Re: "Über"-use

Here is a sentence I always struggle with when I'm trying to explain sentence structure to students: the best is yet to come. 'best' seems so clearly to be an adjective and yet is so clearly functioning as a noun would function. We somehow always seem to stumble on a sentence like this right after I’ve discussed comparatives and modifiers.

Janet Castilleja

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar 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/ ========================================================================Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2008 17:12:35 -0400 Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> Sender: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> From: Linda Di Desidero <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Morphology In-Reply-To: A<[log in to unmask]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01C8CA75.89BAE4B4" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------_=_NextPart_001_01C8CA75.89BAE4B4 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Janet: "We somehow always seem to stumble on a sentence like this right after I've discussed comparatives and modifiers." How convenient in demonstrating the creative aspects of human language--I think it's great that you stumble on these counter-examples! If nothing else, it takes the edge off of the "correctness mentality" that so many students (and teachers) seem to have. I think it can make the study of grammar much less intimidating to know that there aren't always absolute answers to all questions--or at least that a word doesn't only fit in a single grammatical category, and that category can also depend on function/use (not just lexical semantics). Linda ----------------------------------------------------- Linda Di Desidero, Ph.D. Acting Director, Communication Studies & Professional Writing Communication, Arts, and Humanities University of Maryland University College 3501 University Boulevard East Adelphi, MD 20783-8083 (240) 582-2830 (department) (240) 582-2928 (office) (240) 582-2993 (fax) ________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Castilleja, Janet Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 1:28 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Here is a sentence I always struggle with when I'm trying to explain sentence structure to students: the best is yet to come. 'best' seems so clearly to be an adjective and yet is so clearly functioning as a noun would function. We somehow always seem to stumble on a sentence like this right after I've discussed comparatives and modifiers. Janet Castilleja -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 3:13 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Natalie, The "shift vs. ellipsis" argument with examples like "Hey beautiful," as well as more general "shift vs. zero-affixation" arguments, tend to be decided by particular linguists on the basis of other positions they've adopted in their theories -- in other words, I don't think it's possible to step back and look at "linguistics in general" and give a "right" decision on any of those. Those cases don't give analysts any empirical traction to work with, basically, and in the absence of any way to falsify either of the two propositions involved ("there's nothing there" vs. "there's a nothing there"), we just fall back on internal consistency. I suppose it's theoretically possible to resolve the issue if we ever get to the point where we can verify whether there is or isn't a specific subassembly of neurons that fire off whenever a test subject processes an example in which there's a putative gap, but given the number of random factors involved, I don't know if that will ever become feasible. Having said that, the way I would approach "Hey beautiful" is to treat "beautiful" as a deadjectival noun, partly because so many expressions occur that are similar but have an unambiguous noun in the second position (e.g. "Hey dude," "hey knucklehead") that I can't see maintaining the notion that "beautiful" is SO tied to adjectival function that it has to constitute an exception in that use (apologies for the constant barrage of different forms of "that"!). Such an approach does, however, leave me with a bit of a problem if someone uses an expression like "Hey dearest," since the superlative suffix is very adjective-y. 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 Natalie Gerber Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 9:10 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Bill and all, Thank you for catching and for so gently correcting my erroneous example. Would you suggest a reading that clarifies why or how the morphological analysis of functional shift differs from zero affixation with inflectional morphemes? On a slightly different topic, too, how would you analyze an example in which an adjective stands in for a noun, as in Hey, beautiful! Would this be considered an instance of functional shift or rather an instance in which an element is understood to be gapped (if that's the right parlance), i.e. the noun. All best, Natalie Gerber ________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Spruiell, William C Sent: Thu 5/29/2008 5:52 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology I've seen some accounts that appear to be treating all "affixless category-changing derivation" as zero-affixation -- but it's because of a theoretical position that forces that kind of analysis. If I remember correctly (with an even bigger *if* than is usual), there are approaches that mandate that the grammatical category of a complex element be that of its head, even in morphology. Thus, a deverbal noun (for example) has to have a nominal "head." With normal category-shifting affixes, such approaches can treat the affix as the head, so "motion" has "-tion" as a head, and "move" governed by it. With functional conversion, the zero has to "be" there so it can act as a head with a grammatical category. Zero elements make me skittish -- they're too easy to "cheat" with in theory construction -- so I particularly like the approach Herb lays out, where they're limited to exception cases in paradigms where other words would have affixes. I'm even happier just to think of them as notational conventions, since (to mangle a classic line) I'm not sure how one would establish whether or not there's any "there" there. 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 STAHLKE, HERBERT F Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 2:47 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Zero affixation is different from functional shift, as Natalie's example suggests. The plural of "deer" is "deer." That would be considered zero affixation, where some, usually ill-defned, subset of a word class does not take the expected suffix. Usually zero suffixation is inflectional, as with this plural example. Functional shift is a derivational process. In a language like English where there is so much inflectional morphology and so little of it regular, there is no expected suffix for changing a word from a noun to a verb, or from any category to any other category, and so the terms "functional shift," "zero derivation," and "conversion" are ways of labeling changes in word class that have no effect on stem form. Herb ________________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Natalie Gerber [[log in to unmask]] Sent: May 29, 2008 2:01 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Just to second Kathleen's note. What I've read on morphology does consider functional shift to be a morphological change and records this by calling such changes as zero affix, which accounts for the fact that, e.g., in irregular noun plurals there is no -s, or derivational affix attached. John, if it's of interest, I can send a short lesson on morphology created by a Ph.D. in linguistics that will help address this. Natalie Gerber SUNY Fredonia ________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Kathleen M. Ward Sent: Thu 5/29/2008 11:10 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology My speciality is certainly not morphology, but all the books I've read call this kind of "derivation without change in form" a morphological change that is variously called "conversion," "functional shift," or "zero-morph derivation. Kathleen M. Ward UC Davis On May 29, 2008, at 7:34 AM, John Crow wrote: If a word changes function but does not change form, is that considered to be a morphological change? For example, rich, normally considered to be an adjective, can easily function as a noun (the rich). If it becomes an adverb (richly), morphology is obviously involved here. What about the adjective-to-noun shift? Thanks, John 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/ 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/ 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/ 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/ 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/ ------_=_NextPart_001_01C8CA75.89BAE4B4 Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Janet: "We somehow always seem to stumble on a sentence like this right after I’ve discussed comparatives and modifiers."

