nouns as premodifiers

Nouns as premodifiers | Pinkie | December 11th, 2000

Greetings fellows MSc-ers...

I have a little request for help with my GE assignment, which basically sets out to answer the following question: why can we say "the education system" (for "the system of education"), but not "the education purpose" (for "the purpose of education")?

This sort of grammatical error (i.e. inappropriate use of a noun as premodifier, as in "the education purpose") is common among Spanish speakers writing English; and I've been told it's common among Italians too. [As Sue G has pointed out to me, this is a clear case of overgeneralization: students learn that a noun can be used as a premodifier, and then do so willy-nilly].

But what about other major languages and language groups (e.g. German, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic)? Does this sort of error (e.g. "the education purpose") commonly occur?

Best,

Pinkie
Spain

Re: nouns as premodifiers | Mary Lynn | December 11th, 2000

Pinkie,

Your question about why 'the education system' is OK but not *'the education purpose' got me going. My gut feeling is that it is not so much for grammatical, but rather lexical reasons, i.e. what collocates with 'system' cf 'purpose'. So, I had a look at the small corpora I have on my computer and compiled concordances for both 'purpose' and 'purposes', as attached (Word 7 format). If you look at them you can see that for 'purpose' there are no instances with a noun premodifier, but interestingly, for 'purposes' there are quite a few: 'research purposes', 'photocopy purposes', 'trophy purposes', 'integration purposes' and (if you allow gerunds) 'teaching purposes' and 'speaking and writing purposes'.

Of course, this is a very small sample, but Cobuild Demo concordances showed the same pattern, with 'purposes' premodified by: 'investment', 'weapons', 'ritual', 'refunding', 'lending', 'solidarity', 'briefing', 'illustration', 'research', 'merchandising' and 'leisure'; whereas 'purpose' again has no noun premodifiers. My tentative conclusion would be that nouns do apparently not premodify 'purpose', but 'purposes' may be; and that both are frequently premodified by a variety of 'adjectival' forms. I don't know if this is of any use/interest to you. Probably not relevant to a GE assignment, anyway!

I would also query your implicit assumption that what is required (by the student?) is a simple grammatical transformation, from *'the education purpose' to 'the purpose of education'. What about 'the educational purpose', etc? I think it depends on context and preceding/following co-text, and that we cannot make very strict rules.

Well, I've stuck my neck out, now I'm waiting for the chop!

Cheers,

Mary Lynn

Re: nouns as premodifierss | Pinkie | December 11th, 2000

Mary Lynn,

That wasn't my question! My question was whether other speakers of non-Romance languages commonly make errors of this type. [Just wanted to make that clear, so that this question doesn't get swallowed up in the mails, so to speak.].

Apart from that: wow!- I'm impressed! By the way, what a horribly gory metaphor, sticking your neck out and waiting for the chop! You must think I've got an axe to grind [Groan].

OK. You suggest that the reason we can't say "the education purpose" for "the purpose of education" is perhaps lexical/collocational rather than "grammatical". Well you may be right, but my own gut feeling is that there's something grammatical (i.e. generalizable) here. I really haven't got this clear yet, but I think whether or not a post modifying OF-phrase can be "converted into" a premodifying noun (e.g. "the education system" for "the system of education") probably depends largely on three things:

a) The functional role of OF in the phrase (basically possessive, as in "the function of education", or non-possessive, as in "the system of education", though things get a bit hairy here); this is closely related to the question of why we can say "education's purpose" but not "education's system" (other side of same coin, I think).

b) The type of reference (specific definite, nonspecific definite, or generic) to the subordinate noun (eg "education" in "the system of education"), and

c) lexical/collocational factors, as you say.

On another level, I also agree that discourse considerations will affect choices: but I mean choices (e.g. between "the education system" and "the system of education"), not whether or not "the education system" is a grammatical construction.

As regards the example of "the education purpose":

1) Your concordance confirms that this construction is not used,

2) I think the construction "for NOUN purposes" (e.g. "for weapons purposes") is rather an oddball set phrase, though I have to admit you've got me on the defensive here, and

3) You're quite right that a corpus approach is a good way of starting out, should have occurred to me, and thanks for the website address which I wasn't aware of. I went there and tried to look for "education's purpose", but it doesn't let you look for apostrophes.

