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Dear Mike--<br><br>I think the picture of verb origins is more complex than you think. First of all<br>different languages have different systems of verb formation. E.g. Semitic<br>languages have a root as an original element from which verbs are derived, and in <br>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.<br>I think it is also possible to treat the nouns identical with verbs as substativation <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">(nominalization) </span>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.<br><br>What do think?<br><br>Hayim Sheynin<br> <br><b><i>Mike Maxwell <maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu></i></b> wrote:<blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> <!-- Network content --> <div id="ygrp-text"> <div>David Tuggy wrote:<br> > How about a verb such as "elbow", or "knife", or ... ? Would you *not* <br> > derive it from the noun? It seems quite reasonable to me to say that <br> > these are monomorphemic, yet still derived. ...<br> > (Zero-derivation or zero morpheme becomes a bit of notational variation, <br> > as far as I can
see.)<br> <br> I guess I don't have an opinion. Etymologically, clearly the verb is <br> derived from the noun. Whether there is in the mind of the native <br> speaker a _derivational_ relation is, in my opinion, hard to tell (and <br> dependent on your definition of "derivation"<wbr>). One could get into the <br> semantic issues here, e.g. "to stone someone" is more than just touching <br> them or even hitting them with a stone. So is the verb "stone" derived <br> from the noun "stone", synchronically? I don't know.<br> <br> FWIW, I think English tends to have such noun-verb pairs more than the <br> other languages I know (although maybe I just don't know them well <br> enough).<br> <br> In any case, the original statement (by Rudolph Troike) was<br> >>> For one thing, those interested in lexical decomposition<br> >>> recognize that many (perhaps most) verbs consist of a covert<br> >>> light verb component and a nominal component...<br>
<br> and I don't think that many--certainly not *most*--verbs have such a <br> null derivation from a noun, if that's what it is. If I were to go by <br> the primary meaning and my intuitions (which I'm not sure I would, but <br> that seems to be the idea here), I would say that for many of the <br> verb-noun pairs which exist, the relationship in fact goes in the <br> opposite direction: the noun 'work' seems intuitively less "basic" than <br> the verb 'work', the noun 'show' less basic than the verb, the noun <br> 'fill' or the adjective 'full' less basic than the verb 'fill', etc.<br> <br> For many other cases, I think any directionality is debatable, <br> especially in the synchronic sense. And it may be that in fact what's <br> going on is that roots are basic, having some sort of associated meaning <br> (perhaps a vague one), and that *both* noun and verb lexemes are derived <br> (in some sense) from the root. But even if that's true, I wouldn't <br> think of the
resulting verb lexemes as having any kind of light verb <br> relationship with the root--for one thing, there is no light verb, <br> there's just a verb; for another, there is no noun, just a root with no <br> category/POS.<br> <br> In sum, I'm leery of claims about word derivations that depend entirely <br> on a perceived semantic relationship, with no visible affix or light <br> verb, and no way other than intuition of deciding the direction of <br> derivation.<br> <br> But perhaps we're wandering too far from lexicography.<wbr>..<br> -- <br> Mike Maxwell<br> <a href="mailto:maxwell%40ldc.upenn.edu">maxwell@ldc.<wbr>upenn.edu</a><br> </div> </div> <!--End group email --> </blockquote><br><p>
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