How convenient in demonstrating the creative aspects of human language--I think it's great that you stumble on these counter-examples! If nothing else, it takes the edge off of the "correctness mentality" that so many students (and teachers) seem to have. I think it can make the study of grammar much less intimidating to know that there aren't always absolute answers to all questions--or at least that a word doesn't only fit in a single grammatical category, and that category can also depend on function/use (not just lexical semantics).

Linda

-----------------------------------------------------

Linda Di Desidero, Ph.D.

Acting Director, Communication Studies & Professional Writing

Communication, Arts, and Humanities

University of Maryland University College

3501 University Boulevard East

Adelphi, MD 20783-8083

(240) 582-2830 (department)

(240) 582-2928 (office)

(240) 582-2993 (fax)

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Castilleja, Janet
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 1:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Morphology

Janet Castilleja

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 3:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Morphology

Natalie,

The "shift vs. ellipsis" argument with examples like "Hey beautiful,"

as well as more general "shift vs. zero-affixation" arguments, tend to

be decided by particular linguists on the basis of other positions

they've adopted in their theories -- in other words, I don't think it's

possible to step back and look at "linguistics in general" and give a

"right" decision on any of those. Those cases don't give analysts any

empirical traction to work with, basically, and in the absence of any

way to falsify either of the two propositions involved ("there's nothing

there" vs. "there's a nothing there"), we just fall back on internal

consistency. I suppose it's theoretically possible to resolve the issue

if we ever get to the point where we can verify whether there is or

isn't a specific subassembly of neurons that fire off whenever a test

subject processes an example in which there's a putative gap, but given

the number of random factors involved, I don't know if that will ever

become feasible.

