Martha McGinnis: Reponses to Alec's and Heidi's postings

[Martha McGinnis]

Here are some comments and questions in response to the previous
three postings.

Cheers,
Martha

----------------------------------
Alec's first posting:

>8.	Anderson:  Forms of a word are created from a base form via
>morphophonological rules.  On this logic, the base form is the (universal)
>default form, since no morphophonological rules need to apply to a base
>with a full set of syntactic features (assigned to the base by the syntax).

I'm not sure what this means -- what's a universal default form?  And
if forms of a word are created by the application of
morphophonological rules to a base form, why say that no such rules
need to apply to a base form with a full set of syntactic features?

>10.	Why isn't a whole sentence simply a "form of a word" in some
>paradigm space defined by the syntax?
>
>Everyone assumes that one reaches bedrock at the "content" words.  So, "The
>cat is on the mat," can't be a form of the word "cat" since "mat" must be
>an independent word.  However, "He's always singing," could be a form of
>the word "sing," and might be realized as a single phonological word in
>some language.

<cough, splutter>  Indeed.  A fine observation!

>14.	Let's suppose that this idealized view of grammar is too
>simplistic.  On the syntax side, for example, sets of features, as opposed
>to individual features, may operate as atomic units in the syntax (which
>means that the features aren't combined by "merge" and thus that their
>combination need not be interpreted at PF or LF).

Trying to figure out what this would mean..  Say one language
lexically bundles together Tense and Agr (or, say, Aspect) into a
single head, while another projects them as two separate heads (e.g.
along lines suggested in Bobaljik's thesis).  Would we expect a
difference in LF interpretation?

>23.	Suppose true modularity for root semantics.  The features of roots,
>be they consituitive or classificatory, may be irrelevant/invisible to the
>grammar.  This assumption predicts no syncretism/suppletion for roots.

Does it?  As (e.g.) Noyer showed in his thesis, there's both
contextual and intrinsic specification of vocabulary items.  Even if
the intrinsic features of roots are invisible to the grammar, the
features of functional categories in their local context are visible
-- so we might expect contextually determined root suppletion.

Alec has argued in the past that any specificiation of root
vocabulary items will lead to trouble, under the DM claim that more
highly specified vocabulary items will always block less specified
vocabulary items if both will fit into a particular context.
Suppose, for example, that we had a root vocabulary item specified
for nominal plural contexts ("cattle", say), while other root
vocabulary items are unspecified for singular/plural distinction
("cat").  Assuming that Encyclopedic features (distinguishing cattle
from cats) are invisible to the grammar, "cattle" will ALWAYS block
"cat" from being inserted in a plural nominal context.

Thus (the reasoning goes), under DM, "cattle" must not be specified
for nominal plural contexts.  But, as far as I can see, this is a
stipulation -- it doesn't follow from the invisibility of the
features of roots.  Moreover, I don't think it's the only logical
possibility.  Another possibility is that "cattle" can't be inserted
into the nominal plural contexts into which "cat" can be inserted
because "cattle" is inconsistent with some _other_ feature in these
contexts (for argument's sake, say [- herd animal]) -- that is, "cat"
and "cattle" belong to distinct root classes.  We would then predict
other differences in their syntactic distribution.  This alternative
may be a non-starter for "cat" and "cattle," but it seems more
promising for roots that participate in different verb alternations,
for example.

----------------------------------
Alec's second posting:

>4.	The decompositional nature of Pustejovsky's lexical entries imply
>that it makes sense to consider, e.g., what a lion would be if it weren't
>an animal.  Or what a cake would be if it weren't made by baking.  Or what
>a hammer would be if it weren't used for hammering.
>
>Cf., what's "raising" without agentive cause (=rising).  If a "singer" is
>"one who sings," what is, "John sings"?

OK, I give up.  What IS "John sings"?  (No idea what this is about.)

(Heidi wrote:

>With respect to the last parentheses, in posting two, para 6a, is
>there supposed to be a star/question mark on "I devoured it up?"

I assumed so, but found this bit hard to follow too.)


>7.	Criteria of identity between roots
>
>polysemy (same thing has multiple meanings) vs. homophony (different things
>have same sound)

Eh?  I thought polysemy was used for cases where the meanings
typically have a shared core (e.g. cases of underspecification in
DM), while homophony was used for cases where distinct meanings
"accidentally" have the same pronunication (e.g., separate vocabulary
items in DM).  Or maybe that's what was meant here...

>8.	Private nature of meanings/source of meanings in individual...
>
>	a.	Nothing; they're not the same but they're close enough
>	b.	The nature of cats
>	c.	The structure of the human linguistic and conceptual system
>
>The issues here are tightly bound up with questions of acquisition.  Both
>in a. and in c., the child will know a cat when s/he sees one and will be
>able to say, oh "cat" means cat.  Both scenarios leave open the possibility
>of suppletion for roots like "cat" (singular, "cat," plural, "blicks"),
>depending crucially though on the exact structure of the grammar (where do
>roots enter the grammar and in what form?).

I don't see the connection between these different views and root
suppletion.  Does (b) rule out the possibility of root suppletion?
How?

----------------------------------
Heidi's posting:

>Question: in all you English-speakers' judgements out there,does the
>benefactive alternation when used with a potentially
>creation-implying verb like "bake" force the creation reading? That is,
>can "I baked Mary a Twinkie" mean "I put a Twinkie in the sun for Mary"?
>or can it only mean "I created a Twinkie for Mary?"

I think either is possible, given appropriate context.

>[Pinker] says: people have confusion about how to treat sequences like
>'hole in one', 'gin and tonic', 'jack-in-the-box', 'mother-in-law'. Some
>analyse them as regular phrasal idioms, with associated syntactic
>structure, and inflect them as such: holes in one, 'jacks in the box',
>etc. Others analyse them as complex morphologcial words, without phrasal
>components (e.g. as flat structures rather than N+PP), and inflect them
>like words: 'hole in ones', 'jack in the boxes'. What does a Distributed
>Morphologist have to say about flat-structre analyses of these sequences?

Titles are an even more extreme case -- why don't they make any more
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"'s or "Guess Who's Coming to
Dinner"'s?  I don't have anything insightful to say about these
myself, but is there any reason why we couldn't add a nominalizing
head (little n) to any old phrasal constituent and pluralize it at
will?


mcginnis at ucalgary.ca