AltaVista gave me 373 hits, including the following: Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. (Malcolm Forbes).

Summing up: thanks for this extremely interesting reply. You've really given me some useful ideas, and got me thinking more carefully about this. Any more comments would be much appreciated: performatively, I hereby hand over the axe!

Best,

Pinkie

PS 1 - Results of an AltaVista search for "education's system" - 32 hits (cf 373 for "education's function), checked the first 10: 8 were either false hits or constructions like "the Board of Education's system"; one was the following apparently incomprehensible project title written by Italian authors "Anticipation's Inquiry for Multicultural Education's System" (ie to all appearances precisely the sort of error I'm talking about), and one was the following sentence from US authors "Equally important was the embodiment of education's system reform in the first two bills", which does indeed appear to be using the form I am claiming to be ungrammatical: but does that mean I should now consider it grammatical?

PS 2 - Did a quick concordance of "function" at the site you directed me to. Two particularly interesting results were:

a) Because of the valley's function as a kind of... Is it really just a lexical/collocational thing that prevents us from saying "Because of the valley function as a kind of...".

b) ...heart, blood pressure and kidney function. Interesting because it appears to go against my hypothesized rule, ie that possessive OF-phrases ("the function of the kidneys") cannot be restated as premodifying nouns. Though here the problem perhaps lies in different meanings of the word "function" (ie "physiological role" versus here "correct functioning").

PS 3- You write "I would also query your implicit assumption that what is required (by the student?) is a simple grammatical transformation, from 'the education purpose' to 'the purpose of education'". Yes, I don't mean to imply here that this transformation should be a teacher's or student's goal: simply that my students often write phrases like "The education purpose is to..." when they should be writing "The purpose of education is to...".

Re: nouns as premodifierss | Rita Balbi | December 11th, 2000

Hi Pinkie,

In my experience Italians tend to say "the system of education" rather than "the education system" because this is how we say in Italian but the inappropriate use of a noun as premodifier is not a common error ( or mistake?).

Greetings

Rita Balbi

Re: nouns as premodifierss | Dominic | December 12th, 2000

Pinkie,

Japanese students learn "the system of education" as the only correct "grammatical" form (perhaps it was prevalent 50 years ago when these things where being "decided" here) and are either bemused, amazed or don't believe me when I tell them that "the education system" is preferred in most cases (I hope I'm right!) or even possible at all. This has nothing to do with Japanese grammar (in Japanese it would be "education's system"). I don't know why this occurs but it may be linked to a theory of education that sees education as communicating established and unquestioned truths- those things that have already been "decided". (But this is a whole other topic).

Dominic

GE: Clarifying my question, sorry | Pinkie | December 12th, 2000

Thanks provisionally to Mary Lynn, Rita and Dominic, but can I just butt in a moment, to clarify my question:

Do students in your part of the world tend to make either of the following errors/mistakes?

a) Write "The education function is to bla bla bla", when an NS would write "The function of education is to bla bla bla" or "Education's function is to bla bla bla" [Here the of-phrase is possessive]

b) Write "Education's system is bla bla bla", when an NS would write "The system of education is bla bla bla" or "The education system is bla bla bla..." [Here the of-phrase is not possessive]

Related errors with articles in different places, etc.

Please note that these are constructed examples, designed to illustrate classes of error/mistake: I don't mean these specific phrases.

Thanks again, and sorry to clutter up your in-trays.

Best,

Pinkie
Spain

Re: nouns as premodifierss | Mary Lynn | December 12th, 2000

Pinkie,

Most interesting! I think I'll respond in your text, in {{}}, rather than start from scratch. Don't know if anyone else is interested, but will post it so others can react if they want to. (I hate it when people post privately and I miss part of the discussion.)

Mary Lynn

----- Original Message -----

GE: reply to Mary Lynn | Pinkie

Mary Lynn,

That wasn't my question! My question was whether other speakers of non-Romance languages commonly make errors of this type. [Just wanted to make that clear, so that this question doesn't get swallowed up in the mails, so to speak.].

