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NL-KR Digest Volume 05 No. 32
NL-KR Digest (11/30/88 21:00:25) Volume 5 Number 32
Today's Topics:
Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
Re: Syntactical *definition* of English
Submissions: NL-KR@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
Requests, policy: NL-KR-REQUEST@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 88 02:33 EST
From: Greg Lee <lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
From article <Nov.2.16.41.03.1988.13276@topaz.rutgers.edu>, by linhart@topaz.rutgers.edu (Mike Threepoint):
" Ok, while waiting for that unseen reference, I looked into things. I
There's a good dissertation on verb particle constructions by Bruce
Fraser. I think it was an MIT dissertation and came out in 1965.
It may be difficult to locate. I don't know that it has answers to
your questions, but it digs out lots of interesting complications.
" have a problem with treating phrases like "take off" as a single vp,
" since they can be transformed from "take off the frob" to "take the
" frob off". "off" seems to me an adverb (semi-adverb?) here, since
Consider also:
take the cat out of the house
take the cat out
take out the cat
which suggests 'out' is "really" a preposition.
" So is it a preposition without an object (which means I have to revise
" my definition of what a preposition is) or an adverb? Or is this just
" a candy/breathmint distinction?
Dunno.
Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 88 06:47 EST
From: Clay M Bond <bondc@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
Mike Threepoint:
If you're interested in English phrasal verbs and their analysis,
you might want to look at:
Lindner, Susan. 1981. A Lexico-Semantic Analysis of Verb-Particle
Constructions with UP and OUT. PhD diss, UCSD. Pbulished
by IULC.
--
<< Clay Bond -- IU Department of Leath-er, er, uh, Linguistics >>
<< bondc@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu AKA: Le Nouveau Marquis de Sade >>
<< {pur-ee,rutgers,pyramid,ames}!iuvax!bondc
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 88 16:50 EST
From: Bob Donaldson <bobd@bloom.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
In article <2578@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
> From article <Nov.2.16.41.03.1988.13276@topaz.rutgers.edu>, by linhart@topaz.rutgers.edu (Mike Threepoint):
> " Ok, while waiting for that unseen reference, I looked into things. I
>
> There's a good dissertation on verb particle constructions by Bruce
> Fraser. I think it was an MIT dissertation and came out in 1965.
> It may be difficult to locate. I don't know that it has answers to
> your questions, but it digs out lots of interesting complications.
>
> " have a problem with treating phrases like "take off" as a single vp,
> " since they can be transformed from "take off the frob" to "take the
> " frob off". "off" seems to me an adverb (semi-adverb?) here, since
>
> Consider also:
> take the cat out of the house
> take the cat out
> take out the cat
> which suggests 'out' is "really" a preposition.
I don't know if we want to get too much reality into out linguistic model,
but I have noticed an interesting thing about both my children. (I have
observed their language learning process very closely, since my graduate
work was in linguistics.) Between the ages of about 1 1/2 and 3, BOTH
children would treat these verb/??? phrases as simple verbs.
E.g. "Daddy! Pickup me!"
"The cat wants to go out! Will you putout him?"
I should note that with only two years separation, the youngest COULD have
heard the oldest use such constructions, although the oldest was already
transposing the ?preposition? by the time the youngest started using the
above. I think that at least suggests that whatever our adult linguistic
understanding, it at least evolved from an understanding of "pickup" as a
verb.
-=-
These views are barely my own - I won't even share them with my employers,
so I doubt they share them with me.
Bob Donaldson ...!cs.utexas.edu!natinst!radian!bobd
...!sun!texsun!radian!bobd
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 88 00:16 EST
From: Dorai Sitaram <dorai@titan.rice.edu>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
This is about the relative positions of auxiliary and other verbs (no
prepositions).
English> I will let him fell the tree.
German> I will him the tree fell let.
Dutch> I will him the tree let fell.
With more verbs:
English> I will let my son go swim(ming).
German> I will my son swim go let.
Dutch?> I will my son let go swim.
???> I will my son let swim go.
Is there any one stable order to which such widely different orders in
the same language group might possibly converge (given enough
centuries)?
--dorai
(try dorai@rice.edu, dorai@titan.rice.edu for email)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 18:51 EST
From: Rick Wojcik <rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
In article <Nov.2.16.41.03.1988.13276@topaz.rutgers.edu> linhart@topaz.rutgers.edu (Mike Threepoint) writes:
>[in 'take off'] "off" seems to me an adverb (semi-adverb?) here, since
>it's relocatable...
>So is it a preposition without an object (which means I have to revise
>my definition of what a preposition is) or an adverb? Or is this just
>a candy/breathmint distinction?
I vote for adverb. Note that there are a number of verb particles that cannot
serve as prepositions: e.g. 'away' in 'put away' or 'forth' in 'bring forth'.
