[Lexicog] part of speech for phrases

Chinedu Uchechukwu neduchi at HOTMAIL.COM
Mon Jan 19 14:38:55 UTC 2004


The Igbo language also has the same form of "verb + noun = verb". 
While some might stress the point that the two do not amount to a 
verb, as with the English "take a walk" or "run a race", it needs to 
be pointed out that English, German and many European languages have 
two forms: (1) a simple verb (2) phrasal verb (light verb etc).

The Igbo language, and some other African languages, have only ONE 
form for expressiing these predicates. Just an example:
 -gbá oso = (run/run a race)
"oso" simply means 'running/race', and it is an indepentent morphem 
in the language. Though I have not counted the form, as I am still 
working on a corpus to use in doing it, I presently assume that about 
80% of the verbs of the language are constructed that way. 

SOme of the dictionaries have tried to find a way of making this 
obvious. FOr example, the form I cited above has -gbá as the verbal 
part of the "verbal complex" (that's what it is called in Igbo 
linguistics). The verbal part can give the following combinations:
-gbá egwú (dance)
-gbá osó (run)
-gbá àma (reveal a secret)
and so on.....
WHat the dictionaries did was to build clusters of these verbs that 
are built with -gbá and other similary verbs. They thereafter devide 
the verbs into different groups, with each group having its own 
alphabetical order. FOr example, one has -gbá 1; -gbá 2; gbá 3; and 
so on. And each of them has its own internal alphabetical order. 

The method is confusing to a learner of the language,as the person 
has to be sure of the sub-group he is searching for before he can 
even find the word. That is, if the person knows something of the 
word in the frst place.

A possible solution is to list ALL the forms as head words so as to 
make it easy for looking up words.

Chinedu Uchechukwu
Otto-Friedrich University, Bamberg
Germany.






