[Lexicog] Re: lexical phrase

[Mike Maxwell]

David Frank wrote:
> Mike M --
> 
> I notice you seem non-committal as to whether "on the other hand" clearly is 
> a lexeme. 

Let me quote another linguist on this list, one with whom I agree on 
this matter:
 > I've used the word "lexeme" loosely but I have never
 > tried to pin it down with a precise definition.

Oh, that's you :-!

> ...If you say that the meaning of this 
> phrase is non-compositional, is that the same thing as saying it is an 
> idiom? 

Might be.  The problem is that one can have different definitions of 
'idiom', and it's not clear which one is right, or even whether 'idiom' 
is a theoretical construct in linguistics amenable to clear definition. 
  And as I alluded to in another msg, the question of whether s.t. is 
compositional is difficult to pin down.  So is 'book cover' 
compositional?  I suspect not--putting a bowl over a book doesn't make 
the bowl a book cover--but someone might argue that this is world 
(encyclopedic) knowledge about the way books are made in our time.  When 
books were written on scrolls, a book cover would have been an entirely 
different thing; and if ten years from now you buy all your books on CD 
(or the future equivalent), then maybe a 'book cover' is s.t. like a 
jewel case.  So it's unclear how much of our knowledge about book covers 
is really definitional, or for that matter whether our knowledge about 
the meaning of a word or a multi-word lexeme can be distinguished from 
our world knowledge of the objects or concepts they represent, even in 
principle.  This is the debate over lexical vs. encyclopedic knowledge, 
and I'm going to have to defer to others on this issue.

Another issue is whether the term 'phrase' is relevant in this context, 
since many multi-word non-compositional expressions are not things you 
would call a phrase.  Either they're too small, more like a noun 
('manhole', 'dog house'), or they're incomplete as phrases ('look 
<something> up', 'crane <one's> neck').

> ...That is, since "on the 
> other hand" is a phrase, does the dictionary compiler analyze it as a lexeme 
> and include it as a dictionary entry if, in the compliler's opinion, it is 
> an idiom? 

Good question.
-- 
	Mike Maxwell
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu


 
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