unit 3: lexicogrammatical problems
TDA Unit 3 problems | Simon | September 8th, 2000
Reading through TDA U3 on lexicogrammar I came across the following problems:
This is classed as a determiner, for example:
This carrot is old.
But in the following sentence it is a pronoun:
This is the carrot I ate.
Hence words are classed depending on how they are used, right?
Home is classed as an adverb (Bloor, 1995: section 2.3.7, p23). But consider the following:
He went home but found it was not the home he knew.
Are both these homes adverbs, or is only the first one, and the second a common noun?
Simon
TDA Unit 3 problems | Tom Bloor | September 14th, 2000
I feel obliged to respond to Simon's question (below) even though I am not really here and I have no satisfactory answer.
Yes, I think that the analysis of 'home' as adverb in the first case and noun in the second is viable and correct in terms of my pronouncements elsewhere. But this example serves to underline how fuzzy grammar can be and how right Halliday is to posit the idea that categories operate on clines rather than discretely.
My general principle is that a word inherently belongs to a particular class, or, to use slightly different grammatical terms, each lexical item carries an inherent feature such as [noun] or [verb]. In cases like 'swim' [verb] and 'swim' [noun] I would simply say that there are two separate lexical items that share some semantic features. Likewise with the two instances of 'this' in Simon's example (below): one is arguably a pronoun and the other a determiner and hence two different items.
One problem with this position is that over time new replications of this kind emerge (for example and to put it informally, a word that shows up as only a verb in one period of history may show up as both verb and noun in another), and even on an ad hoc basis people often play around with word classes: 'But me no buts', 'the idiot greens the meadows with his eyes', etc; therefore, the notion of word class as an INHERENT feature needs to be understood in a fairly narrow technical sense; it is not necessarily immutable - or to put it another way, new words can be coined based on existing ones. Problems notwithstanding, that seems to me the most efficient way of dealing with the issue and it works for most cases.
But the classification of 'home' as adverb is obviously a less clear-cut case. 'Home' seems to have some qualities of noun even in its adverbial manifestation; hence the plausibility of Simon's example ('He went home but found it was not the home he knew'), which parallels the first 'home' with the second 'home', the latter being clearly a noun. I have always felt a little uneasy about classifying 'home' as an adverb, but there is a case for it as well as against it. Locative words that are not part of a prepositional phrase and that realise the Adjunct function are typically adverbs (Compare 'they moved forward'; 'she stayed back'; 'they went shoreward/s - or homeward/s!!); in Standard English we can't say 'He has gone *the bank' or 'She went *Aston University'. However, the more I think about it, the less happy I am. The fact that we can say 'close to home' and 'near home' seems to suggest that it is a noun (unmodified head of a nominal group in a prepositional phrase), but the fact that we can't modify it with a determiner (in this Adjunct function and without a preposition: e.g. He went *his home; he went *the same home) suggests that it is not. There are further arguments on both sides, no doubt. As they say, all grammars leak, and there seems to be quite a puddle here.
By the way, Meriel has just mentioned to me that Cobuild Grammar Patterns: 1 Verbs (labels 'home') as adverb when it occurs with verbs like 'phone' etc p138). It probably does the same with 'go' but you can check that for yourselves.
Best
Tom Bloor
Re: TDA Unit 3 problems | Pinkie | September 14th, 2000
Can't keep off the list today, I'm afraid: so many interesting posts! This one's about Simon's sentence "He went home but found it was not the home he knew".
I must admit that the subtlety of Simon's query didn't hit me on first reading: it was only when I read Tom's response that I latched on to the particularly interesting thing about this sentence, i.e. that the second (noun) "home" is apparently making anaphoric ("back-pointing") reference to the first (adverb) "home". Actually, Tom doesn't use the term "anaphoric reference" (he says that the second occurrence "parallels" the first), but I think (?) this is what he's getting at.