The best place to go for a survey of these things is _The Longman Dictionary
of Phrasal Verbs_ by Rosemary Courtney (1983. Longman Group Ltd. ISBN
0-582-55530-2).
--
Rick Wojcik csnet: rwojcik@boeing.com
uucp: uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!rwojcik
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 88 21:26 EST
From: Robert Harvey <harvey@esquire.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
In article <514@bloom.UUCP> bobd@bloom.UUCP (Bob Donaldson) writes:
>In article <2578@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
>> From article <Nov.2.16.41.03.1988.13276@topaz.rutgers.edu>, by linhart@topaz.rutgers.edu (Mike Threepoint):
>> " Ok, while waiting for that unseen reference, I looked into things. I
>>
>> There's a good dissertation on verb particle constructions by Bruce
>> Fraser. I think it was an MIT dissertation and came out in 1965.
>> It may be difficult to locate. I don't know that it has answers to
>> your questions, but it digs out lots of interesting complications.
>>
>> " have a problem with treating phrases like "take off" as a single vp,
>> " since they can be transformed from "take off the frob" to "take the
>> " frob off". "off" seems to me an adverb (semi-adverb?) here, since
>>
>> Consider also:
>> take the cat out of the house
>> take the cat out
>> take out the cat
>> which suggests 'out' is "really" a preposition.
I am not sure that I have gotten in on the beginning of this discussion, so
I may be repeating what is obvious or has already been stated.
The construction you refer to is the linguistic decendant of the the
germanic separable and inseparable verbs, which combine (typically) a verb
and a particle related to a preposition to create a new verb. Consequent,
the particles you refer to are not really adverbs or preposition, but a
component of the verb. In modern German, for example, they are still
written as part of the verb in some instances for separable verb, and in
every instance for the inseparable.
Er kommt auf/He is coming up.
*** **
Er muss aufkommen/He must come up.
*** **
Sie ueberholt das Auto/She overtakes the car.
***** ****
The problem you have in anyalysing the situation is that English-speakers
have become accustomed to attempting to find grammatical structures of
Romance languages to English, which despite centuries of Romance influence,
is still a Germanic language. The particles are not preposition because
they do not take objects. They are not adverbs, because they do not answer
questions like how much, how many, to what degree, and so forth.
The are part of the verb, and the sentence is dependent on the presence of
both the verb and particle for its meaning. This is clearest in the third
example above, where the particle is still written as part of the verb in
both English and German.
It is because of a failure of grammarians and linguists to understand the
germanic roots of English that certain purported "rules" (which have no
basis in the history or usage of the langague) have become widespread.
Think, for example, of the "rule" against splitting infinitives, the "rule"
against ending a sentence with a preposition, or the "rule" against using
words like "hopefully" as predicate adverbs to illustrate the speaker's
point of view. These are all (more or less) valid rules of descriptive
grammar in romance languages, but are unfounded as rules of descriptive
grammar, and specious as rules of normative grammar, in English.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 88 07:00 EST
From: Greg Lee <lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
From article <805@esquire.UUCP>, by harvey@esquire.UUCP (Robert Harvey):
" >> Consider also:
" >> take the cat out of the house
" >> take the cat out
" >> take out the cat
" >> which suggests 'out' is "really" a preposition.
"
" I am not sure that I have gotten in on the beginning of this discussion, so
" I may be repeating what is obvious or has already been stated.
"
" The construction you refer to is the linguistic decendant of the the
" germanic separable and inseparable verbs, which combine (typically) a verb
" and a particle related to a preposition to create a new verb. Consequent,
" the particles you refer to are not really adverbs or preposition, but a
" component of the verb. In modern German, for example, they are still
" written as part of the verb in some instances for separable verb, and in
" every instance for the inseparable.
But
*take out the cat out of the house.
Aren't the corresponding constructions with particle=preposition
ok in modern German? If so, it suggests this particular English
construction is not like the German separable prefix construction.
Compare
put up the dishes up into the cupboard,
where the up-put analysis works better.
" ... The particles are not preposition because
" they do not take objects.
Look at my example again.
Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 88 19:46 EST
From: Clay M Bond <bondc@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
..RM79/
Greg Lee:
>But
> *take out the cat out of the house.
>
>Aren't the corresponding constructions with particle=preposition
>ok in modern German? If so, it suggests this particular English
>construction is not like the German separable prefix construction.
>Compare
> put up the dishes up into the cupboard,
>
>where the up-put analysis works better.
>
>" ... The particles are not preposition because
>" they do not take objects.
>
>Look at my example again.
