[Lexicog] Defining verbs, etc.

[Wayne Leman]

  rtroike at email.arizona.edu wrote:
  > ...(Is
  > anyone old enough to remember the "God's Truth or Hocus-Pocus"
  > controversy? There can be no doubt that Chomsky's work is in the
  > hocus-pocus category, given the frequent radical changes in the
  > model.) For one thing, those interested in lexical decomposition
  > recognize that many (perhaps most) verbs consist of a covert
  > light verb component and a nominal component...

  I'm old enough, but deriving mono-morphemic verbs from covert components 
  is not hocus pocus :-? I thought that sort of thing went out with 
  Generative Semantics...

  As in "kill" = cause to die? I rather liked some of that stuff. But it doesn't work cross-linguistically, at least not unless we really want to have all those abstract covert categories which may never surface within a language.



  Wane



  -- 
  Mike Maxwell
  maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu


   
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