Versatility?

[A. Katz]

Lise,

Could you share some references to specific article that are point?

Best,

    --Aya


On Sun, 20 Mar 2011, Lise Menn wrote:

> Gary Libben and his group have done a great deal of psycholinguistic work on 
> what people consciously and unconsciously know about compounds; it's not 
> necessary to rely on anecdote and introspection.  Check out the journal The 
> Mental Lexicon. Obviously no one has all the answers, but linguists shouldn't 
> ignore the very good science that has been done in this area.
> Lise
>
> On Mar 20, 2011, at 5:31 PM, Tom Givon wrote:
>
>> 
>> Maybe it would be useful to add that among all the pieces of quaint 
>> exemplars lie some general principles that have to do with both the 
>> semantic & phonological changes that affect compound expressions. Once the 
>> two parts co-vary in all (or most) contexts, and once the meaning of the 
>> compound drifts away from the original composite meaning of the two parts, 
>> there is a growing semantic incentive to cease interpreting it as a 
>> composite, given that the predictability of the compound meaning from its 
>> parts gets lower & lower over time. In parallel, once two phonological 
>> sequences becomes fused as a single word, assimilation & reduction make the 
>> similarity to the two original parts less & less obvious. This is a typical 
>> "iconic conspiracy" in compounding & co-lexicalization. Ther rest is, as 
>> usual, history.  TG
>> 
>> ====================
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 3/20/2011 4:53 PM, dharv at mail.optusnet.com.au wrote:
>>> I can attest that even in the aircraft industry plenty of people don't 
>>> realize that helicopter means helical or twisting wing.
>>> 
>>> At 3:45 PM -0600 20/3/11, Sherman Wilcox wrote:
>>>> On 20 Mar 2011, at 15:26, Pamela Munro wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> The first time the observation about the analyzability of /rooster/ was 
>>>>> made here, I thought, sure, I know the ending -/ster/, but what is 
>>>>> /roo/?
>>>> 
>>>> I routinely ask my students to analyze helicopter. No one can. Everyone 
>>>> thinks the word has an -/er/ suffix. Some of them come up with /heli-/ 
>>>> having to do with the sun, but then they can't figure out what the sun 
>>>> has to do with helicopters, or what -/copt/- might mean. Something that 
>>>> chops the sun's rays?
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> Sherman Wilcox, Professor
>>>> Department of Linguistics
>>>> University of New Mexico
>>>> Albuquerque, NM 871131
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>
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