This is an example of a very common rhetorical device, anthimeria (the substitution of one part of speech for another). Our dear friend Will Shakespeare does it often. Examples of adjectives used as nouns abound -- e.g., "in few" (Hamlet; The Tempest), "I'll make division of my present ( Twelfth Night: 'present' is here the adjective meaning 'existing now', not the noun meaning 'gift'), and "My false o'erways your true" (Measure for Measure). We do this sort of thing constantly.
Paul D.
----- Original Message ----
From: Linda Di Desidero <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, June 9, 2008 5:12:35 PM
Subject: Re: Morphology
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
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________________________________
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
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