LINGUIST List 9.615

Sun Apr 26 1998

Qs: Part of Speech,Cluster Reduction,Scope,Metaphor

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Ji Donghong, What's behind Part-of-speech?
2. MARC PICARD, Cluster Reduction
3. Eung-Cheon Hah, Scope
4. Thomas Li, Metaphor

In Chinese, there are fewer affixes for us to classfy words into
categories, e.g., nouns, verbs or adjectives, etc., so even up to now,
there has been no information about POS for Chinese words in the most
famous Chinese dictionary, i.e., Mordern Chinese Dictionary. Some
linguists proposed that Chiense words be classified as nouns, verbs,
adjectives, etc. completely based on their grammartical distribution,
which they refered to as their ability to combine with other words.
My questions are:

1) Can such grammartical distribution be solely used as a means to
 determine POS of words?

2) Are there any similar problems in other languages? and how to solve
 the problem there?

Any comments or information would be greatly appreciated. I will
summarize if there is enough interest.
 
 Ji Donghong
 Kent Ridge Digital Labs
 Email: dhjikrdl.org.sg 

Does anybody recall ever coming across a case of
final-consonant-cluster reduction where its application systematically
depended on the quality or quantity of the preceding vowel, i.e.,
where -V1CC# > -V1C# but -V2CC# > -V2CC# (and where V1 and V2 are
vowels that differ in some property like height, frontness, length,
etc)? 

If so, please send me any references and/or data, and I'll post
a summary.

Marc Picard

I'm currently investigaing scope phenomena in English. Your intuitive
judgement on the following sentences would be gratly appreciated. If
the sentence is ambiguous, marginally ambiguous, or unambiguous
between the relevant scope-bearing elements given in the parenthesis,
please mark it with (+A), (mA), or (-A), respectively. I assume that
all the scope-bearing elements receive neutral stress.


*********************************************************************

1. Someone doesn't love everyone. 
	(between 'someone' and 'everyone')

2. Someone doesn't love John. 
	(between 'someone' and 'not')

3. I expected someone not to have arrived. 
	(between 'someone' and 'not')

4. I expected everyone not to have arrived.
	(between 'everyone' and 'not)

5. I expected someone not to like everyone.
	(between 'someone' and 'everyone')

6. I expected someone to like everyone. 
 (between 'someone' and 'everyone')

*********************************************************

I will post a summary after I get enough responses for the purpose.

Best wishes,

Eung-Cheon Hah

I've hopelessly fallen in love with "Metaphor", and prepare to do
research, or rather Ph.D dissertation within the field of:

 "Metaphors Chinese Live By"
 "Metaphors Chinese Political Leaders Live By"
 "Metaphors Chinese Businessmen Live By"
 "Metaphors Chinese.............Live By"
 "The Metaphorical Structure of Zhou Yi
		(The Book of Changes)"

So I humbly make a request to each distinguished linguist:

Is there anyone doing the same thing? Could you offer me some
reference?


Thomas Lee (Li Fu Yin)
Linguistic Section
School of languages
University of Otago
Po Box 56
Dunedin
New Zealand

Fax: (64)-3-479-8689
Home Phone:(64)-3-477-8161
e-mail:thomas.listonebow.otago.ac.nz