Herb,
   I can't help wondering what the argument would be for limiting 
lexical categories to what we can learn from morphology and syntax. 
Isn't that prejudiced toward a formal or structural view of language?
   One exercise I often do with a writing class for a "show not tell" 
conversation involves looking at levels of abstractness and 
concreteness: for example,  from "thing" to "machine" to "car" to "Ford" 
to "Mustang". Can we describe many nouns in terms of their place on or 
outside of that kind of  continuum? Can we categorize words on the basis 
of some sort of cognitive or semantic criteria or on the basis of a role 
in discourse? Can we have a category like "verbal process" that may 
include verbs that differ from each other in other ways? ("said" and 
"told", for example.) How about a list of words you wouldn't use in 
polite company?
   You seem to admit yourself that some languages seem to have no 
lexical categories if we use  strict morpho-syntactic tests. It's hard 
for me to believe there is no useful way to distinguish word types in 
those languages.
   If language has a deep role in cognition and is deeply context 
sensitive, shouldn't our lexical categories reflect that?

Craig


STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
> Edmond, and I think I've spelled your name right for a change,
>
> It's been some time since I read Aitchison's book, although I remember it as a fine piece.  But the question of what the lexical categories are in a particular language is a morphosyntactic one.  That is, a language has words of category X if there are morphological and syntactic traits that define that category.  Thus number words in English are a lexical category.  Morphologically they allow the suffixes -th (fourth), -fold (fourfold), and -some (foursome), suffixes that are rarely found on words of other categories.  (A different -th, one that is no longer productive, occurs on some nouns derived historically from adjectives, as in depth, youth, height, etc., and -fold also affixes to the quantifier "many.")  And syntactically number words must occur after any determiner, if one is present in the noun phrase, and before all adjectives.  Obviously the less derivational morphology a language has the less evidence there will be in the language for lexical categories.  Some syntactic traits may still exist, but not much beyond that.  
>
> If the ontogeny of pidgins is a model, as Derek Bickerton maintains, for the some aspects of the evolution of language, then it's very likely the case that morphosyntactic evidence for lexical categories in a language is the result of long periods of language change.  Tok Pisin, spoken in Papua-New Guinea, is an example of a post-pidgin creole that has developed some, at this point, highly regular and productive inflectional and derivational morphology, and so arguments can be made for lexical categories in TP.  The case is rather more difficult to make in a language like Vietnamese or Mandarin, where there is neither inflectional nor derivational morphology, and, in fact, in both languages there are serious problems with defining lexical categories.
>
> I would argue, then, that whether a language has lexical categories is a function of how much morphology it has.  A sort of argument can be made for a language like Yupik or West Greenlandic that the only lexical category is verb; everything else is an affix.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Edmond Wright
> Sent: 2008-02-24 10:49
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Form and function
>
> Herb is surely right about degrees of constraint for the more one deviates,
> the more one is demanding of our fellow-speakers.  I think teachers must
> still try to avoid giving the impression that he apportionment of function
> is a given of any kind outside curent usage.  For the definitions of Noun,
> Verb, and we can include Adjective it is important not to fall into the
> prejudices about the real that language itself induces.  Useful here to turn
> to what Jean Aitchison says in her interesting book The Seeds of Speech:
> Language Origin and Evolution (Aitchison, 1996: 133):
>
>  
> 'Nouns are at one end of a continuum, with words that retain their identity
> through time, such as dog, mountain, sky.  Verbs are at the other end, with
> words that involve rapid change, such as jump, hit, swim.  In the middle
> come properties, some semi-permanent, as in a large elephant, a round pond,
> a green frog, and some temporary, as in an angry bull, a happy baby, a hot
> day.' (ibid., 132)
>
>  
> She then shows how languages differ in this regard, pointing out that there
> is an indefinite borderline between nouns and adjectives on the one hand,
> and verbs and adjectives on the other.  She thus goes on to illustrate the
> point from English:
>
>  'Some adjectives seem more like nouns, as in a gold watch, a tin tray,
> others more like verbs, as in a lasting peace, a whistling kettle.' (ibid.)
>
>  What is important is to ask to what kind of a Œcontinuum¹ she is referring.
> It appears that she just means that there is a gradation of meaning in the
> words themselves so that we could set them out in some kind of ascending
> order from stability to changeableness. But what cannot be left out here is
> the actual continuum, the changeable real, Œmatter¹, the Œhyle¹ of the
> Greeks, Heraclitus¹s flow of becoming ‹ whatever you like to call it ‹ upon
> which people are hopefully endeavouring, if they are not lying, to get a
> mutual fix with their statements to each other. As the word Œupdating¹ makes
> clear, this is a serious engagement with the contingencies of time.  What we
> apply these functional devices we call Œparts of speech¹ to is a matter of
> human choice.  The word Œmatter¹ itself gives away the fact that we are
> trying to divide up the continuum of the real together so that our purposes
> will keep in harmony both with the real and with each other across persons.
> So what we apply them to must reflect our immediate and long-term
> preferences, those that our bodies and the society our bodies try to
> maintain out of the real in the hope of success, and not necessarily
> anything given in its separateness in the real. Consider these words of
> Ernest Fenellosa as he is reflecting on Chinese poetry (The Chinese Written
> Character as a Medium for Poetry, London:  Stanley Nott, 1936: 511):
>
>  
> A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exist in nature.  Things are only
> the terminal points, or rather the meeting points of actions, cross-sections
> cut through actions, snapshots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion,
> be possible in nature.  The eye sees noun and verb as one:  things in
> motion, motion in things, and so the Chinese conception tends to represent
> them.'
>
>
> 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/
> Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256
>
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