{{Sorry about that! I have noticed that most learners (incl Swedes, Japanese, Slav speakers) tend to suffer from confusions of the type, 'if X is OK, why not Y?' - where X and Y are different lexical items in a particular (learned) 'grammatical' structure, and I think these are often related to what can permissibly modify what, but I don't have samples to back that up. I also think most of them eventually get these things sorted out more by exposure to the language than by grammatical analysis, but that may be because in most cases I'm not able to provide them with comprehensible (i.e. clear and memorable) grammatical explanations. Certainly, the simplified grammar 'rules' presented in most grammar and course books are no help, and probably contribute to the confusion.}}.

Apart from that: wow!- I'm impressed! By the way, what a horribly gory metaphor, sticking your neck out and waiting for the chop!- You must think I've got an axe to grind [Groan].

{{Ah well, 'sticks and stones will break my bones, but metaphors will never hurt me.' Know that one?}}.

OK. You suggest that the reason we can't say "the education purpose" for "the purpose of education" is perhaps lexical/collocational rather than "grammatical". Well you may be right, but my own gut feeling is that there's something grammatical (i.e. generalizable) here. I really haven't got this clear yet, but I think whether or not a postmodifying OF-phrase can be "converted into" a premodifying noun (e.g. "the education system" for "the system of education") probably depends largely on three things:

a) The functional role of OF in the phrase (basically possessive, as in "the function of education", or non-possessive, as in "the system of education", though things get a bit hairy here); this is closely related to the question of why we can say "education's purpose" but not "education's system" (other side of same coin, I think).

b) The type of reference (specific definite, nonspecific definite, or generic) to the subordinate noun (e.g. "education" in "the system of education"), and

{{I'm in no position to criticize your analysis, but it makes me shiver. As you say, 'things get a bit hairy' when you're trying to split hairs!- Chop, chop, chop, finer and finer (Sorry, couldn't resist.). What do you do with the above categories when they become indeterminate, as they must at some point?- Nothing personal, but this is the problem I have with such formal systems, they cannot but be arbitrary as they move into more and more abstract territory. And I remain to be convinced that they have pedagogical relevance, which is supposedly our bottom line. Although, having said all that, I have to add that I know absolutely nothing about GE.}}

c) lexical/collocational factors, as you say.

On another level, I also agree that discourse considerations will affect choices: but I mean choices (e.g. between "the education system" and "the system of education"), not whether or not "the education system" is a grammatical construction.

{{OK, but the latter question is at the heart of our discussion, isn't it? What is the deciding criterion for 'grammaticality'? Is it formal constraints like your a) and b) above, or is it usage (i.e. what people do with language), or ? More below.}}

As regards the example of "the education purpose":

1) Your concordance confirms that this construction is not used

2) I think the construction "for NOUN purposes" (e.g. "for weapons purposes") is rather an oddball set phrase, though I have to admit you've got me on the defensive here,

{{Well, it turns up frequently and with a wide variety of lexical realizations, so it can't be that odd as far as general usage is concerned. I think this is where our different approaches are most evident - to you this is 'an oddball set phrase' (cf some set of grammatical rules?), to me it's a common, observable pattern and therefore valid - it exists!- To try and convince you, I've attached the Cobuild concordance - if you look at the NOUN instances in their (limited) co-text they might make more sense.}}.

and 3) you're quite right that a corpus approach is a good way of starting out, should have occurred to me, and thanks for the website address which I wasn't aware of. I went there and tried to look for "education's purpose", but it doesn't let you look for apostrophes.

{{I know, the demo version severely limits how you can search, which is frustrating. Try searching for 'education* + purpose' - this should give you all forms with the stem 'education'. There's also the the BNC corpus- if you haven't already had enough of this! Web searches are fascinating, but don't you find it terribly time-consuming having to go to each site?}}.

AltaVista gave me 373 hits, including the following:

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." (Malcolm Forbes)

Summing up: thanks for this extremely interesting reply. You've really given me some useful ideas, and got me thinking more carefully about this. Any more comments would be much appreciated: performatively, I hereby hand over the axe!

