Edmond:

A good many words, though by no means all, seem to have "default
settings" in English. As you point out, this may merely be a case of the
analyst creating what amounts to a stereotype based on observations of
frequency -- but then, sometimes frequency *does* crucially determine
the way people deal with things. If I use the word "invitation," instead
of the word "invite," speakers will likely have a higher expectation
that the word's showing up in a noun slot, even though modern speakers
can (and do) use "invite" as a noun sometimes and even though a host of
other structural cues will either confirm or contradict that
expectation. 

I'm trying to approach this in terms of expectations because I'd like to
avoid attributing some essential quality of "nouniness" to nouns, which
they then retain no matter how you use them. That's a classic Platonist
approach; it underlies much of traditional grammar, and it shows up in a
kind of biological costume in many modern theories, but I'm not sure how
to demonstrate the existence of an essential quality in any non-circular
way. On the other hand, I can think of ways to test for speakers'
expectations, and I do think frequency is relevant to them. I also do
not want to give the impression that I think every word should be
assigned strictly to a single lexical category; I just think that many
*can* be.

Regardless of how we approach this theoretically, there is also a
pedagogical dimension, and it's of particular relevance to ESL students.
Even if frequency *isn't* correlated with some kind of
category-assignment, it does serve as a good basis for working with
students who are trying to sound more like native English-speakers, or
even native-English-speakers who are trying to sound more like users of
formal written English. While I can say something like, "I've been
invitationed half to death" in the right context and pull it off, ESL
students are likely to be perceived as having trouble with the language
when they do something similar. If this were forty years ago, I could
say the same thing about native speakers using "impact" in verb slots.
Even when we move from "do this or you're making an error" to "do this
if you want to be perceived as a member of this particular speech
community," it's handy to have content to fill in for the "do this"
part.

Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edmond Wright
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 5:57 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Form and function

Janet and William,

Would it not be better to think of words as just as nameless entities
that
can be fitted into a range of function slots according to context?  Our
memories can make the requisite jumps even when the change is
unprecedented
as long as the contextual clues are obvious.  William, plumberhood may
take
precedence over lawnmowinghood in human life, but why should, say,
'noun' be
affixed to a word just because a majority of its uses are of the noun
type?
Are we, like the dictionary, just to count by numbers?  Where is the
linguistic characterization in that?  Even words with so-called
noun-endings
can be subverted (e.g. 'conversation piece').

Consider:


The stream ran through the wood.

The rays stream out in every colour.

The factory will be on stream next month.

Being a stream school, it won't present you with a range of abilities in
one
class.

Stream the atoms came in:  packets they went out.

Our output is going to be stream reliable -- no hiccups!


Edmond


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

Email: [log in to unmask]
Website: http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/elw33/
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