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
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
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
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
Sent: May 29, 2008 2:01 PM
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
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
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