whether there is in the mind of the native 
 speaker a _derivational_ relation is, in my opinion, hard to tell (and 
 dependent on your definition of "derivation").  One could get into the 
 semantic issues here, e.g. "to stone someone" is more than just touching 
 them or even hitting them with a stone.  So is the verb "stone" derived 
 from the noun "stone", synchronically?  I don't know.
 
 FWIW, I think English tends to have such noun-verb pairs more than the 
 other languages I know (although maybe I just don't know them well 
 enough).
 
 In any case, the original statement (by Rudolph Troike) was
 >>> For one thing, those interested in lexical decomposition
 >>> recognize that many (perhaps most) verbs consist of a covert
 >>> light verb component and a nominal component...
 
 and I don't think that many--certainly not *most*--verbs have such a 
 null derivation from a noun, if that's what it is.  If I were to go by 
 the primary meaning and my intuitions (which I'm not sure I would, but 
 that seems to be the idea here), I would say that for many of the 
 verb-noun pairs which exist, the relationship in fact goes in the 
 opposite direction: the noun 'work' seems intuitively less "basic" than 
 the verb 'work', the noun 'show' less basic than the verb, the noun 
 'fill' or the adjective 'full' less basic than the verb 'fill', etc.
 
 For many other cases, I think any directionality is debatable, 
 especially in the synchronic sense.  And it may be that in fact what's 
 going on is that roots are basic, having some sort of associated meaning 
 (perhaps a vague one), and that *both* noun and verb lexemes are derived 
 (in some sense) from the root.  But even if that's true, I wouldn't 
 think of the resulting verb lexemes as having any kind of light verb 
 relationship with the root--for one thing, there is no light verb, 
 there's just a verb; for another, there is no noun, just a root with no 
 category/POS.
 
 In sum, I'm leery of claims about word derivations that depend entirely 
 on a perceived semantic relationship, with no visible affix or light 
 verb, and no way other than intuition of deciding the direction of 
 derivation.
 
 But perhaps we're wandering too far from lexicography...
 -- 
  Mike Maxwell
  maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu
 
     
                       

 
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