On flexible and rigid nouns (2010) (original) (raw)

On Flexible and Rigid Nouns (2008)

Rijkhoff, Jan. 2008. On flexible and rigid nouns. Studies in Language 32-3, 727-752., 2008

This article argues that in addition to the flexible lexical categories in Hengeveld’s classification of parts-of-speech systems (Contentive, Non-Verb, Modifier), there are also flexible word classes within the rigid lexical category Noun (Set Noun, Sort Noun, General Noun). Members of flexible word classes are characterized by their vague semantics, which in the case of nouns means that values for the semantic features Shape and Homogeneity are either left undetermined or they are specified in such a way that they do not quite match the properties of the kind of entity denoted by the flexible item in the external world. I will then argue that flexible word classes constitute a proper category (i.e. they are not the result of a merger of some rigid word classes) in that members of flexible word categories display the same properties regarding category membership as members of rigid word classes. Finally this article wants to claim that the distinction between rigid and flexible noun categories (a) adds a new dimension to current classifications of parts-of-speech systems, (b) correlates with certain grammatical phenomena (e.g. so called number discord), and (c) helps to explain the parts-of-speech hierarchy.

On flexible and rigid nouns

Studies in Language, 2008

This article argues that in addition to the major flexible lexical categories in Hengeveld’s classification of parts-of-speech systems (Contentive, Non-Verb, Modifier), there are also flexible word classes within the rigid lexical category Noun (Set Noun, Sort Noun, General Noun). Members of flexible word classes are characterized by their vague semantics, which in the case of nouns means that values for the semantic features Shape and Homogeneity are either left undetermined or they are specified in such a way that they do not quite match the properties of the kind of entity denoted by the flexible item in the external world. I will then argue that flexible word classes constitute a proper category (i.e. they are not the result of a merger of some rigid word classes) in that members of flexible word categories display the same properties regarding category membership as members of rigid word classes. Finally this article wants to claim that the distinction between rigid and flexibl...

(book) Flexible Word Classes: Typological studies of underspecified parts of speech (2013)

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: September 2013 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199668441.001.0001, 2013

"""- First major publication on the phenomenon; - Offers cross-linguistic, descriptive, and diverse theoretical approaches; - Includes analysis of data from different language families and from lesser studied languages. This book is the first major cross-linguistic study of 'flexible words', i.e. words that cannot be classified in terms of the traditional lexical categories Verb, Noun, Adjective or Adverb. Flexible words can - without special morphosyntactic marking - serve in functions for which other languages must employ members of two or more of the four traditional, 'specialised' word classes. Thus, flexible words are underspecified for communicative functions like 'predicating' (verbal function), 'referring' (nominal function) or 'modifying' (a function typically associated with adjectives and e.g. manner adverbs). Even though linguists have been aware of flexible world classes for more than a century, the phenomenon has not played a role in the development of linguistic typology or modern grammatical theory. The current volume aims to address this gap by offering detailed studies on flexible word classes, investigating their properties and what it means for the grammar of a language to have such a word class. It includes new cross-linguistic studies of word class systems as well as original descriptive and theoretical contributions from authors with an expert knowledge of languages that have played - or should play - a role in the debate about flexible word classes, including Kharia, Riau Indonesian, Santali, Sri Lanka Malay, Lushootseed, Gooniyandi, and Late Archaic Chinese. 1: Eva van Lier and Jan Rijkhoff: Flexible Word Classes in Linguistic Typology and Grammatical Theory 2: Kees Hengeveld: Parts-of-speech Systems as a Basic Typological Determinant 3: Jan Don and Eva van Lier: Derivation and Categorization in Flexible and Differentiated Languages 4: David Gil: Riau Indonesian: A language without nouns and verbs 5: John Peterson: Parts of Speech in Kharia: A formal account 6: Felix Rau: Proper Names, Predicates, and the Parts-of-speech System of Santali 7: David Beck: Unidirectional Flexibility and the Noun-verb Distinction in Lushootseed 8: William B. McGregor: Lexical Categories in Gooniyandi, Kimberley, Western Australia 9: Sebastian Nordhoff: Jack-of-all-trades: The Sri Lanka Malay flexible adjective 10: Walter Bisang: Word Class Systems Between Flexibility and Rigidity: An integrative approach Readership: Linguists and students of linguistics and cognitive sciences, anthropologists, philosophers. """"""