{{Ha, ha. Thanks to you too, this is very stimulating (even though it's not what I 'should' be doing). I think I'll get the bandages ready all the same, cause I still feel that chop is coming, if not from you.}}

Best,

Pinkie

PS 1 - Results of an AltaVista search for "education's system" - 32 hits (cf 373 for "education's function), checked the first 10: 8 were either false hits or constructions like "the Board of Education's system"; one was the following apparently incomprehensible project title written by Italian authors "Anticipation's Inquiry for Multicultural Education's System" (ie to all appearances precisely the sort of error I'm talking about), and one was the following sentence from US authors "Equally important was the embodiment of education's system reform in the first two bills", which does indeed appear to be using the form I am claiming to be ungrammatical: but does that mean I should now consider it grammatical?

{{Probably not on the basis of one citation, anyway! It's an odd one, do you think they might mean the Dept of Education?}}

PS 2 - Did a quick concordance of "function" at the site you directed me to. Two particularly interesting results were:

a) Because of the valley's function as a kind of...

Is it really just a lexical/collocational thing that prevents us from saying "Because of the valley function as a kind of..."

{{NO! (Now you're having me on.) Of course we mostly follow agreed conventions, grammatical and lexical. You'd have to say, 'Because the valley functions as...'. Not only lexical, but you tell me, you're the grammar expert here. Isn't 'because of' the key structure, which determines what follows, lexically/grammatically?}}

Re: nouns as premodifiers | Pinkie | December 12th, 2000

Hi Mary!

1 I hate it when people post privately and I miss part of the discussion.

Me too!

2 I have noticed that most learners tend to suffer from confusions of the type, 'if X is OK, why not Y?' - where X and Y are different lexical items in a particular (learned) 'grammatical' structure, and I think these are often related to what can permissibly modify what, but I don't have samples to back that up. I also think most of them eventually get these things sorted out more by exposure to the language than by grammatical analysis...

I agree: I mean, I FULLY AGREE that "exposure to the language" generally makes a more important contribution to language learning than grammatical analysis. But this DOES NOT mean a) that everything is lexis and there's no such thing as grammar, b) that grammatical analysis by students is valueless, or c) that grammatical analysis by teachers and applied linguists is valueless.

3 Certainly, the simplified grammar 'rules' presented in most grammar and course books are no help, and probably contribute to the confusion.

Don't agree. In my view this is a generalization. Some grammar rules presented in some books are helpful to some students (and some teachers) some of the time; some aren't.

4 I'm in no position to criticize your analysis, but it makes me shiver. As you say, 'things get a bit hairy' when you're trying to split hairs! Chop, chop, chop, finer and finer (Sorry, couldn't resist.) What do you do with the above categories when they become indeterminate, as they must at some point? Nothing personal, but this is the problem I have with such formal systems, they cannot but be arbitrary as they move into more and more abstract territory. And I remain to be convinced that they have pedagogical relevance, which is supposedly our bottom line.

My view - a pretty uncontroversial one, I think - is that some lexicogrammatical aspects of language can best be described in terms of generalizable rules (at one extreme) and others in terms of specific word-word collocations (at the other extreme): in between are lots of intermediate situations in which the rules apply to increasingly small subsets of words, or in which the rules are overlaid by lots of collocational exceptions.

To say "everything is lexis" (as you seem to be saying) is in my view about as unhelpful as saying that "everything is grammar". Nor does the fact that grammar rules are complex mean that they don't exist. I think a good example of this grammar-to-collocation continuum is given by the way in which verbs can be classified in terms of transitivity (intransitive, copular, monotransitive, complex transitive, ditransitive; see Quirk et al Sections 16.19 and 16.20), and within these classes into semantic subsets showing related behaviour; and of course within these subsets there is variation which can only be described in lexical-collocational terms (still rules, though: rules that native speakers follow, albeit unconsciously). Whether you choose to use this grammatical information in your teaching, and if so how, is another matter: my view is that this understanding is useful, though that doesn't mean you should give your students photocopies of Quirk et al.

5 What is the deciding criterion for 'grammaticality'? Is it formal constraints like your a) and b) above, or is it usage (i.e. what people do with language).

