LINGUIST List 9.797

Thu May 28 1998

Disc: Recent Change in English

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

Directory

1. manaster, Re: 9.795, Disc: Recent change in English
2. Johanna Rubba, Disc: Recent change in English

Message 1: Re: 9.795, Disc: Recent change in English

I am an idiot not to have noticed that. 'Fun game' seems to behave
like 'super game' in this regard and surely no one will take 'super'
to be a noun (except in the irrelevant NYese sense of 'janitor').
Indeed, we could construct an accentual minimal pair:

'super game' meaning 'great game' is not pronounced the same as

'super game' meaning 'game in which one pretends to be a NY janitor'.

There is also perhaps the conjunction test. We can say 'a card or
checkers game' but not 'a card or fun game'. But here I am concerned
about the influence of semantics/pragmatics.

Alexis MR

On Wed, 27 May 1998, LINGUIST Network wrote:
> From: Mark Mandel <Markdragonsys.com>
> 
> Beyond that, it is only in writing that Herrick's two examples have
> the same syntax. At least in my speech, and in any that I would
> expect to hear, "This is a fun game" puts primary stress on both
> "fun" and "game", while "This is a card game" puts primary stress of
> the NP on "card" and a secondary stress on "game". The second stress
> pattern is also possible for the first sentence, but not vice
> versa. Or am I behind the times?

Benji Wald writes,

>"traditional parts of speech would turn out to be polarised
>stereotypes of the nature of lexico-grammatical categories, and there
>would be an orderliness to the complex hierarchy (or something like
>that) of intermediate 'parts of speech'."

This is exactly what Cognitive Grammar proposes -- that parts of
speech have the organization of prototype categories. The orderliness
would not be hierarchical, however: lexical items would be more or
less 'nouny', 'verby', etc. according to where they land on different
parameters of meaning (e.g. transitivity for verbs but not nouns). And
there would be more than one parameter per category.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba	Assistant Professor, Linguistics ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407 ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184 E-mail: jrubbapolymail.calpoly.edu ~ 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~