My dissertation (now many years in the past) involved a typological comparison of the way languages make nouns out of non-nouns -- I focussed on nouns referring to some participant in the action (like drive -> driver) rather than nouns referring to the action itself (refuse -> refusal). As might be expected, almost the first third of the darn thing was my attempt to wrestle with definitions (if you think it's a headache in English, try getting a non-circular definition of "noun" that can apply to multiple languages). There was a kind of commonality, though: if a language has some kind of marker of nouniness, it will tend to show up the minute you try to make a comment about something. In English, for example, if you can put a single word in the blank in a sentence like, "I don't really like _____" or "We talked about ___________" it's acting like a noun -- and if it doesn't have an -ing suffix, it probably is, in fact, a full noun. I suspect this has a relation to Cognitive Grammar's notion of bounded spaces, since in effect you're having to hold a notion "steady" in order to then tinker with it via commenting on it; it's establishing the difference based on discourse role rather than conceptualization, though. Greek terms transliterated as "onoma" and "rhema" (I can't figure out how to do Greek orthography in email, and I wouldn't remember where the squiggly bits go anyway) are the basis for our modern division of sentences into subject and predicate -- but "onoma" just means "name" (it's the basis for "noun"), and I can't find any real evidence that "rhema" early on really meant "predicate" as opposed to simply "the stuff you say about the thing you just named" (I have to stress here that "can't find any real evidence" should in no way be taken as meaning there is none -- there may be tons, but I haven't run across it). If "rhema" really was just "what you say about the thing you just named" though, it didn't really mean "predicate," but rather "comment," roughly -- and thus "noun" is basically right back to "what you can make a comment about." And to chime in on hellbound handbasketness: I wonder what would happen if English teachers systematically treated expressions like "pre-owned vehicle" or "free gift" as being as "bad" as, or even "worse" than, expressions like "There's two books on the table" or "Bob and me went to the movies." Bill Spruiell Dept. of English Central Michigan University ________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Johanna Rubba Sent: Thu 6/12/2008 3:06 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Anthimeria: Hell in a handbasket Try calling nouns labels for categories. For that matter, all words are labels for concepts. Common nouns are labels for types of things. The structuralists came up with classifications based on distribution and co-occurence in part in order to do better than the meaning-based definitions. Hence a noun is a word that acts like a noun: it takes plural suffixes, can appear alone after an article, and so on. Cognitive Grammar posits extremely abstract definitions for parts of speech, e.g., a noun is a bounded region in some domain; a verb is a relational predication with a temporal profile. It would take a long essay to explain these. Also, nouns and verbs are gradable categories such that some nouns are "nounier" than others, some verbs "verbier" than others, and so on. Cog. Grammar posits lists of criteria for each category. Discourse-based grammar posits yet different criteria for defining nouns and verbs based on their discourse functions. Of course, it is not practical to try to use these theoretical definitions in classrooms. I have found in at least one case that the structural definitions work at the middle-school level, once the kids catch on that they are using their own judgment to decide whether a usage sounds correct or not. As to hell in a handbasket, I don't see any difference in using "leverage" as a verb and using "eyeball" as a verb. Both are anthimeria. Judgments of them are purely subjective. That isn't to say that all use of language is equal. A good deal of language of government, advertising, and so on is deliberately obfuscatory. As to examples like "leverage", perhaps these are jargon that their users find necessary to name business concepts, or perhaps they are merely markers of insider status. These are common functions of language, and there isn't much we can do about them. Language is both a reflection of and a manipulator of thought. If thought goes to hell, language will. If someone wants to use language to euphemize (e.g., "collateral damage" for dead or injured noncombatants), then it is up to someone else to point it out and hold such people accountable. Correcting language won't do any good if the thought behind it doesn't change. Dr. Johanna Rubba, Ph. D. Associate Professor, Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Dept. Cal Poly State University San Luis Obispo San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 Ofc. tel. : 805-756-2184 Dept. tel.: 805-756-2596 Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 E-mail: [log in to unmask] URL: cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba 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/