If so, I would tentatively suggest that there is no rigid requirement for an anaphor to be in the same functional class as its antecedent; nor is it entirely clear in this case that the antecedent of the second "home" is the first "home". Consider the following (constructed) example:
"They're going to cut our wages again. And I'm afraid it's going to be the biggest cut yet."
The anaphor/antecedent analysis of this example is I think a bit tricky. On the surface, the second (noun) "cut" might be considered a direct anaphoric reference to the first (verb) "cut"; equally, however, the second "cut" might be seen as an inference-requiring "packaging" reference to the entire previous sentence. [Here I'm deliberately NOT venturing into the terminological minefields laid by authors such as Halliday, Winter, Hoey, Francis and Quirk et al].
The analysis of anaphor/antecedent relations in Simon's sentence is I think similarly complex: in other words, the second "home" can be interpreted as inference requiring, not directly coreferential. In any case, the existence of a same-lexeme anaphoric relationship does not necessarily imply that the two occurrences (anaphor and apparent antecedent) are of the same functional class. Comments? (Tom? Simon? Rob? Sue Wharton? Anyone?)
Given this, I don't really understand why there's any problem about considering "home" as a lexeme that can function as an adverb (as well as a noun and, incidentally, a verb). I realize that some occurrences of some lexemes (e.g. -ing forms) are sometimes difficult to assign to a functional class, but I remain to be convinced that this is the case with "home". Can anyone suggest a "slot" (i.e. gap in a sentence) into which other adverbs of this type (i.e. "direction-of-movement" adverbs) might be put, but not "home"? Or is this not the right way of looking at it?
Pinkie
TDA Unit 3 problems | Mary Lynn Hughes | September 15th, 2000
Hello,
In response to the comments about 'home', etc, in particular Tom Bloor's posting, I wonder if phrases like 'went home', 'near home', etc might not have evolved from originally longer (prepositional) phrases? For example, I think it's possible (if unusual) to say 'near to home', in the same way that we say 'close to home', even though 'near home' is more common and hence, more 'standard'. I can't think of any other prepositional examples at the moment, but there must be some. What about 'They went shopping'? Mightn't 'went shopping' be a shortened form of a longer phrase, e.g. 'went to do some/the shopping' (which in turn perhaps evolved from 'went to the shops')?? Does anyone know about the historical development of such common phrases?
More generally, we often 'telescope' phrases - and whole sentences - by means of ellipsis and so on (on the principle of providing 'just enough'), and as long as the meaning is clear and the usage not too jarring, this doesn't seem to be problematic; and these versions sometimes catch on and eventually become 'standard', if enough users of the language (especially influential ones like broadcasters, etc) adopt them.
Concerning Tom's other examples - 'He went *his home'; 'He went *the same home' - it strikes me that these non-standard forms may not be acceptable because they don't really make sense, rather than because of grammatical proscription (or might this amount to the same thing?). In these examples the modifiers ('his', 'the same') seem redundant, i.e. unless there is reason to mark this occurrence of 'home' as somehow different than expected, just plain 'home' is the default option. For the same reason, the presumably 'standard' variants ('He went to his home' and 'He went to the same home') sound odd to me. Of course, I agree that we can't say 'He has gone *the bank' or 'She went *Aston University', at least not yet!
Also, I find it hard to think of a lexical item like 'home' as an adverb (even though I can see the grammatical/syntactic (?) argument for it being one). Tom wrote: 'Home' seems to have some qualities of noun even in its adverbial manifestations', and I intuitively agree (I feel it is mentally present as a noun, with the modifier/prep elided). However, I must admit I'm talking through my hat in all of this, as I haven't done TDA yet and am not familiar with the grammatical theory.
