[Lexicog] Interesting lexical discoveries

[Kenneth C. Hill]

Earlier respondents to Patrick Hanks's comments have, I believe, missed
his most important observation, that of the remarkable uniformity of
phenomena over a speech community. This observation validates to a large
extent the traditional enterprise of historical linguistics. Things seem
to change chaotically on a microscopic level: individual usages seem to be
remarkably variable and even at a phonetic level people behave in a
thoroughly variable way. But as a former professor of mine (Paul Garvin)
said, it all comes out in the wash. All in all, there are great
regularities that exist at the speech community level. (Lest anyone
question me about what a speech community level is such that a great
regularity should exist there, let me respond beforehand that the speech
community itself is defined by the regularities that exist there. If this
is confusing, then I am confused too. Don't criticise, write
dictionaries!)

--Ken Hill

--- Patrick Hanks <hanks at bbaw.de> wrote:
>
> 1. Corpus evidence shows that word usage in a speech community, even one
> as large as English, is very regular -- much more highly patterned, in
> innumerable subtle ways, than some of us once believed.

> 2. English speakers all over the world unconsciously share subtle and
> delicate collocational preferences, and exploit them in similar ways.
>
> Patrick Hanks
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "List Facilitator" <lexicography2004 at yahoo.com>
> To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 6:11 AM
> Subject: [Lexicog] Interesting lexical discoveries
>
>
> What are one or two of the most interesting discoveries that stand out
> for you (plural) in any of the lexical research that you have done?
> >
> > Wayne Leman
> > Cheyenne dictionary project

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