Peter,

 

Thanks for a useful cautionary note.  We make a distinction in
morphological theory between classes and processes like functional
shift, which is the reassignment of a member of one class to another.
As a morphological derivational process, functional shift is widely used
and highly productive in English.  Instead of adding a suffix, we do
nothing at all to the word except assign it to a new class.  

 

Tree drawing doesn't work terribly well in email, but I'm going to
attempt a tree and that I'll represent also as a labeled bracketing with
subscripted labels.  You'll need to read the text in HTML format for
this to work.

 

The clerk entered the reservation in the [N book N].

 

The clerk [V [V [N book N] V] -ed V] the reservation. 

   

          V

      /      \

   V         |

   |          |

   N         |

   |          |

book   -ed

 

What these representations are saying in terms of derivational
morphology is that the noun "book" is functionally shifted to be a verb
(the V brackets surrounding the N brackets.  The past tense suffix -ed
is added to the newly derived V and together with it makes up a new V
node.

 

And, of course, you're right that such derivational processes need to be
kept distinct from variation from prototype.

 

Herb

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Adams
Sent: 2008-02-29 22:18
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: But as a preposition?

 

 

On Feb 29, 2008, at 9:43 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:





But this just gets us back to the fact that lexical classes are

prototypes rather than discrete categories. 

 

Herb, I think it is useful to distinguish two separate sources of
difficulty with lexical classes.  One, comes from the idea that the
lexical classes are, as you put it so well, merely prototypes ("merely"
is my addition).  So the personal pronouns are strongly pronouns
displaying all their characteristics, while the indefinite pronouns are
just barely pronouns.  They don't have antecedents, don't have case,
gender, number, or person and they do form possessives with apostrophe
s.  

 

But a second source of difficulty with lexical classes stems from the
fact that words that fit centrally in one class can, in some contexts,
function in an entirely different class.  We "book" reservations, build
"stone" houses, and take a "drive."

 

Both of these characteristics of lexical classes seem to me to
contribute to the difficulty we, and especially our students, have when
we try to pin them down.

 

Peter Adams

Community College Baltimore County

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