[Lexicog] part of speech for phrases

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Moe" <ron_moe at sil.org>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 10:34 PM
Subject: RE: [Lexicog] part of speech for phrases


> 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 cogsci.berkeley.edu [mailto:rrhodes at cogsci.berkeley.edu]
>   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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