My dissertation (now many years in the past) involved a typological comparison of the way languages make nouns out of non-nouns -- I focussed on nouns referring to some participant in the action (like drive -> driver) rather than nouns referring to the action itself (refuse -> refusal). As might be expected, almost the first third of the darn thing was my attempt to wrestle with definitions (if you think it's a headache in English, try getting a non-circular definition of "noun" that can apply to multiple languages). There was a kind of commonality, though: if a language has some kind of marker of nouniness, it will tend to show up the minute you try to make a comment about something. In English, for example, if you can put a single word in the blank in a sentence like, "I don't really like _____" or "We talked about ___________" it's acting like a noun -- and if it doesn't have an -ing suffix, it probably is, in fact, a full noun. I suspect this has a relation to Cognitive Grammar's notion of bounded spaces, since in effect you're having to hold a notion "steady" in order to then tinker with it via commenting on it; it's establishing the difference based on discourse role rather than conceptualization, though.
Greek terms transliterated as "onoma" and "rhema" (I can't figure out how to do Greek orthography in email, and I wouldn't remember where the squiggly bits go anyway) are the basis for our modern division of sentences into subject and predicate -- but "onoma" just means "name" (it's the basis for "noun"), and I can't find any real evidence that "rhema" early on really meant "predicate" as opposed to simply "the stuff you say about the thing you just named" (I have to stress here that "can't find any real evidence" should in no way be taken as meaning there is none -- there may be tons, but I haven't run across it). If "rhema" really was just "what you say about the thing you just named" though, it didn't really mean "predicate," but rather "comment," roughly -- and thus "noun" is basically right back to "what you can make a comment about."
And to chime in on hellbound handbasketness: I wonder what would happen if English teachers systematically treated expressions like "pre-owned vehicle" or "free gift" as being as "bad" as, or even "worse" than, expressions like "There's two books on the table" or "Bob and me went to the movies."
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Johanna Rubba
Sent: Thu 6/12/2008 3:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Anthimeria: Hell in a handbasket
Try calling nouns labels for categories. For that matter, all words
are labels for concepts. Common nouns are labels for types of things.
The structuralists came up with classifications based on distribution
and co-occurence in part in order to do better than the meaning-based
definitions. Hence a noun is a word that acts like a noun: it takes
plural suffixes, can appear alone after an article, and so on.
Cognitive Grammar posits extremely abstract definitions for parts of
speech, e.g., a noun is a bounded region in some domain; a verb is a
relational predication with a temporal profile. It would take a long
essay to explain these. Also, nouns and verbs are gradable categories
such that some nouns are "nounier" than others, some verbs "verbier"
than others, and so on. Cog. Grammar posits lists of criteria for
each category.
Discourse-based grammar posits yet different criteria for defining
nouns and verbs based on their discourse functions.
Of course, it is not practical to try to use these theoretical
definitions in classrooms. I have found in at least one case that the
structural definitions work at the middle-school level, once the kids
catch on that they are using their own judgment to decide whether a
usage sounds correct or not.
As to hell in a handbasket, I don't see any difference in using
"leverage" as a verb and using "eyeball" as a verb. Both are
anthimeria. Judgments of them are purely subjective.
That isn't to say that all use of language is equal. A good deal of
language of government, advertising, and so on is deliberately
obfuscatory. As to examples like "leverage", perhaps these are jargon
that their users find necessary to name business concepts, or perhaps
they are merely markers of insider status. These are common functions
of language, and there isn't much we can do about them.
Language is both a reflection of and a manipulator of thought. If
thought goes to hell, language will. If someone wants to use language
to euphemize (e.g., "collateral damage" for dead or injured
noncombatants), then it is up to someone else to point it out and
hold such people accountable. Correcting language won't do any good
if the thought behind it doesn't change.
Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Dept.
Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184
Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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