[Lexicog] Nouns

[Ron Moe]

This is actually getting a bit humorous. Maybe its just because it is now
late at night. If someone asks, "Does anyone want a hotdog in a bun loaded
with mayonnaise and sauerkraut and baked beans?" I might answer, "Sure, I'll
take two." If in your theory "two" stands for "two of those buns with
hotdogs in them that you are offering that are loaded with mayonnaise,
sauerkraut, and baked beans," then I will happily agree that "two" is a
degenerate NP. But in my dictionary entry for 'two', I sure wouldn't give it
the POS 'NP'. So I think Mike (below) hit the nail on the head.

Ron Moe

-----Original Message-----
From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of Mike Maxwell
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 6:56 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Nouns


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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