Flexible Word Classes: Typological studies of underspecified parts of speech (2013)

-First major publication on the phenomenon. - Offers cross-linguistic, descriptive, and diverse theoretical approaches. - Includes analysis of data from different language families and from lesser studied languages. This book is the first major cross-linguistic study of 'flexible words', i.e. words that cannot be classified in terms of the traditional lexical categories Verb, Noun, Adjective or Adverb. Flexible words can - without special morphosyntactic marking - serve in functions for which other languages must employ members of two or more of the four traditional, 'specialised' word classes. Thus, flexible words are underspecified for communicative functions like 'predicating' (verbal function), 'referring' (nominal function) or 'modifying' (a function typically associated with adjectives and e.g. manner adverbs). Even though linguists have been aware of flexible world classes for more than a century, the phenomenon has not played a role in...

Flexible word classes in linguistic typology and grammatical theory

Typological studies of underspecified parts of speech, 2013

in Mundari morphology is that not only in syntax, but even in the morphological formation of words, a stem occurs now as one part of speech, now another.' 11 See also contributions in Vogel and Comrie (eds.) (2000), Broschart and Dawuda (eds.) (2000), Ansaldo et al. (eds.) (2010). 12 The generative-based theory of Distributed Morphology represents a special case in the sense that it assumes universal categories in the syntax only-not in the lexicon; cf. note 3.

Evelien Keizer, The English Noun Phrase. The Nature of Linguistic Categorization

Lingua, 2009

Evelien Keizer's new book explores different aspects of the syntax of the English noun phrase (NP) from a structural-functional perspective. Even though the title might suggest that the book presents a general examination of the structure of the NP within one of the existing theoretical approaches, the volume is in fact a collection of insightful analyses of different types of nominal constructions. What gives unity to the work is the functional-cognitive orientation and the attempt at showing that linguistic categories are not discrete but gradual and have a cognitive basis (hence the subtitle). The book is divided into two parts. The first one deals with aspects of the internal structure of NPs, with particular reference to appositive constructions, whereas part II treats pragmatic and cognitive aspects of the production and interpretation of NPs. Part I is preceded by an introduction in which the author explains the aims of the study as well as the methodological orientation employed. She ascribes herself to the 'communication-and-cognition' paradigm (Van Valin and LaPolla, 1997), which includes theories such as Role and Reference Grammar, Functional Grammar or Systemic-Functional Grammar, among others. However, it is important to emphasize that the author does not state her analyses in the formalisms of any particular theoretical option. The reasons for this choice relate to the flexibility this offers to freely incorporate ideas from any linguistic model and because, in Keizer's view, even the formalisms of functional models have been constructed on the basis of an idealized and restricted corpus of data which does not adequately represent the way language is used. Underlying representations in the volume, therefore, should be seen as a mere 'notational tool' and no claims are made as to their being psychologically real. Moreover, as the book tries to demonstrate, a strict classification of linguistic phenomena in terms of formal categories is not adequate as the analyses are based on semantic, syntactic and pragmatic factors which are not amenable to representation in rigid categories or constructions. Underlying structures are thus considered representations of the prototypical function of units. In order to solve the data problem in functional models Keizer extracts most of her examples from the International Corpus of English. It is worth mentioning, though, that the study does not make use of statistical frequencies, which the author considers of minor importance for her purposes. I will come back to this question in the closing paragraphs of this review. Let me now move on to examine in more detail each of the chapters of the book. Given the detailed discussion that the author offers, sometimes for individual examples, it would seem too tedious and unpractical for this review to discuss specific analyses and I will therefore present the contents of the volume in a more general manner. Part I, The Structural Approach: Possibilities and Limitations, opens with a short chapter devoted to headedness within the NP, with particular reference to noun phrases containing two nominals (e.g. a bottle of wine). Keizer reviews the semantic, syntactic, and phonological criteria employed in the literature and concludes that headedness should be regarded a matter of degree because the tests available tend to offer conflicting results. Consequently, she argues, it is best to treat headedness as a cluster notion, the head of a given construction being thus the element which complies with more criteria. The tests for headedness introduced in this chapter will be employed in the rest of part one to identify heads of particular constructions. This chapter, then, serves an anticipatory function and offers the necessary background for later discussions. Chapter 3 is devoted to 'close appositions', constructions containing two nominals with no intervening relator between them and usually referring to the same entity (e.g. the actor Orson Wells).