[Lexicog] Re: lexical phrase

Wed Dec 6 19:41:06 UTC 2006

David,

I find myself agreeing with almost everything you say. Rather than rehash
where we agree, let me address the one place where it appears that we
disagree—our interpretation of ‘on the other hand’.

If I say to a woman, “I like your ring,” and she replies, “The diamond was
my grandmother’s,” I might say something like, “No, I meant the pearl ring
on your other hand.” I would consider the prepositional phrase “on your
other hand” to be non-idiomatic. By this I mean that it is not an idiom or
what I call a lexical phrase. It can be understood literally and the meaning
is the sum of the parts. It refers to a literal hand. ‘On’ is indicating
location. ‘Your’ has a referent in the context. ‘Other’ is being used to
contrast a previous use of ‘hand’ which referred to a hand other than the
one I am referring to.

But when I say, “We have good reason to feel pleased with our progress. On
the other hand we mustn’t get complacent,” (example from Longman Language
Activator, p.165) we cannot interpret ‘on the other hand’ literally. There
is no literal hand. Nothing is ‘on’ anything. I am referring to another
thing, but it is a thought. Perhaps in some bygone century someone had a
reason for expressing contrast with this particular phrase. But today I have
difficulty understanding how a thought can be on a hand. So the meaning of
‘on the other hand’ is not the sum of the parts. Therefore it is what I
would call an ‘idiom’ (two or more words whose meaning is not the sum of
their parts and which function together semantically as a unit).

Some linguists only want to put morphemes in their dictionaries. Others only
want to put full words in as head words, relegating multi-word lexical items
to the status of “minor entries.” But when you think about it, there really
is no difference between derivatives, compounds, and lexical phrases (as to
their status as legitimate lexemes). All are composed of more than one
morpheme. Although there are derivatives and compounds whose meaning is the
sum of their parts, the tendency is for the meaning to be relatively
independent of the meaning of the parts. Either they gain secondary meanings
that are not the sum of the parts, or they drift in meaning. We are all
familiar with the secondary meanings of ‘runner’. The basic meaning ‘a
person who runs’ is the sum of the parts. But the meaning ‘a branch of a
vine’ is not. One could argue that ‘runner’ (a person who runs) is not a
lexeme. In fact some lexicographers will not bother defining derivatives
whose meaning is transparent. Some dictionaries merely add transparent
derivatives to the end of the entry for the root with no information about
the derivative. I have a dictionary that merely gives a long list of
derivatives that start with un- (unkind, unnecessary) and another list of
self- words (self-control, self-portrait). But this is really a matter of
practical lexicography rather than theoretical lexicology. Here again we
observe that language is a bit messy. There is a continuum from
non-idiomatic speech through semantically transparent complex forms to
highly idiomatic complex forms. So it is a judgment call to decide when a
particular form is frequent enough or conventionalized enough or
semantically idiomatic enough to warrant inclusion in the dictionary. My
personal opinion is that ‘on the other hand’ is frequent, conventionalized,
and semantically non-transparent and should therefore be granted the status
of ‘lexeme’ with all the rights and priviledges pertaining thereunto.

This discussion has been beneficial to me. It has helped to clarify my
thinking on several points, especially the relation of ‘invariant phrases’
to playful variants.

Ron Moe

p.s. Your list of sentence connectives all qualify as idiomatic lexical
phrases. They are frequent, conventionalized, and semantically
non-transparent.

p.p.s. My use of terms such as ‘lexical phrase’ ‘phrasal lexeme’
‘idiom(atic)’ and ‘multi-word lexical item’ is a bit fuzzy. A while ago I
asked this list for bibliographical references to the literature on lexical
phrases. I only got one reply (from Helge Gundersen—thank you). My guess is
that there is such a wide variety of lexical phrases that it is difficult to
categorize them or give precise definitions for specific terms such as
‘prefab’. But I need to do more research on this topic since it frequently
causes confusion and is of practical importance to us all.

   _____  

From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of David Frank
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 1:30 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Lexicog] Re: lexical phrase

Ron --

I've used the word "lexeme" loosely but I have never tried to pin it down
with a precise definition. I understand that, generally speaking, "word" and
"lexeme" are about the same, except that "run," "runs" and "ran" could all
be considered the same lexeme. Also, an idiom could be considered a lexeme,
because its meaning is not the sum of its parts. I'm not as clear on how "on
the other hand" would be a lexeme. Is that clear to everyone except me?

Generally, prepositional phrases modify nouns, and the set of prepositional
phrases that can modify a noun is open-ended. There is a more limited set of
prepositional phrases that can modify a verb. These generally have a time
word or a location word as the object of the preposition, as in "in the
morning" or "in the garden." And there is an even more limited set of
prepositional phrases that can serve as sentence connectives, including the
following:

    on the other hand

    on the contrary

    by contrast

    by this time

    at the same time

    in addition

    by the way

    for this reason

Is there a reason why the prepositional phrases that link a sentence to the
previous one would be considered lexemes when other prepositional phrases
would not? Is it because conjunctions are functors, and so prepositional
phrases that serve as sentence connectors have a function rather than a
meaning?

How do you determine that "A sequence of words such as ‘on the other hand’
is a form with a single 'lexical' meaning." I don't think you can use the
argument that prepositional phrases that link a sentence to the sentence one
are analogous to -- and sometimes roughly equivalent to -- single words. The
same thing could be said for adjectival or adverbial prepositional phrases.
Or would you say that "out the door" in the sentence "We chased the bird out
the door" is a lexeme because it could be paraphrased as "We chased the bird
outside"? (You could also reason that "out the door" cannot be changed in
any way, because if it were to be changed, it would have a different
meaning.)

Another way of explaining what a lexeme is would be to say it is what
constitutes a dictionary entry. But my own practice is not to list phrases
as major entries. I list them as minor entries added to the end of a major
entry. I don't think that everything I would include in a dictionary as a
minor entry could be considered a lexeme. I have to admit that I have never
been in a situation where I had to say whether a phrase like "on the other
hand" is or is not truly a lexeme. I suppose we could say, to use your form
of argument, that a phrase like that isn't a prototypical lexeme.

-- David 

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