And would
(4) Ellen and Gail get stoned as often as they can.
be a fourth instance? Or would it be a separate lexical item? It
probably started out as a metaphorical extension of the active voice "to
stone," but then took on other cultural and semantic trappings, giving
us words like "stoner," which is not a person who stones others (I'm
showing my 1960s roots). At some point the word splits into different
words whose relationship can be traced only by careful, dogged
etymological work. If past participles are the same word as the verb
they are formed from, and they're certainly part of the same lexeme,
then at some point meaning change in "seethe" vs. "sodden" led them to
become totally distinct words. Etymologically "sodden" is the past
participle of Old English seothan "to boil," from which we get Modern
English "seethe" by regular sound change. But the two words are no
longer related as far as speakers of English are concerned.
On another topic, the form/function distinction is important precisely
because it allows us to deal with grammatical variation in word use that
falls short of the seethe/sodden extreme. Edmund has raised the very
difficult question of whether there is such a thing as a lexical class,
and there are languages for which the answer almost certainly has to be
no, but given the rich derivational morphology of English I'm less
willing to say that we don't have lexical classes and that most words
don't clearly belong to one while they can be used, under strict
conditions, as members of another. There are, granted, words for which
we cannot make a clear argument as to which class is their primary home,
but the problem is not a statistical one as Edmund suggests; it's a
matter more of prototype theory. A word belongs to a class to the
extent that it has the traits that are prototypical of that class.
"May" has some properties of verbs, but not as many as "hit" has, and
this has led some grammarians to the position that modals are a separate
class in English. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it's clear that
"may" is one of the least verb-like of verbs. But this is more a matter
of prototype theory than of statistics.
There are some fairly abstruse definitions of the category "word" in the
various texts on morphology, but the one I like best and find most
teachable to undergraduates is Leonard Bloomfield's, going back to his
Language (1933), where he defines word as "a minimal free form." That
means that a word is the smallest piece of an utterance-remember
Bloomfield was a linguist and worked on speech, not writing-that can be
said by itself. So in a spoken sentence like
The ball's in play.
there are two words, "ball" and "play" (I'm staying clear of the
phonological vs. morphological word distinction). "The," "'s," and "in"
are not words because they are unstressed and therefore cannot be
pronounced by themselves, that is, if you try to pronounce them you get
something that sounds different from what's in the utterance above
because to isolate them in English you have to stress them, and that
changes them. This leads to a somewhat different description of English
morphology than we're used to, and it makes heavy use of the category
"clitic." A clitic is a form that is unstressed and so cannot be
pronounced alone. It attaches to a phrasal category rather than to a
lexical category, so "the" attaches to a noun phrase, not to a noun.
That makes clitics different from affixes. The -s in "balls" is a
suffix; the -'s in "ball's" is a clitic. On the scale of morphological
units, clitic sits between affix and word, sharing some but not all of
the properties of each.
Clearly this is a somewhat more technical definition of word than our
students are used to. They tend to assume that a word is anything you
write with spaces around it, a definition that doesn't get us very far
in linguistic analysis. You can present the "minimal free form"
definition without getting into the sort of complexity I've just
wallowed in, but it also allows students to begin to ask some
interesting questions.
Herb
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Adams
Sent: 2008-02-22 12:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Adverb?
This form vs function discussion is fascinating and frustrating. My
difficulty with it is illuminated by Bruce's comment: "I think that the
nouns tomorrow, and today are often adverbial in nature (as in your
examples), and that the adverb now is sometimes used as a noun (as in
'Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.')"
I don't understand what it means to say that a word, in this case,
tomorrow is "a noun that is adverbial in nature."
Why wouldn't a more elegant solution be to say that words can belong to
more than one word class and that which class a word is belongs to in a
particular utterance can only be determined in context. For example,
stone is a word that can be a noun, a verb, an adjective . . . perhaps
more. In sentence (1) below it is a noun, in (2) it is a verb, and in
(3) it is an adjective.
To me, this analysis is more intuitive and would, therefore, make
teaching these concepts to young (or old) students easier.
(1) Ellen picked up a stone.
(2) Ellen and Gail stone their enemies whenever they can.
(3) It is fortunate that Ellen lives in a stone house rather than a
glass one.
But all this leads me to a really basic question: what is a word? Is
stone the same word in these three sentences or three different words?
In fact, I wonder about a sentence like (4) below:
(4) This suitcase is heavier than the suitcase I carried yesterday.
Does (4) have ten words or nine, with one used twice? What do we mean
by the word word?
