[Lexicog] Re: lexical phrase

[maxwell at LDC.UPENN.EDU]

Quoting John Roberts <dr_john_roberts at sil.org>:
> The Longman Dictionary of English Idioms says the meaning of 'on (the)
> one hand ... and on the other (hand) ...' is "in one case ... and in
> another" and is used to emphasize the comparison between two opposite
> statements, opinions, arguments, ideas, etc. This doesn't seem very
> non-compositional to me.

I would say it was compositional if it meant s.t. like "laying across 
one's hand" (like "Why are you looking for your scarf?  It's laying on 
your hand!") or "stuck to one's hand" (like "Yuck--I spilled the glue, 
and now it's on my hand!") or "covering one's hand" (like "On the one 
hand, she wore a glove; on the other hand, she wore a sock").

> Firstly, there is the sense that 'on (the) one
> hand' is the first of a pair of linguistic expressions and is properly
> matched to 'on the other (hand)'.

True, there is a _pair_ of expressions (and some imaginative extensions 
that have been discussed here, like "on the third hand").  But the fact 
that there are _two_ such expressions does not, to my mind, imply that 
both of them must be compositional.  However, you might be able to say 
that there was a construction "on the X hand", where X = {one, other}.  
Something like that seems to be at work when people extend this to "on 
the third hand".  But now we are--I think--getting into the realm of 
how people generalize or _coin_ words and expressions, which *may* go 
beyond how people _store_ lexical information.  (Then again, it may 
not; I suspect one could write a linguistic paper about the light such 
extensions do or do not throw on lexical storage.)

Another way to look at this question (is the phrase compositional) 
would be through the lens of translational equivalents.  I would bet 
that there are few languages for which either the expression "on the 
one hand" or "on the other hand" would be translated more or less 
literally.  In Spanish, I'm sure you would not say "sobre una de las 
manos" or anything like it, or even "en una de las manos" ('sobre' = 
"on" in the sense of "on top of"; 'en' would come closer to the sense 
of holding s.t. in one's hand).  My Spanish is getting very rusty, but 
I would guess you'd say s.t. like "de un/otro punto de vista".

   Mike Maxwell
   CASL/ U MD


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