Hmmm. I have less German than Dansk (and that is not great), but
it seems that we're talking apples and oranges, Greg. One can get
Die Vorlesung faengt _um_ 9 Uhr an.
but this is not the same as your sentences above. The prep/adv/particle
(um) is not the same as the seperable prefix, an. I think this is the
same case in Danish:
tage ud katten nede fra stollen.
but you can get the same in English, take the cat out from under the chair.
(Help, native speakers! It's been a few years ...) I don't think, though,
that you can get a repetition of the same particle, since the prefix (or
the English particle) changes the semantics of the verb, and is certainly
not a preposition. Run up the hill vs. run up the bill, and all that. I
don't have the article right in front of me, but Hopper and Thompson (?) did
and interesting paper about the semantics of phrasal verbs.
and Joe Keane:
>Doug Gwyn writes:
>> In English as it existed before the recent politicization of the language,
>> there were two genders, masculine and feminine.
>
>I disagree. Adjectives don't agree with nouns, etc. The only difference
>between English and (say) Finnish is `he/she/it'. Maybe `a vestige of >gender', but that's it.
Indeed. I thought this very strange when I read it. How does one defend
the notion that English has grammatical gender in anything but its 3s pronouns?
Somebody's been taking too many Latin classes ...
>The real problem is with `man/woman/person' and derivatives. People had always
>used the masculine form simply because there weren't any `mailwomen' and such
>around.
Pardon me, but let me throw out an interesting personal anecdote here. I
was intellectually sympathetic to the whole linguistic sexism issue until
I read my (if all goes well) codirector-to-be's dissertation. In it, he
uses (almost exclusively) 'she' as the generic 3s. Throughout the first
half of the dissertation, every time I ran into it I looked back for an
antecedent. By the time I had finished it, I was feeling quite excluded
from the world.
I don't think there is ONE real problem, but that there are many. Not the
least of these is exclusion. Men, it's a bit different when you're on the
receiving end of the stick. :-)
--
<< Clay Bond -- IU Department of Leath-er, er, uh, Linguistics >>
<< bondc@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu AKA: Le Nouveau Marquis de Sade >>
<< {pur-ee,rutgers,pyramid,ames}!iuvax!bondc
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 88 05:51 EST
From: Andreas Stolcke <stolcke@icsi.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
In article <2634@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
>From article <805@esquire.UUCP>, by harvey@esquire.UUCP (Robert Harvey):
>" the particles you refer to are not really adverbs or preposition, but a
>" component of the verb. In modern German, for example, they are still
>" written as part of the verb in some instances for separable verb, and in
>" every instance for the inseparable.
>
>But
> *take out the cat out of the house.
>
>Aren't the corresponding constructions with particle=preposition
>ok in modern German?
Not quite. I'm not aware of any acceptable German verb phrase where
the (detachable) verb prefix is really identical to the preposition of the
embedded prepositional phrase. The closest I could get to this was
er nahm den Brief aus dem Briefkasten heraus
he took the letter out (of) the mailbox out
where the verb is 'HERAUSnehmen' and the head of the PP is 'AUS'.
Although the prefix is obviously derived from the preposition, they are
clearly not identical.
Thus, it seems fairly save to say that HERAUS is at least not a preposition,
governing some 'imaginary' object, and maybe one could make a similar case for
English (although I don't know of any direct English analogues to the example
given above).
It is still arguable, however, that HERAUS is really an adjective in
this case. For one thing, there are other contexts where HERAUS
actually functions as an adverb in its own right. Perhaps the whole problem
can then be seen as yet another instance of composition. When using verbs as
nouns, e.g., it is perfectly normal to combine them with adverbs to form
compounds, cf. schneller + gehen --> Schnellergehen ("faster-going").
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 88 16:59 EST
From: Andreas Stolcke <stolcke@icsi.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: Verb-prepostion idioms
In article <2634@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
>From article <805@esquire.UUCP>, by harvey@esquire.UUCP (Robert Harvey):
>" the particles you refer to are not really adverbs or preposition, but a
>" component of the verb. In modern German, for example, they are still
>" written as part of the verb in some instances for separable verb, and in
>" every instance for the inseparable.
>
>But
> *take out the cat out of the house.
>
>Aren't the corresponding constructions with particle=preposition
>ok in modern German?
Not quite. I'm not aware of any acceptable German verb phrase where
the (detachable) verb prefix is really identical to the preposition of the
embedded prepositional phrase. The closest I could get to this was
er nahm den Brief aus dem Briefkasten heraus
he took the letter out (of) the mailbox out
where the verb is 'HERAUSnehmen' and the head of the PP is 'AUS'.
Although the prefix is obviously derived from the preposition, they are
clearly not identical.
Thus, it seems fairly save to say that HERAUS is at least not a preposition,
governing some 'imaginary' object, and maybe one could make a similar case for
English (although I don't know of any direct English analogues to the example
given above).
