[Lexicog] Invariance and exploitation

[Patrick Hanks]

> Succumb to the temptation.

Absolutely! -- Certain expletives ("kicked the bloody bucket") and
classifiers
("kicked the proverbial bucket") can be boldly inserted where no other
modifier dares to go. From my youth I dimly remember an Australian
humorous poem which contained a line that ran something like this:

   "Up in Wagga bloody Wagga shooting kanga-bloody-roos..."

These are not counterexamples, IMHO, to the norms of invariance in
Australian place names and vocabulary words.

What they suggest (to me, at least) is that linguistic theory needs to
distinguish
two kinds of competence: competence in using the norms of a language, and
competence in exploiting those norms. This is of course quite different from
the competence/performance distinction of traditional American linguistics.
I
suppose that all languages contain exploitation rules associated with each
set
of norms, but I do not know of any good account of exploitation rules in any
language. (Do you?) The phenomenon is rarely acknowledged for what it is
-- but lexicographically speaking, is it a very useful distinction.

Patrick



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Tuggy" <david_tuggy at sil.org>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 8:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Invariant Phases vs. " Kicked the proverbial bucket"


> Succumb to the temptation.
>
> --David Tuggy
>
> fieldworks_support at sil.org wrote:
> > I'm tempted to suggest that invariancy is a matter of degree.
> >
> > But also it can be a humorous use of language to vary an invariant
phrase.
> > Should a lexicographer include all possible humorous uses of words? In
my
> > opinion, not unless he was attempting something the scope of the OED.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Steve White, Jaars language software support
> > 704-843-6337, 1-800-215-7813
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >



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