But of course the deciding criterion for grammaticality is usage, and of course usage is determined by formal constraints, i.e. rules (ranging from the extremely general to the word-specific) which speakers follow but are generally unable to make explicit: the identification and "explicitation" of these rules is one of the jobs of language teachers and linguists, no? [And secondarily: the deciding criterion for grammaticality is usage, but there's an evident practical problem with this: how many uses makes a usage correct?].

6 [The construction "for NOUN purposes" (e.g. "for weapons purposes")] turns up frequently and with a wide variety of lexical realizations, so it can't be that odd as far as general usage is concerned. I think this is where our different approaches are most evident - to you this is 'an oddball set phrase' (cf some set of grammatical rules?), to me it's a common, observable pattern and therefore valid - it exists!

Please! Of course I'm not suggesting that "for weapons purposes" is in any way invalid. Neither did I mean to suggest that I think this construction is infrequent: as your concordances make clear, it's common. However, I certainly AM suggesting that it's grammatically odd - i.e. that its grammatical structure does not accord with the rules (sorry, know you don't like that word!) that govern semantically comparable constructions with near-synonyms of "purposes" (aims, functions, goals, objectives, ends).

7 I cited the corpus find "Because of the valley's function as a kind of...", and asked "Is it really just a lexical/collocational thing that prevents us from saying "Because of the valley function as a kind of...". You replied: "NO! (Now you're having me on.) Of course we mostly follow agreed conventions, grammatical and lexical."

I'm certainly not having you on. You agree that I can say "the education system" with pretty much the same meaning as "the system of education"? And that "the valley's function" has pretty much the same meaning as "the function of the valley"? So why can't I say "the valley function", again with pretty much the same meaning as "the function of the valley"? Your argument appears to be that a speaker chooses "valley function", never "valley's function", not because she's applying an internalized rule applicable to sets of words, but rather because she's never heard the particular combination "valley function", at least with this meaning. Because when we take it to its logical conclusion, isn't this what the "strong" lexical position implies: that the only rules in a speaker's head are those derived directly from word combinations actually heard?

Better toddle off to bed now. Fun, this!

Best wishes,

Pinkie

Re: nouns as premodifiers | Dominic Marini | December 13th, 2000

Pinkie,

You mentioned writing (as opposed to speaking). Could the use of "of" be linked to register? When you write, particularly about education, you are more likely to be in a formal register and this could carry over to, or even subconsciously inform, your choice of words when speaking. Strunk & White, The Elements of Style, note that while you cold write or say, for example, This country's laws" you write or say "The laws of Moses" rather than "Moses's laws". No reason is given in the book but I think that religion has always been a serious business and so an appropriate serious register is used. The same goes for academia and I would venture to guess that a corpus of academic works would show a higher frequency of the X of Y pattern that a corpus of bar room chit chat, for similar social reasons.

All the best,

DM (Dominic Marini)

Re: nouns as premodifierss | Pinkie | December 13th, 2000

Dominic: Thanks for the information that Japanese Ss tend to use "X of Y" rather than "Y X" because that's what they were taught; and I certainly agree that "X of Y" is often used in preference to "X's Y" in formal registers.

Rita: Thanks too for the information that Italian Ss tend to say "X of Y" rather than "Y X" because the former is the structure used in Italian.

With all due respect and gratitude, however, neither of you - nor Mary Lynn nor anyone else - has answered my question [see "GE: Clarifying my question, sorry"]. Must be my problem for not expressing myself clearly or something!

Anyway, doesn't matter: I'll get by without this information. Thanks again.

Best,

Pinkie
Spain

Re: nouns as premodifierss | Steve Mann | December 13th, 2000

Further to Dominic's observation about register - it is interesting that nearly all Universities in UK have the 'of' - possibly making them sound more serious and formal?- Aston's title has stayed Aston University.

Dunno what we ought to make of that?

When I was a student at Essex University, they changed it to University of Essex. I'm sure this was partly to counter the image of radical politics and drunk students. I can't say I noticed much of a change from my chair in the Student Union Bar.

