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/ Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256 To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/