LINGUIST List 3.1

Wed 11 Jan 1992

Disc: S -> NP NP

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1. Ellen Prince, Re: 2.882 S -> NP NP
2. , S -> NP + NP
3. Stavros Macrakis, 2.882 S -> NP NP

Message 1: Re: 2.882 S -> NP NP

>Date: Sun, 15 Dec 91 02:25:02 EST
>From: Michael <MMORSEVM1.YorkU.CA>
>Subject: Re: 2.864 Queries
>
>Wlodek Zadrozny asks if there is "anything interesting" to be said
>about the construction "S > NP NP" ... Second,
>and very much related: might we consider the construction to be a form
>of what has been discussed on this list of late as reduplication? The
>logical sense of "John McNamara the name" is tautologous and thus, at
>that level, indistinguishable from "well, well now, what have we here?".

to say that 'john mcnamara the name' is tautologous is to give support to
those who say that a logic-based semantics is irrelevant to natural language.
in what sense is it tautologous? it supplies the value of an attribute followed
by the attribute of which it is the value. if in fact the value of the
name-attribute for the relevant entity were 'chaim shmendrik', 'john mcnamara
the name' would be false. no tautology, this. (and no reduplication, either.)

 The discussion of S -> NP + NP reminds me
that some years ago I read, in a source now forgotten,
a critique of some newsmagazines' unique tendencies in writing style,
most of which the writer found overly "cute".
One item was tersely put down as follows: "TIME's favorite: the colon."
-----------------------------------
Lee Hartman ga5123siucvmb.bitnet
Department of Foreign Languages
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901 U.S.A.

 ...for me it's much more restrictive than S -> NP NP. It's

	 "no" NP Pro

Quite an over-restriction, that.