[Lexicog] part of speech for phrases

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----- Original Message -----
From: "John Roberts" <dr_john_roberts at sil.org>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 1:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] part of speech for phrases


> 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
>
>
>
>
>
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