LL-L: "Grammar" LOWLANDS-L, 22.JAN.2001 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

 ======================================================================
  L O W L A N D S - L * 22.JAN.2001 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
  Posting Address: <lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>
  Web Site: <http://www.geocities.com/sassisch/rhahn/lowlands/>
  User's Manual: <http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html>
  Archive: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html>
  =======================================================================
  A=Afrikaans, Ap=Appalachean, D=Dutch, E=English, F=Frisian, L=Limburgish
  LS=Low Saxon (Low German), S=Scots, Sh=Shetlandic, Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
  =======================================================================

From: Colin Wilson [lcwilson at starmail.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Grammar" LOWLANDS-L, 21.JAN.2001 (01) [E/German]

At 14:34 21/01/01 -0800, Stefan Israel wrote:
>
>Does the same goes for adjectives?
>You can argue whether the "opera" of "she's an opera person" is
>an adjective or part of a noun phrase.  What if someone said
>"she's a very opera person, more opera than he is"?   That
>doesn't sound quite right to my ears.

Even so, it might happen! Over the last few years we've gone from
"X is a key point (in the plan)" to "X is a very key point, even more
key than Y is".

With language (with English at least), anything can happen.

Colin Wilson.

*********************************************************************
                               the graip wis tint, the besom wis duin
Colin Wilson                   the barra wadna row its lane
writin fae Aiberdein           an sicna soss it nivver wis seen
                               lik the muckin o Geordie's byre
**********************************************************************

----------

From: john feather [johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk]
Subject: Grammar

Stefan wrote:
>German has many ways to derive different parts of speech from a given
noun,
adjective or verb, but the resulting word is still clearly marked by the
ubiquitous endings ... The topic Ron has raised is the radical volitility
of
English parts of speech, often with no morphological marking. In English
you
can off someone, up a price, etc. without having to add any derivational
affixes; German is not nearly so flexible.<

Well, in Ron's example, "dilled" was obviously a past participle being used

as an adjective, so its grammatical function was clearly marked by an
ending.

It seemed to me that one aspect of his question was whether the lack of
morphology in English made it easier to create a new word from another with

a different grammatical function. That was the point I was trying to
address. Eggers points out (as I said) that the verbal concept "denken" is
readily transformed into noun and adjective forms. He also (of course)
points out German's great ability to create new words by adding concepts
together, eg Lärm (noun) + erzeugen (verb) => lärmerzeugend (adjective),
Lärmerzeugung (noun), Lärmerzeuger (noun). Of course it is more difficult
to
make a prefix/suffix-free word in German than in English, but is that worth

saying?

Ron later wrote:
>What I am trying to say is that rules may be relatively lax, but there are

always rules nevertheless, i.e., limits in the creation of words, including

lexical derivation. <

I don't agree that language has rules in this sense. (We _create_ rules to
reduce the complexities of language to manageable levels.)

Ron's argument is confounded (I think) if there is a verb formed from a
relevant noun which he thinks is not valid but which can be shown to be so.

I will bid "vinegar". In Britain we "vinegar" our chips (apply the
condiment
to our fries). Chambers Etymological Dictionary does not record this word
as
a verb in US usage. If it is correct in this, and unless we say that the
"rule" differs in the two varieties of the language, there is no rule.

BTW 1, one version of the vinegaring agent is decribed on the bottle as
"Non-brewed condiment", meaning that it is actually dilute industrial
acetic
acid. Years ago (late 1940s ?) there was a British fiasco called the
"groundnut scheme", whose aim was to grow peanuts in Tanganyika to
alleviate
the shortage of cooking oil. (I suppose if they had called it the "peanut
scheme" or "monkey-nut scheme" people wouldn't have taken it seriously.)
The
Government announced the scheme by saying that the staple of the British
diet was fish and chips, that Britain was surrounded with fish and its
fields were groaning with their load of potatoes but there was nothing to
fry them in. Nowadays most of the fish have gone but we get our condiment
from North Sea oil instead.

BTW 2, I have just eaten something called "Salsa wedge bake". That would
probably have been linguistically impossible just 3 years ago.

How about an epigram: "The future is a foreign country, they speak a
different language there." In that language they may happily pepperoni
their
pizzas or meatball their spaghetti or marjoram their macaroni. Until we get

there we shan't know.

John Feather johnfeather at sceptic1.freeserve.co.uk

==================================END===================================
  You have received this because your account has been subscribed upon
  request. To unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l"
  as message text from the same account to
  <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org> or sign off at
  <http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html>.
  =======================================================================
  * Please submit contributions to <lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org>.
  * Contributions will be displayed unedited in digest form.
  * Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
  * Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l") are
    to be sent to <listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org> or at
    <http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html>.
  * Please use only Plain Text format, not Rich Text (HTML) or any other
    type of format, in your submissions
  =====================================================================