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words</title></head><body>
<div>Mike Maxwell wrote:</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>I'll try very hard to make this my last
posting on this topic, lest I wear<br>
out your monitors :-).</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>No, you don't get out of this so easily.</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
> It seems to me that there are two sets of assumptions in play in
this<br>
> discussion. First, what does it mean to be lexicalized? And
second,<br>
> what is the role of pragmatics?<br>
<br>
And third, what needs to be included in a dictionary? (Or as I might
put it,<br>
what goes in a dictionary and what goes in an
encyclopedia?)</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>You're right, that is a third assumption.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>I'd
like to distinguish between what theoretically belongs in a lexicon
and what goes into the book we call a dictionary. The constraints on
the latter include many imposed by editors and publishers, as well as
those imposed by limits of manpower. The constraints on the former
depend on positions one takes theoretically.</div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>We're
clearly in different camps. I do not believe that there is any
principled distinction among what are traditionally called syntax,
lexicon, and encyclopedia. There are certainly kinds of knowledge
crucial to language use that are more clearly grammar-like and less
lexical, and there are kinds of linguistically relevant knowledge that
are more clearly like knowledge of the world, and less clearly
lexical, but my position is that you can't draw a principled line
dividing the lexicon from either the "grammar" or the
"encyclopedia".</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Since
you'll balk at both ends of this assertion, let me work on the harder
sell, that there is no principled distinction between grammar and
lexicon.</div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>We
already cheat a lot to maintain the fiction that there is a
distinction. On the lexical side we do this in four ways. 1) We
acknowledge that part of speech is relevant to a lexical entry. 2) We
include, either in theory or practice, various kinds of collocational
information, e.g. selectional restrictions on verbs. 3) We are trained
to ignore enormous amounts of collocational information as if it were
"automatic", e.g. that<i> hear</i> refers to a particular
relation between a sentient being and a sound source (modulo
metonymies). And 4) we just tacitly omit various kinds of lexically
relevant information, like the fact that<i> put</i> is an obligatory
three place verb - agent theme location.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>That
the lexicon and syntax can't be divided is shown in more dramatic ways
by recent work on the constructions central to examples like:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>The
more, the merrier.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>and</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>What's
that fly doing in my soup?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>These show that some syntactic constructions crucially include
lexical items. Thus it is in principle impossible to modularize
lexical items off from syntax. It turns out that there are so many of
these kinds of constructions that the folks working on the syntactic
side of this (most notably Chuck Fillmore and Adele Goldberg) are now
talking about a "constructicon" which includes both lexical
items with their associated syntax, constructions with crucial lexical
parts, and constructions with more general syntactic properties.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><x-tab>
</x-tab>Unfortunately, I have to run now. But I'll have more to say
about lexicalization and encyclopedic knowledge in a future
contribution.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Rich Rhodes</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>BTW Levi's work is a book:<i> The Syntax and Semantics of Complex
Nominals.</i> New York: Academic Press, 1978. Dated, yes, but full of
important insights, required reading for anyone serious about English
noun compounds.</div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div
>******************************************************************<br
>
<br>
Richard A. Rhodes<br>
Department of Linguistics<br>
University of California<br>
Berkeley, CA 94720-2650<br>
Voice (510) 643-7325<br>
FAX (510) 643-5688<br>
<br>
******************************************************************</div
>
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