Peter
On Feb 21, 2008, at 3:05 PM, Bruce Despain wrote:
Geoff & Dick,
May I respond?
1) When I said "licensed by the verb" in my post, I was referring to
just such verbs as "arrive" that require the temporal adverbial,
expressed or understood. It seems that with this understood it is
possible to state it as a precondition on your movement of the temporal
adverbial to the fore: that complements be provided after it. (These
are all quite distinct from the adverbial adjunct.)
2) I think that the nouns tomorrow, and today are often adverbial in
nature (as in you examples), and that the adverb now is sometimes used
as a noun (as in "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of
their party."
Bruce
>>> Geoffrey Layton <[log in to unmask]> 02/21/08 12:43 PM >>>
Craig -
I'd like to put this question into the context of an issue that we seem
to continually (although sometimes it seems continuously) confront - the
impact of grammar instruction on writing. From my perspective, teaching
students whether (and how) these phrases function adverbially would fall
under the "grammar instruction has no effect and perhaps even a negative
effect on writing" dictum. Of more interest to me is the rhetorical
effect of starting or ending the sentence with adverbials, particularly
those that communicate WHEN information. For example, ending the
sentence with a WHEN adverbial ("He arrives a week from Thursday.")
effectively ends the sentence, whereas starting the sentence with an
adverbial almost forces the writer to continue writing. For example, a
sentence that starts with WHEN information ("A week from Thursday he
arrives") sounds very unfinished and awkward, but it has the benefit of
forcing the writer to expand the sentence with WHERE and WHY
information: "A week from Thursday, he arrives from San Francisco to
perform as the piano soloist with the Chicago Symphony." This is how I
like to use grammar.
Geoff
________________________________
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:49:59 -0500
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Adverb?
To: [log in to unmask]
Craig,
Would all of these be noun phrases functioning adverbially? (This is a
genuine question, not a challenge.)
He arrives a week from Thursday.
He arrives Thursday.
He arrives this afternoon.
He arrives tomorrow.
He arrives today.
He arrives now.
The first three seem to be noun phrases, but what about the last three?
Dick Veit
________________________________
Richard Veit
Department of English
University of North Carolina Wilmington
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf OfCraig Hancock
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 12:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Adverb?
Bruce,
I wonder about the confusion that might be caused by 3b) below: "A
noun phrase referring to a time period may be called an "adverbial
phrase."" My own tendency would be to say that it is a noun phrase
functioning adverbially within this context. It is also possible for the
same phrase (though it refers to a time period) to act in a different
role. "Last summer was hot." (Last summer as subject). "I hated last
summer." (Last summer as direct object complement of "hated".) I don't
think a noun like "summer" is an adverbial noun outside of context.
He left home. He went home. The first is transitive, the second
intransitive. The verb has an influence on the functional role.
We also have adverb phrases, like "so quickly" or "too often." I
would call them "adverb phrases" because an adverb functions as head.
To me, a "phrase" would refer to the internal structure of the word
group. Function (like adverbial) would be somewhat independent of that.
Craig
Bruce Despain wrote:
Janet,
I think that explaining "last summer" in your sentence needs to point
out a number of relationships.
1) It is a phrase, in that it consists of more than a single word.
1a) The (operational) limiting adjective "last" modifies the noun
"summer" designating a seasonal part of a year.
1b) "Summer" is one of those nouns that refers to a time period.
2) The phrase functions in the predicate as temporal modification.
2a) Temporal modification may be carried out by single words, which are
then called "adverbs."
2b) Temporal modification carried out by phrases are called "adverbial
phrases."
3) A noun that refers to a time period may often be used in the
predicate by itself as temporal modification.
3a) Such nouns are often called adverbial nouns.
3b) A noun phrase referring to a time period may be called an "adverbial
phrase."
The adverbial phrase in this case "last summer" is modifying the whole
subject-predicate combination "Reports of flying saucers were frequent."
Such phrases have been called "adverbial adjuncts" in the sense that
they are not licensed by the verb phrase, as many adverbial phrases are.
Such phrases are more freely attached to the sentence, much like
sentence adverbs (never, sometimes, always, immediately, etc.) regularly
are.
Bruce
>>> "Castilleja, Janet" <[log in to unmask]>
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> 02/20/08 4:27 PM >>>
How do you guys handle this kind of a sentence:
Reports of flying saucers were frequent last summer.
Do you call 'last summer' a noun phrase functioning as an adverb or do
you just call it an adverb phrase?
Janet Castilleja
Heritage University
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