Going off on a bit of a tangent, Tom's comments about word class as an inherent feature of words made me think of the notion of 'prototypical' meanings for lexical items (something I'm currently interested in). These tend to be the 'literal' senses, probably the ones we learn first in our L1 (and perhaps the ones learners sometimes associate with new lexical items via translations from English back to their L1); in any case, they are what we usually think of when we hear a 'word' out of context. Presumably, in L1 acquisition, we then build on these prototypical meanings, adding nuances, metaphorical senses and sometimes even contrary meanings as we experience the lexical items in more and varied contexts. The point is, I think there might be a psychological need for such prototypes, as a rock to cling to in the sea of meanings, or as a 'default' or temporary place-holder until the particular meaning becomes evident? If so, this might partly explain why many learners tend to cling to the desire for a 'universal' definition/explanation of lexical items, rather than accepting from the start that there are simply different meanings. This is NOT to say that there cannot also be quite distinct meanings for a lexical item, stored as separate 'entries' in the mental lexicon, with little/no conscious link to each other, or necessarily to the prototype. (I go along with Tom's statement that 'there are two separate lexical items', but am not sure they necessarily 'share some semantic features', although in his 'swim' (N/V) example they clearly do).
Pinkie's example of 'home' occurring as a verb might be such a case, as in 'The radar homed in on the approaching ship'. This seems pretty far removed from a prototypical meaning for 'home', even if we can retrospectively posit a semantic link. (Coincidentally, I made up that sentence, then got a Cobuild demo concordance to check the usage of 'home in on'. There were some similar occurrences (cameras, missiles, radar), but the majority were distinctly 'metaphoric' and indicated a variety of contexts completely unrelated to mine - my prototype, I suppose - which just goes to show how far from 'originals' things can get! Three examples: 'Whitewater investigators are homing in on Hillary Clinton after...'; Home in on joys of life down by the...'; Over the next few laps da Silva homed in on the leader, cutting a lead of...').
Well, enough of my speculations. Hope I haven't bored you all stiff!
I second Pinkie's comment about 'so many interesting postings' and would like to thank the contributors- the list has become compulsive reading for me. I'd also like to say that I hope Tom will continue to be 'not really here' for as long as he likes.
Mary Lynn Hughes
TDA Unit 3 problems | Pinkie | September 15th, 2000
Brief correction to my post of yesterday...
I said that "home" in "He went home" is a "direction-of-movement" adverb (like forwards, shorewards, etc), but in fact it's presumably better classed as a "destination-reached" adverb* (like back, out, upstairs etc, as in "She went back", "They climbed out", "He went upstairs"). Is this right?
[* adverb or adverbial particle or whatever these words are called].
Pinkie
TDA Unit 3 problems | Tom Bloor | September 17th, 2000
(Reply to Simon & Tom),
I can't add a lot to Pinkie's perceptive remarks. It occurred to me after I'd signed off that I may have overstated the identity of the two occurrences of 'home'. I didn't mean to suggest that it was a clear proof of identity of word class and I thought of the example 'He went back but found that it wasn't the home he knew'. Pinkie's example makes the case perfectly. I felt that there was some kind of poetic or rhetorical force here suggesting the same word class but, on reflection, I don't think so. I was planning to post this second thought, but Pinkie, quick off the mark as ever, forestalled me with better examples. (by the way, Pinkie, you left out Sue Garton from the list of possible respondents to your questions. I am not sure it is ethical or polite to nominate respondents, but Sue Garton is the new LSU grammar expert responsible for GE.
Re anaphoric reference: one implication of my earlier remark was indeed that 'the' was anaphoric. However, the definiteness is almost certainly due to the defining clause after the head noun. cf "The girl that I marry will have to be As soft and as pink as a nursery" (A song in 'Calamity Jane'. In case you are retching, I think it was meant to be satirical). I suppose this makes it a case of homophoric reference. There's only one perceived 'girl that I marry', one 'home he knew' just as there is only one moon or earth or government (for some given context).