Having said that, the way I would approach "Hey beautiful" is to treat

"beautiful" as a deadjectival noun, partly because so many expressions

occur that are similar but have an unambiguous noun in the second

position (e.g. "Hey dude," "hey knucklehead") that I can't see

maintaining the notion that "beautiful" is SO tied to adjectival

function that it has to constitute an exception in that use (apologies

for the constant barrage of different forms of "that"!). Such an

approach does, however, leave me with a bit of a problem if someone uses

an expression like "Hey dearest," since the superlative suffix is very

adjective-y.

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 Natalie Gerber

Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 9:10 AM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Morphology

Bill and all,

Thank you for catching and for so gently correcting my erroneous

example. Would you suggest a reading that clarifies why or how the

morphological analysis of functional shift differs from zero affixation

with inflectional morphemes? On a slightly different topic, too, how

would you analyze an example in which an adjective stands in for a noun,

as in Hey, beautiful! Would this be considered an instance of functional

shift or rather an instance in which an element is understood to be

gapped (if that's the right parlance), i.e. the noun.

All best,

Natalie Gerber

________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of

Spruiell, William C

Sent: Thu 5/29/2008 5:52 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Morphology

I've seen some accounts that appear to be treating all "affixless

category-changing derivation" as zero-affixation -- but it's because of

a theoretical position that forces that kind of analysis. If I remember

correctly (with an even bigger *if* than is usual), there are approaches

that mandate that the grammatical category of a complex element be that

of its head, even in morphology. Thus, a deverbal noun (for example) has

to have a nominal "head." With normal category-shifting affixes, such

approaches can treat the affix as the head, so "motion" has "-tion" as a

head, and "move" governed by it. With functional conversion, the zero

has to "be" there so it can act as a head with a grammatical category.

Zero elements make me skittish -- they're too easy to "cheat" with in

theory construction -- so I particularly like the approach Herb lays

out, where they're limited to exception cases in paradigms where other

words would have affixes. I'm even happier just to think of them as

notational conventions, since (to mangle a classic line) I'm not sure

how one would establish whether or not there's any "there" there.

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 STAHLKE, HERBERT F

Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 2:47 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Morphology

Zero affixation is different from functional shift, as Natalie's example

suggests. The plural of "deer" is "deer." That would be considered

zero affixation, where some, usually ill-defned, subset of a word class

does not take the expected suffix. Usually zero suffixation is

inflectional, as with this plural example. Functional shift is a

derivational process. In a language like English where there is so much

inflectional morphology and so little of it regular, there is no

expected suffix for changing a word from a noun to a verb, or from any

category to any other category, and so the terms "functional shift,"

"zero derivation," and "conversion" are ways of labeling changes in word

class that have no effect on stem form.

Herb

________________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar

[[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Natalie Gerber

[[log in to unmask]]

Sent: May 29, 2008 2:01 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Morphology

Just to second Kathleen's note. What I've read on morphology does

consider functional shift to be a morphological change and records this

by calling such changes as zero affix, which accounts for the fact that,

e.g., in irregular noun plurals there is no -s, or derivational affix

attached.

John, if it's of interest, I can send a short lesson on morphology

created by a Ph.D. in linguistics that will help address this.

Natalie Gerber

SUNY Fredonia

________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Kathleen

M. Ward

Sent: Thu 5/29/2008 11:10 AM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: Morphology

My speciality is certainly not morphology, but all the books I've read

call this kind of "derivation without change in form" a morphological

change that is variously called "conversion," "functional shift," or

"zero-morph derivation.

Kathleen M. Ward

UC Davis

On May 29, 2008, at 7:34 AM, John Crow wrote:

If a word changes function but does not change form, is that

considered to be a morphological change? For example, rich, normally

considered to be an adjective, can easily function as a noun (the rich).