--- In lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com, "Ron Moe" <ron_moe at s...> 
wrote:
> RE: [Lexicog] part of speech for phrasesVery well put, Rich.
> 
> Even English has some exotic forms:
> unseen  adj.
> unheard-of  adj.
> dying  adj.
> dressed  adj.
> undoing  n.
> wannabe  n.
> hasbeen  n.
> foundling  n.
> 
> go  v.
> going  n.  adj.
> go-ahead  n.
> go-getter  n.
> gofer  n.
> goner  n.
> bygone  adj.
> bygones  n.(pl.)
> on the go  phr.
> a going over  phr.
> goings on  phr.
> 
> Ron
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: rrhodes at c... [mailto:rrhodes at c...]
>   Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 7:21 PM
>   To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
>   Subject: RE: [Lexicog] part of speech for phrases
> 
> 
>   John,
>           I'm not sure I agree with the end of your argument. The 
fact that
> the English word saw is both noun and verb without any derivational 
marking
> doesn't require that you point that out in either of the entries.
>           This question touches on the relationship between 
morphology and
> syntax. The usual principle is that dictionary entries list the 
part of
> speech that is reflective of the EXTERNAL syntax of the cited form. 
That a
> particular form happens to have the INTERNAL morphology of 
different part of
> speech is irrelevant. That is the assumption behind the answer John 
Roberts
> gave Ron Moe in the exchange about part of speech for phrases 
(quoted
> below).
>           The choice to assign part of speech on the basis of 
external
> syntax is not arbitrary. It is dictated by languages with little 
internal
> morphology like English and Chinese. There is only the external 
syntax to
> tell us what the part of speech is.
>           Where the confusion arises is that the typological norm 
for
> morphologically complex languages is that particular morphologies 
are
> aligned with the external syntactic word class. As such, in normal 
case you
> can infer the external syntactic class on the basis of the 
morphology. But
> it ain't necessarily so. The fact that a language has verb forms 
that can be
> used as syntactic nouns without being overtly derived means that 
they are
> nouns. (There's a parallel argument about languages that treat nouns
> predicatively, but I'll pass on that for now.)
> 
> 
>           As far as the dictionary goes, one way to do it is to 
list the
> most "neutral" nominalization and make a note that sends you to the 
grammar
> to see how such deverbal nominals are treated.       So I'd argue 
your
> version
> 
> 
>     i'base vt cut with
>     we'base n saw
> 
> 
>   is a principled way to do it, and not an uncomfortable compromise 
you were
> "driven to".
> 
> 
>   Rich Rhodes
> 
> 
> 
>     On Fri, 16 Jan 2004, Ron Moe wrote:
>     > I agree that we need to look at lexical units using each of 
the three
>     > criteria. But my understanding is that 'part of speech' means
> 'inflectional
>     > and/or syntactic class'.
> 
>     In dealing with Siouan languages I have been driven to conclude 
that
> these
>     are actually not quite the same thing.  A lot of things that are
>     morphologically verbs (or halfway in from being verbs) are used
> regularly
>     in syntactic and lexical terms as nouns.  For example, 'house' 
might be
>     'he dwells' or 'he dwells there'.  In some languages this might 
be
>     possessed with nominal schemes, while in others 'my house' 
is 'I dwell
>     there'.  Similarly, 'saw' (the tool) might be 'he cuts things 
with it'
> and
>     'my saw' might be 'my one cuts things with it' or '(the thing) 
one cuts
>     things with that I have' or 'I cut things with it'.
> 
>     There are pure noun forms, and nouns can be used as verbs to a 
certain
>     extent, but the only derivational mechanisms are verb 
derivation and
>     clausal syntax, so any derived form has to be a verb, or a 
clause, the
>     latter often reduced to a compound.  There no specific mark of
>     nominalization.
> 
>     Since many of these verbish nouns are quite lexicalized, and 
may have
>     mandatory "indefinite object" prefixes added that would only be 
added to
>     the verb when the object was specifically "indefinite," it's 
not quite
>     possible to do something like
> 
>     i'base vt cut with, n saw
> 
>     You would actually have to say something like
> 
>     i'base vt cut with
>     we'base vt-indef cut things with, n saw
> 
>     But the vt-indef is productive and any vt can have that prefix, 
so
> you're
>     driven to
> 
>     i'base vt cut with
>     we'base n saw
> 
>     But we'base is verbal in derivational morphology and may well be
>     inflectable as a verb, so you're faced with something like
> 
>     i'base vt cut with
>     we'base [vt-indef]n saw
> 
>     I'm inclined to conclude that noun and verb in morphological 
terms is
>     something different from noun and verb in syntactic and/or 
lexical
> terms.
> 
>     (Exx. are Omaha-Ponca)
> 
>     JEK
> 
> 
> 
> 
>   On 16 Jan 2004 John Roberts said:
> 
> 
> 
>     On 15 Jan 2004 Ron Moe said:
> 
> 
>       So here's my question: Does anyone know of something written 
on the
> subject
>       of labeling the part of speech for multi-word lexical items? 
Can
> anyone
>       clarify the issue or give examples from your language? For 
instance
> the MDF
>       manual is good on principles for determining the parts of 
speech of a
>       language, but says nothing about phrases.
> 
> 
>     The basic problem is that there are three sets of criteria that 
you can
>     appeal to in defining what a word is and these criteria are 
independent
> of
>     defining a unit's syntactic function. You can use phonological
> (phonological
>     unit), morpho-syntactic (morphological unit) or lexico-semantic 
(lexemic
>     unit) to define a word unit. These do not always converge so 
that all
> the
>     criteria form a unit.
> 
>     For example, each of the English examples below are phrasal
> constructions of
>     some type but they are all unitary lexemes. 'off duty' and 'by-
product'
> are
>     phonological words but the others are not.
> 
>     an off duty policeman    'off duty' is a PP functioning as an 
adjective
>     'by-product' is a PP functioning as a noun
>     He worked round-the-clock. 'round-the-clock' is a PP 
functioning as an
>     adverb
>     a hit-and-run accident     'hit-and-run' is a V and V phrase 
functioning
> as
>     an adjective
>     'pass up' is a V + P phrase functioning as a verb
>     'kick the bucket' is a V + NP phrase functioning as a verb
> 
>     On the other hand, they each function as a unitary part of 
speech, such
> as
>     adjective, adverb, noun or verb. They should also all be 
entered in an
>     English dictionary because they are unit lexemes.
> 
>     John Roberts
>     Linguistics Consultant
>     SIL WEG
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> ******************************************************************
> 
>    Richard A. Rhodes
>    Department of Linguistics
>    University of California
>    Berkeley, CA 94720-2650
>    Voice (510) 643-7325
>    FAX (510) 643-5688
> 
>   ******************************************************************
> 
> 
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