I still feel slight doubt about 'home' as an adverb though I did instinctively assign it to that class initially, which is where this all started, but Pinkie is making me feel more confident about it. Thanks, Pinkie. There must be assignment potential in here somewhere. Yes, Pinkie, search for slot/filler approach is certainly a good way to approach the question.
I've just seen Mary's (Mary Lynn Hughes) interesting email on the same subject but I have to leave now, and I'll come back to it. I am not supposed to be doing this.
Best
Tom Bloor
TDA Unit 3 problems | Tom Bloor | September 17th, 2000
(Reply to Simon & Tom II),
Yes, 'home' could be described (in this case at least: 'he went home') as 'destination-reached'. But I'm not sure how useful it is to classify adverbs in this way since adverb is a word class and not a semantic category. Halliday talks about such semantic fine grinding under the head of Circumstance (counterpart of Process and Participant in the clause as Representation; see IFG Chapter 5). These matters are addressed in the GE module though I have tended to avoid getting down to such fine detail in the file except by advising you to read the relevant Halliday chapter.
But 'home' here is not an adverb particle; I don't think it ever could be. A particle is an item attached to a verb as in 'look up' (They looked up the reference/looked the reference up), 'tear down'
(She tore down the fence/tore the fence down); see GE file.
Tom Bloor
TDA Unit 3 problems | Tom Bloor | September 17th, 2000
I don't know the history of these forms but Mary's speculation seems quite plausible, at least for some of them. It is unlikely that 'go shopping' derives from 'go the shops,' but I'm sure that 'shop' [verb] derives from 'shop' [noun]. 'go VERB+ing' is a standard grammatical form in English (e.g. 'go fishing, go swimming', etc; hence once you have 'shop' as a verb, it follows that you can have 'go shopping'.
De Saussure (and most structuralists or recent theoretical syntacticians - but not Halliday) would say that in terms of a synchronic view of existing grammar the history is irrelevant. Certainly innovations of the type outlined in Mary's last paragraph do occur in the way she suggests.
Back to 'home': I don't see how anyone could argue that 'home' in 'go home' and 'home' in 'it was not the same home' do not share SOME semantic features - obviously they must have some different ones as well. 'Homing in' is an example of a metaphor that has almost lost its metaphorical force; hence the common ground with 'home' [noun] is less obvious, but still vestigially present whereas in the term 'homing pigeon' the gerundive 'homing' retains more obvious semantic overlap. (See the superb: Lakoff G & Johnson M 1980 Metaphors We Live By and Lakoff G 1987 Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (both University of Chicago Press) to get the lowdown on the ubiquity of metaphor in the language.
You can't say that 'he went his home' is ungrammatical BECAUSE there is redundancy. Redundancy is one of the major characteristics of language systems and language use. Of course, there are pressures for economy, too. Hence ellipsis, etc though ellipsis is not grammatically obligatory. My point about *his home in 'He went *his home' is that if the item were a noun it should be grammatically possible to modify it with a determiner when it is definite. 'His' is no more redundant here than 'wife' is in 'He loves his wife' since it is possible to go to someone else's home just as it is possible to love someone else's wife; or indeed it is no more redundant than in 'He went back to his home'. Or how about 'I have a pain in my heart'; I could hardly have a pain in someone else's heart, but 'I have a pain in *heart' is not grammatical in English. This bar on modification together with the absence of a preposition suggests the status of adverb.
Incidentally, redundant features are added to the language as time goes by as well as lost.
(By the way, on your 'not yet possible' point about 'He went the bank'; 'He went Aston University': in my native dialect (North Staffordshire), people do say that. Julian Edge and I grew up saying exactly that, except for the fact that neither of us knew anyone who went to Aston University - or to the bank for that matter. We did say 'He went school', 'he went Stoke', etc. I didn't mention this point before for fear of confusing the issue. Different dialects have different grammars).
I really have to drop out of this fascinating interchange because I am way behind on other commitments, but keep up the high level of discussion. What a great list this is!
Tom Bloor
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