[Lexicog] Re: Lexical Relations vs. Etymology

[David Frank]

Ken --

In response to your query, I think the consensus is that etymologies and calques are basically in the same category, namely inheritance from another language (including older forms of the same language). I suppose it is possible, though, that a phrase could be a calque from one language, and the words that make up the phrase have etymologies from other languages. Why do you ask, anyway? I would imagine that you are trying to figure out how to label something as being a calque in a dictionary you are working on, and you are using Shoebox to develop the dictionary. So the question then is how one would mark something as being a calque in a Shoebox database, and then print it out the way you would want it to look.

Now as to the issue of whether a phrase can be a noun, I would still say no. You say that "vital statistics office" functions as a noun. I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I think that "functions as a noun" and "is a noun" might be two different things. I might call a phrase like that a lexeme or count it as a lexical entry, but that doesn't mean it is a word. Nouns are words, and phrases consist of more than one word.

We have these noun combinations all over the place in English, where one noun modifies or qualifies another. Many years ago I remember reading an article about this phenomenon in Verbatim. For example, the U.S. National Parks Service (note "parks" modifying "service") is establishing a Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Heritage is a noun that modifies Corridor. And there is a government commission to oversee the development of the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which is called the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission. A horrible name, really, but I hear this phrase a lot these days because I happen to be a member of a Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission. That makes me a Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission member. And if we were to meet over dinner, I suppose you could call it a Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission member dinner. This kind of recursion could go on forever, where a noun is embedded in a noun phrase as a modifier of the head noun.

Since I don't know the languages you were originally talking about, what I am saying is based on English as an example. The only thing that keeps the English phrase "vital statistics office" from being a complete NP is the addition of a determiner at the beginning. One might call it a complex nucleus of a noun phrase.

The best analysis I have see of this phenomenon in English, where one noun modifies another, is a book by Peter Fries (1970), Tagmeme Sequences in the English Noun Phrase. He calls the slot where one noun modifies another, a margin of close-knit modification.

-- David F

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kenneth Keyes 
  To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 11:28 AM
  Subject: RE: [Lexicog] Re: Lexical Relations vs. Etymology


  David, 

  Thanks for responding. What I was trying to demonstrate here was that this kk phrase is a compound noun is calque derived from the Russian "zapis aktov grazhdanskovo sostajanijie" = record of documentation of the situation of citizens, i.e. vital statistics office. 

  I believe while this is a phrase, "vital statistics office" functions as a noun. The phrase "vital statistics" also functions as a noun.  What I am trying to establish is, what relationship do calques have to their original "loanwords"? For example, a common kk calque for typesetting is maetin tery "to pick texts" which is a calque from the Russian nabor tekstov, lit. "collection of texts". This sounds strange in kk to me, it sounds like you're picking fruit off a tree. There are many, many such calques in kk, as the language struggles to transform itself from vocabulary suitable for nomadic herdsmen to one which can accomodate a modern technological society. 

  Ken



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  From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com [mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of David Frank
  Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 10:18 AM
  To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
  Subject: [Lexicog] Re: Lexical Relations vs. Etymology


   

  I can't read Cyrillic script and I'm not too familiar with Shoebox or Toolbox or FieldWorks, but I think I see two problems here. It looks to me like you are citing an example of a phrase, and I would not try to give an etymology for a phrase. Words have etymologies; phrases don't. Or in the case of a calque, I suppose you could consider the source from another language as being a kind of etymology, but we wouldn't usually describe phrases as having etymologies.

  Also, I wouldn't assign a part of speech to a phrase either. It looks like you are calling this phrase a noun, and I don't think that is appropriate. A phrase may contain a noun but wouldn't be called a noun or any other part of speech. Instead of a word class label, some people might want to assign a label that would be appropriate to phrases such as "phr" or "np", but I prefer to just leave the part of speech blank for anything I would put into a dictionary that is comprised of more than one word.

  -- David Frank
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