If it becomes an adverb (richly), morphology is obviously involved here.

What about the adjective-to-noun shift?

Thanks,

John

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 <http://ateg.org/>

<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/

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/

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/

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/

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/ ------_=_NextPart_001_01C8CA75.89BAE4B4-- ========================================================================Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2008 20:10:11 -0400 Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> Sender: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> From: "STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Thanks for the advice! In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="_000_0DDF38BA66ECD847B39F1FD4C801D543047A101927EMAILBACKEND0_" MIME-Version: 1.0 --_000_0DDF38BA66ECD847B39F1FD4C801D543047A101927EMAILBACKEND0_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Stacy, Congratulations on the appointment! And best wishes in your new job. Herb From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of stacy bracher Sent: 2008-06-09 10:22 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Thanks for the advice! I just wanted to thank everyone who offered advice and tips for interviewing. I got the job! I'll be teaching 9-10th grade Language Arts and Drama this Fall. Stacy Bracher ________________________________ Search that pays you back! Introducing Live Search cashback. Search Now! 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/ --_000_0DDF38BA66ECD847B39F1FD4C801D543047A101927EMAILBACKEND0_ Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Stacy,

Congratulations on the appointment! And best wishes in your new job.

Herb

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of stacy bracher
Sent: 2008-06-09 10:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Thanks for the advice!

I just wanted to thank everyone who offered advice and tips for interviewing. I got the job! I'll be teaching 9-10th grade Language Arts and Drama this Fall.

Stacy Bracher

Search that pays you back! Introducing Live Search cashback. Search Now!

