[Lexicog] Nouns

[Mike Maxwell]

billposer at alum.mit.edu wrote:
> Actually, Chomsky and I believe pretty much all generative grammarians
> as well as many non-generative syntacticians would call "grits"
> BOTH a noun AND an NP. As a word, its a noun, but when it appears in
> a sentence it may be an NP by itself. 

I agree with Bill, obviously (I could hardly do otherwise, since he's 
agreeing with me!).  As I think back over why this has even come up as 
an issue, I wonder whether the problem comes from thinking about what 
POS would be assigned to a word or sequence of words in a lexical entry 
in a dictionary, vs. what category some word or words would have in a 
syntactic parse of a sentence (like "Grits is good")?  In the first 
instance, 'grits' would obviously be listed as a noun; in the second, it 
would be both a Noun and an NP (or perhaps other phrasal or semi-phrasal 
categories, under some theories, but let's not get into that!).

    Mike McSwell


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