It is still arguable, however, that HERAUS is really an adjective in
this case. For one thing, there are other contexts where HERAUS
actually functions as an adverb in its own right. Perhaps the whole problem
can then be seen as yet another instance of composition. When using verbs as
nouns, e.g., it is perfectly normal to combine them with adverbs to form
compounds, cf. schneller + gehen --> Schnellergehen ("faster-going").
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 88 16:43 EST
From: Rick Wojcik <rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Syntactical *definition* of English
Greg Lee writes:
me> [writing about relative clauses containing resumptive pronouns]
me> Note that relative clauses that violate extraction constraints *must*
me> contain pronouns that agree with the head NP.
GL> Two counter-notes. Such relative clauses do not violate extraction
GL> constraints, strictly speaking, since nothing is extracted (obviously).
Let's not jump to conclusions either way. The constraints were originally
described in terms of movement rules. The question is over what it buys you
to use the gap metaphor or movement metaphor in describing these syntactic
constructions. I don't think that there is any absolute truth here.
GL> And it is not clear that they must contain the pronouns you say they
GL> must. After all, there are relative clauses that contain neither
GL> gaps nor resumptive pronouns -- we call them appositive.
In this regard, there is a very interesting article by Francis Pelletier
"Vacuous Relatives and the (Non-) Context-Freeness of English" in
_Linguistics_ and_Philosopy_ (11:3, 255-260, 1988). Pelletier discusses a
controversy over 'such that' constructions, which are very similar to relative
clauses with resumptive pronouns (e.g. 'every triangle such that two of its
sides are equal'). The argument turns, in part, around Pullum's (and other's)
feelings that expressions like 'every triangle such that two sides are equal'
are as well-formed as expressions with the resumptive pronoun. I agree with
Pelletier that they are not and that "this is not an area where one should
look to find a proof of the non-context-freeness of English."
My knowledge about resumptive pronouns derives primarily from the study of
Breton, where such pronouns occur in relative clauses marked by 'hag' /ag/
(literally 'and'). So you say the following:
an istor hag en-deus klevet ar paotr anezhan
'the' 'story' 'and' 'he-has' 'heard' 'the' 'boy' 'IT (resumptive)'
"the story that the boy heard"
Interestingly, the use of question words for relatives, an innovation caused
by exposure to French, disallows resumptive pronouns:
an istor petra en-deus klevet ar paotr (*anezhan)
'what'
(In fact, most Bretons seem to prefer a passive clause with relativization out
of subject position here. But my active clause gets grudging acceptance. :-)
So the use of a non-pronominal relativizer 'and' is associated with the use of
resumptive pronouns. My question concerns other languages with resumptive
pronouns. Are there examples of languages that have true pronoun relativizers
(requiring morphological agreement between head and relativizer) and
resumptive pronouns in the clause? I suspect that this is rare. The
occurrence of pronominal relativizers facilitates the existence of gaps. This
is so because pronominal relativizers help the listener to identify the gap
site, whereas non-pronominal relativizers obscure it. Anyway, this is my gut
feeling.
--
Rick Wojcik csnet: rwojcik@boeing.com
uucp: uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!rwojcik
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 88 00:27 EST
From: Greg Lee <lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Subject: Re: Syntactical *definition* of English
From article <8563@bcsaic.UUCP>, by rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik):
" ...
" In this regard, there is a very interesting article by Francis Pelletier
The only point seems to be that James Higginbotham made a bad argument.
Surprise, surprise.
""Vacuous Relatives and the (Non-) Context-Freeness of English" in
" _Linguistics_ and_Philosopy_ (11:3, 255-260, 1988). Pelletier discusses a
" controversy over 'such that' constructions, which are very similar to relative
" clauses with resumptive pronouns (e.g. 'every triangle such that two of its
" sides are equal'). The argument turns, in part, around Pullum's (and other's)
" feelings that expressions like 'every triangle such that two sides are equal'
" are as well-formed as expressions with the resumptive pronoun. I agree with
" Pelletier that they are not and that "this is not an area where one should
" look to find a proof of the non-context-freeness of English."
If you say they are not well formed, you are not agreeing with
Pelletier, because he doesn't say that. No participant in the
controversy (Pullum, Higginbotham, Pelletier) says that.
But let's say they're not. Then a GPSG analysis would have to
treat such-that clauses parallel with relative clauses, and assign
them to a special category. Where does that get us? Or are
we no longer discussing the appropriateness of Gazdar's theory?
" ...
" occurrence of pronominal relativizers facilitates the existence of gaps. This
" is so because pronominal relativizers help the listener to identify the gap
" site, whereas non-pronominal relativizers obscure it. Anyway, this is my gut
" feeling.
Makes sense to me.
Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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