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/ --_000_0DDF38BA66ECD847B39F1FD4C801D543047A101927EMAILBACKEND0_-- ========================================================================Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2008 20:15:42 -0400 Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> Sender: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> From: "STAHLKE, HERBERT F" <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Morphology In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="_000_0DDF38BA66ECD847B39F1FD4C801D543047A101928EMAILBACKEND0_" MIME-Version: 1.0 --_000_0DDF38BA66ECD847B39F1FD4C801D543047A101928EMAILBACKEND0_ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Janet, I'd use this with the class as an excellent example of functional shift/conversion. Clearly "best" is an adjective, and just as clearly it is used in this sentence as a noun. There are cases where an ellipsis explanation might work, but in those cases the referent of the ellipsis would have to be immediately recoverable, as in the following: The members of the US Gymnastics Team are competing for a place on the Olympic Team, but only the best will make it. Even there I'm no sure I wouldn't call it conversion. Herb From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Castilleja, Janet Sent: 2008-06-09 13:28 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Here is a sentence I always struggle with when I'm trying to explain sentence structure to students: the best is yet to come. 'best' seems so clearly to be an adjective and yet is so clearly functioning as a noun would function. We somehow always seem to stumble on a sentence like this right after I've discussed comparatives and modifiers. Janet Castilleja -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 3:13 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Natalie, The "shift vs. ellipsis" argument with examples like "Hey beautiful," as well as more general "shift vs. zero-affixation" arguments, tend to be decided by particular linguists on the basis of other positions they've adopted in their theories -- in other words, I don't think it's possible to step back and look at "linguistics in general" and give a "right" decision on any of those. Those cases don't give analysts any empirical traction to work with, basically, and in the absence of any way to falsify either of the two propositions involved ("there's nothing there" vs. "there's a nothing there"), we just fall back on internal consistency. I suppose it's theoretically possible to resolve the issue if we ever get to the point where we can verify whether there is or isn't a specific subassembly of neurons that fire off whenever a test subject processes an example in which there's a putative gap, but given the number of random factors involved, I don't know if that will ever become feasible. Having said that, the way I would approach "Hey beautiful" is to treat "beautiful" as a deadjectival noun, partly because so many expressions occur that are similar but have an unambiguous noun in the second position (e.g. "Hey dude," "hey knucklehead") that I can't see maintaining the notion that "beautiful" is SO tied to adjectival function that it has to constitute an exception in that use (apologies for the constant barrage of different forms of "that"!). Such an approach does, however, leave me with a bit of a problem if someone uses an expression like "Hey dearest," since the superlative suffix is very adjective-y. 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 Natalie Gerber Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 9:10 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Bill and all, Thank you for catching and for so gently correcting my erroneous example. Would you suggest a reading that clarifies why or how the morphological analysis of functional shift differs from zero affixation with inflectional morphemes? On a slightly different topic, too, how would you analyze an example in which an adjective stands in for a noun, as in Hey, beautiful! Would this be considered an instance of functional shift or rather an instance in which an element is understood to be gapped (if that's the right parlance), i.e. the noun. All best, Natalie Gerber ________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Spruiell, William C Sent: Thu 5/29/2008 5:52 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology I've seen some accounts that appear to be treating all "affixless category-changing derivation" as zero-affixation -- but it's because of a theoretical position that forces that kind of analysis. If I remember correctly (with an even bigger *if* than is usual), there are approaches that mandate that the grammatical category of a complex element be that of its head, even in morphology. Thus, a deverbal noun (for example) has to have a nominal "head." With normal category-shifting affixes, such approaches can treat the affix as the head, so "motion" has "-tion" as a head, and "move" governed by it. With functional conversion, the zero has to "be" there so it can act as a head with a grammatical category. Zero elements make me skittish -- they're too easy to "cheat" with in theory construction -- so I particularly like the approach Herb lays out, where they're limited to exception cases in paradigms where other words would have affixes. I'm even happier just to think of them as notational conventions, since (to mangle a classic line) I'm not sure how one would establish whether or not there's any "there" there. 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 STAHLKE, HERBERT F Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 2:47 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Zero affixation is different from functional shift, as Natalie's example suggests. The plural of "deer" is "deer." That would be considered zero affixation, where some, usually ill-defned, subset of a word class does not take the expected suffix. Usually zero suffixation is inflectional, as with this plural example. Functional shift is a derivational process. In a language like English where there is so much inflectional morphology and so little of it regular, there is no expected suffix for changing a word from a noun to a verb, or from any category to any other category, and so the terms "functional shift," "zero derivation," and "conversion" are ways of labeling changes in word class that have no effect on stem form. Herb ________________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Natalie Gerber [[log in to unmask]] Sent: May 29, 2008 2:01 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology Just to second Kathleen's note. What I've read on morphology does consider functional shift to be a morphological change and records this by calling such changes as zero affix, which accounts for the fact that, e.g., in irregular noun plurals there is no -s, or derivational affix attached. John, if it's of interest, I can send a short lesson on morphology created by a Ph.D. in linguistics that will help address this. Natalie Gerber SUNY Fredonia ________________________________ From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Kathleen M. Ward Sent: Thu 5/29/2008 11:10 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Morphology My speciality is certainly not morphology, but all the books I've read call this kind of "derivation without change in form" a morphological change that is variously called "conversion," "functional shift," or "zero-morph derivation. Kathleen M. Ward UC Davis On May 29, 2008, at 7:34 AM, John Crow wrote: If a word changes function but does not change form, is that considered to be a morphological change? For example, rich, normally considered to be an adjective, can easily function as a noun (the rich). If it becomes an adverb (richly), morphology is obviously involved here. What about the adjective-to-noun shift? Thanks, John 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/ 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/ 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/ 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/ 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/ --_000_0DDF38BA66ECD847B39F1FD4C801D543047A101928EMAILBACKEND0_ Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Janet,

I’d use this with the class as an excellent example of functional shift/conversion. Clearly “best” is an adjective, and just as clearly it is used in this sentence as a noun. There are cases where an ellipsis explanation might work, but in those cases the referent of the ellipsis would have to be immediately recoverable, as in the following:

The members of the US Gymnastics Team are competing for a place on the Olympic Team, but only the best will make it.

Even there I’m no sure I wouldn’t call it conversion.

Herb

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Castilleja, Janet
Sent: 2008-06-09 13:28
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Morphology