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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