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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>----- Original Message ----- </FONT>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>From: "Mike Maxwell" <</FONT><A
href="mailto:maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu"><FONT face=Arial
size=2>maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu</FONT></A><FONT face=Arial size=2>></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>To: <</FONT><A
href="mailto:lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com"><FONT face=Arial
size=2>lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com</FONT></A><FONT face=Arial
size=2>></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 9:17
PM</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Percentage of idioms vs
single words</FONT></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>> At its simplest, a forest fire is a fire where
the fuel is a forest, while a<BR>> wood fire is a fire whose fuel is (any)
wood. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Ah Mike, I perceive that you are resolutely
pursuing necessary conditions for firehood, despite the exhortations of
philosophers of language (notably Quine and Putnam) to desist. Focusing on
<STRONG><EM>wood</EM></STRONG> and <EM><STRONG>forest</STRONG></EM> as
"fuel" for a type of
<STRONG><EM>fire</EM></STRONG> is reductionist -- an appeal to
the Aristotelian notion of essences, necessary conditions under another name.
("We have outlived this doctrine of essences, I think" - Quine
1971). Your account of <EM><STRONG>forest fire</STRONG></EM> and
<EM><STRONG>wood fire</STRONG></EM> unifies them semantically as types of
<STRONG><EM>fire</EM></STRONG> only by dint of suppressing useful,
practical, important information about each. </FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2>Prompted by your comments, I looked a bit more deeply. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Excluding names and headlines, there are
23 hits in BNC for <EM><STRONG>wood fire(s)</STRONG></EM> and
54 for <EM><STRONG>forest fire(s).</STRONG></EM> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><STRONG><EM>Wood fire</EM></STRONG> always
denotes some kind of human-created entity, whereas <EM><STRONG>forest
fire</STRONG></EM> doesn't. The <EM><STRONG>forest fire</STRONG></EM> is
always destructive and potentially lethal: this is part of its semantics or
pragmatics (lexicographically, it doesn't matter which). <EM><STRONG>Wood
fire </STRONG></EM></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>is more complex. In 12 cases
the <EM><STRONG>wood fire</STRONG></EM> is in a house, typically in a
hearth for heating a room. In 8 cases it is in an outdoor camp. There
is one example of a <EM><STRONG>wood fire</STRONG></EM> powering an
old locomotive; there are none of <EM><STRONG>wood fires</STRONG></EM> on
ships. Following a principle that dictionaries should make
statements about the central and typical convention of the language while
ignoring boundary cases, I think it is right to single out wood fires in
houses and in outdoor camps for mention and not other possible but rare or
unlikely cases. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The "semantic prosody" (Sinclair's term) of
<STRONG><EM>wood fire</EM></STRONG> is always positive (nice, cosy, etc.), the
semantic prosody of <EM><STRONG>forest fire</STRONG></EM> is always negative
(destructive, lethal). </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>There is something horribly wrong (unidiomatic,
unnatural) about the notion of referring to a wooden house burning down as a
<STRONG><EM>wood fire.</EM></STRONG> I can find no evidence that any English
speaker has ever said or written anythign like this. This is a good example of
why linguists should not invent evidence.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>In the Associated Press 1992-3 corpus, the facts
about <EM><STRONG>wood fire</STRONG></EM> are uncannily similar to those in BNC.
(American and English ARE the same language!) <EM><STRONG>Forest
fire</STRONG></EM> is ten times more common in AP than in BNC, but that is
what one would expect in a corpus of journalism. The syntagmatics are
no different. </FONT></DIV></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><BR>> Or maybe your point is that if 'forest
fire' and 'wood fire' were<BR>> synonomous, we could just as well refer to a
forest fire as a wood fire?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Yep, that's my point. </DIV>
<DIV><BR>> But it seems to me that there's a Gricean reason for this: all
forest fires<BR>> are wood fires, but not vice versa, and we try to be
somewhat explicit.<BR></DIV>
<DIV>Reductionist logical semantics of this kind allows all forest fires to be
wood fires only <EM>in defiance of</EM> the idiom of the language. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>> In sum, compound nouns are notoriously productive in English, with
the<BR>> meanings of productive compounds being determined for the most part
by<BR>> pragmatics. I'm not sure I see the sense (pardon the pun) in
doing a<BR>> dictionary of that (or if you do create such a work, calling it
a<BR>> dictionary).<BR></DIV>
<DIV>The sense (purpose) would be to explain the idiom of the language as
it is naturally and normally used, for the benefit of learners and computer
programs alike. For one thing, would enable richer computation of
implicatures, which is severely limited by a reductionist approach such as
the one you advocate.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Cheers -- and thanks for thought-provoking comments --</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Patrick</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></FONT>
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