Predication with _beautiful of face_

[Joan Bresnan]

Hi.
For the "weak of mind", "slender of body" examples, you suggest a
possible analysis in which "weak" or "slender" is predicated of the
object of the preposition `of', which is the possession of the
subject: He is weak of mind => His mind is weak, etc.  One could
certainly do c- to f-structure  gymnastics to produce these relations,
but I wonder whether that is the right kind of approach...

Why don't we say:

   He is checkered of coat.  ==> His coat is checkered.
   He is happy of bulldogs.  ==> His bulldogs are happy.
   He is beaufiful of sports cars. ==> His sports cars are beautiful.
   He is expensive of school. ==> His school is expensive.
   He is hairless of chihuahua?  ==> His chihuahua is hairless.

It seems to me that in the "A of N" construction, the A really is
predicated of the subject, and the `of' phrase semantically restricts
the adjectival property to something which is an inherent part or
property of the subject.

I am not familiar with the Arabic construction, though.   Perhaps it
is not so restricted?

Your query raises the important issue of how far
f-structure should be semantically motivated.  You may have seen the
very interesting paper on this topic by Helge Dyvik, given at LFG 99
in Manchester: "The Universality of F-structure: Discovery or
Stipulation? The Case of Modals".

Best wishes,

Joan Bresnan







> Hi,
>
> I'm wondering if anyone in the LFG community has considered or could
> reflect upon constructions like the following (these are all examples I
> pulled off the web):
>
> 	"Dietrich was slender of body and of medium height "
> 	"She is slender of build and graceful in movement
> 	"She remembered when she was round of belly, ripe tropical as a
> setting moon"
> 	"The fact is simple: Bush is weak. He is weak of mind. He is not very
> smart. He is weak of body "
>
> and so on.
>
> The issue is how the predication between the subject in such an example
> and the predicate would be represented. Intuitively, saying that "Bush
> is weak of mind" is equivalent (at least truth-conditionally) to saying
> that "Bush's mind is weak" or "Bush has a weak mind." In other words,
> "weak" seems like it should be predicated of "mind," rather than Bush.
> In LFG terms, this should mean that _weak_ subcategorizes for a (SUBJ)
> function, and that _mind_ should fill it, or that it is an adjunct
> modifying _mind_.
>
> However, if I assume that a predicational clause is represented as a
> functional control structure, then I would expect - at least in
> syntactic terms - that _weak_ should be predicated of Bush. Say that
> _be_ is a raising verb, and _weak of mind_ is its XCOMP. Then  _Bush_
> should fill the SUBJ-function in the PRED-function of  _weak_.  But if
> that is the case, then it's not clear to me what role _of mind_ is
> playing.
>
> I would say that in English, examples like this have a slightly bookish
> feel, so maybe they're a marginal phenomenon, but in other languages
> (such as Standard Arabic) they are very productive, and considered good
> style, so even if an analysis might be of marginal concern for English,
> it would be very useful elsewhere.
>
> Thanks for any thoughts,
>
> Fred Hoyt
>
>
> Frederick M. Hoyt
> Linguistics Department
> University of Texas at Austin
> fmhoyt at mail.utexas.edu
>
> --Apple-Mail-2-718458244
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> Content-Type: text/enriched;
> 	charset=US-ASCII
>
> Hi,
>
>
> I'm wondering if anyone in the LFG community has considered or could
> reflect upon constructions like the following (these are all examples
> I pulled off the web):
>
>
> <fontfamily><param>Arial</param>	"Dietrich <bold>was slender of
> </bold>body and of medium height "
>
> 	"She <bold>is slender of </bold>build and graceful in movement
>
> 	"She remembered when she <bold>was round of </bold>belly, ripe
> tropical as a setting moon"
>
> 	"The fact is simple: Bush is weak. He <bold>is weak of </bold>mind.
> He is not very smart. He <bold>is weak of </bold>body "
>
>
> and so on.
>
>
> The issue is how the predication between the subject in such an
> example and the predicate would be represented. Intuitively, saying
> that "Bush is weak of mind" is equivalent (at least
> truth-conditionally) to saying that "Bush's mind is weak" or "Bush has
> a weak mind." In other words, "weak" seems like it should be
> predicated of "mind," rather than Bush. In LFG terms, this should mean
> that _weak_ subcategorizes for a (SUBJ) function, and that _mind_
> should fill it, or that it is an adjunct modifying _mind_.
>
>
> However, if I assume that a predicational clause is represented as a
> functional control structure, then I would expect - at least in
> syntactic terms - that _weak_ should be predicated of Bush. Say that
> _be_ is a raising verb, and _weak of mind_ is its XCOMP. Then  _Bush_
> should fill the SUBJ-function in the PRED-function of  _weak_.  But if
> that is the case, then it's not clear to me what role _of mind_ is
> playing.
>
>
> I would say that in English, examples like this have a slightly
> bookish feel, so maybe they're a marginal phenomenon, but in other
> languages (such as Standard Arabic) they are very productive, and
> considered good style, so even if an analysis might be of marginal
> concern for English, it would be very useful elsewhere.
>
>
> Thanks for any thoughts,
>
>
> Fred Hoyt
>
> </fontfamily>
>
>
> Frederick M. Hoyt
>
> Linguistics Department
>
> University of Texas at Austin
>
> fmhoyt at mail.utexas.edu
>
>
> --Apple-Mail-2-718458244--