Craig, since the dictionary was right here on my desk, I decided to
check your suspicion: nope, the dictionary does have both transitive and
intransitive meanings and examples for sleep==and the noun one also, of
course. And in addition, some phrasal verbs (sleep around, sleep in,
sleep with) and an idiom (sleep on it).
Edith
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 6:27 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Transitivity vs Intransitivity - The Linguists' Version
ofHazing?
Bill,
Another frame or schema might be X blanked X's way into/to/through
blank, which tends to pull in intransitive verbs fairly easily. "He
lied his way into her heart." "He slept his way through chemistry." "He
talked his way out of trouble."
These lower level schemas tend to overide more general patterns.
We also have structures like "He slept a deep, relaxing sleep" or "He
slept the sleep of the dead."
I suspect that the dictionary routinely ignores these and treats the
verbs as intransitive.
Craig
Bob,
>
> I was trying to start with a position that was "agnostic" about
whether
> those two versions of 'sleep' are the same or not. We can take a
> distribution like that and then develop hypotheses about what causes
the
> distribution -- and that's both necessary in linguistics and
thoroughly
> normal -- but we just have to remember those are hypotheses, not
> observations themselves.
>
> Saying that a given verb can be transitive or not is a perfectly good
> way to approach the issue, but then, so is saying that clauses are
> transitive or not, and that particular verbs are more or less
associated
> with particular clause types. "The professor's lecture ______ the
> class," for example, could be seen as a kind of causative frame, and
the
> use of "sleep" in it as a nonce association of the verb with a frame
> it's not normally used with (and, of course, one could instead view
that
> use of "sleep" as an example of nonce conversion of an intransitive
stem
> to a transitive one). I was trying to argue that other options are
> workable, not that the verb-based one is unworkable. Other choices the
> analyst makes about how to treat things may rule out some otherwise
> workable options, but that doesn't rule them out in approaches that
use
> different choices.
>
> 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 Robert Yates
> Sent: Friday, July 11, 2008 11:23 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Transitivity vs Intransitivity - The Linguists' Version
> ofHazing?
>
> Bill,
>
> I don't understand your probablity account, especially with regard to
> your two examples of sleep.
>
> Bill writes:
>
> When you look at a large number of examples of sentences using a given
> verb, whan you find, in terms of "+/- use of a direct object," is a
> probability distribution. "Sleep" is rarely used with a direct object,
> *but it can be* (I've heard students say things like, "That lecture
> slept the whole class") -- the probability distribution is thus
> something like 99.99999% intrans. vs. 0.00001% trans, or even more
> assymmetric. With a verb like "run," the distribution will be more
> symmetric. Traditional grammar makes an argument move that says,
> roughly, "verbs don't _really_ having varying probabilities of use;
> instead, each verb has exactly one use, and what looks like variation
is
> either due to homonymy, or the kind of language play that does not
call
> for any formal explanation."
>
> ****
> If I understand this correctely (and I may not have), then the passage
> above says the "sleep" in sentences 1 and 2 are the same.
>
> 1) The class slept.
> 2) The lecture slept the class.
>
> Causative constructions in English are hard to learn. There is
evidence
> that sentences like (2) are created by children.
>
> However, (1) and (2) have different meanings for me. (1) has no
sense
> of causation; (2) clearly has that.
>
> Likewise, in sentences (3) and (4) "run" has very different meanings.
>
> 3) Barry ran.
> 4) Barry ran a good campaign.
>
> Dictionaries are very interesting in this regard. They provide
> different meanings for verbs and indentify which meaning of a verb is
> transitive or intransitive. Why is this wrongheaded?
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>
> 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/
|