Best

Steve Mann

Re: nouns as premodifiers | Pinkie | December 14th, 2000

Dear Pinkie,

Been chewing over your message. It seems that in the heat of battle, I've given an inaccurate/unbalanced impression of my views, so let me try to clarify them. I'm definitely not anti-grammar. I don't think that 'everything is lexis' or that grammatical analysis is a waste of time, nor do I have anything against rules per se. I am skeptical about the usefulness of very complex or abstract rules (where's the practical payoff?) and approaches to grammar that don't make substantial reference to 'real' language data (where's the relevance?). This is all provisional though, based on my own experience and what I've learned so far on this course. On the whole, I go along with your 'uncontroversial' view of language as a lexicogrammatical continuum (though haven't read Quirk et al) and I agree with what you say about 'the deciding criterion for grammaticality' (quite circular really, or maybe a spiral with comet-like tails representing 'fringe' usages). I can't respond properly to your last two points (6 & 7), as I'm completely out of my depth in terms of the specific GE frame of reference, and think I'd better just stop making uninformed speculations (Maybe someone else?). However, I can see that the subject is fascinating and the discussion has certainly made me think, even about fundamental questions like, 'what is grammar?'. GE isn't on my agenda, but I have Bloor & Bloor (95), so will try to get down to reading that. Would you say it's a good holiday read?!

I'm sticking to my criticism of pedagogical grammar rules for now. Although you're quite right that they are sometimes helpful, I think they are too often inaccurate (e.g. by over-generalizing, or ignoring important aspects of usage) to be relied on. And when students are not told this (never mind teachers), it may lead to the kind of confusions that started off this discussion. Also, explanations are not always very clear. Examples that spring to mind on both counts are 'standard' treatments of the passive form, relative clauses, modal verbs and verb tenses. I realize it's difficult to write a pedagogical grammar, but. (By the way, I read an interesting article on that very topic recently - Chalker, S, 1984, Why can't someone write a nice, simple grammar?- ELT Journal 38/2:79-85 Old but still relevant).

So what to do?- I'm trying to more often balance use of pedagogical grammar materials with analysis of real language data, e.g. checking or comparing rules/hypotheses against data and encouraging students to hypothesize from data - a two-way process. I think this can be particularly useful for specific questions/problems posed by students, for which grammar books may not have adequate (or any) answers. However, it's not that straightforward (especially as I'm often on as much of a learning curve as my students - enter the non-knowing teacher) and I am struggling to find ways to make it work effectively. It's interesting though. I'd love to hear what others think about this teaching-of-grammar question and how they deal with it in practice.

OK Pinkie, I've got to put this aside for a while, though doing so may bring on withdrawal symptoms! Interesting that you never got the answer you were looking for to your original question - you'd think there'd be some analyses of error types by language group out there somewhere. Anyway, vive le discussion and very best wishes.

Feliz Navidad, Happy Christmas or whatever you're having yourself (as they say here in Ireland),

Mary Lynn

Re: nouns as premodifiers | Pinkie | December 14th, 2000

Dear Mary Lynn,

The fault's largely mine: in the heat of the battle, I think I probably wasn't interpreting you very accurately. I certainly agree with just about 100% of your last message (no kidding), and you've certainly drawn my attention to several VERY interesting points, and to the likelihood that much of what I'm trying to study will turn out to be just collocation. In fact, I have to admit that the results of my analyses over the last few days have been very much in your favour. Perhaps I should have done LEX first!

Anyway, I agree that it's time to stop. Many thanks for this. As you say, viva el debate! ...and a very Merry Christmas to you and to everyone else who's reading this, especially regular posters Rita and Jonathan and Dominic and Simon and Murray and Francesca and James and Rob. Not forgetting our inspired and long-suffering mentors in Brum! Now I promise not to clutter mailboxes for ...ooh, at least 3 weeks.

Warmest wishes,

Pinkie

Re: nouns as premodifiers | Tom Bloor | December 23rd, 2000

Further to a discussion of some weeks ago, which I have only just caught up with: when I joined it in 1979, Aston was called (the) University of Aston in Birmingham, usually abbreviated to (the) University of Aston. Shortly thereafter, under the vice-chancellorshipship of the dreaded Fred Crawford (later SIR Frederick Crawford), the name was changed to Aston University, the idea being that it was snappier and more up-to-date. At the same time the address changed from Gosta Green to Aston Triangle and the triangle motif replaced the original coat of arms. For proposing these changes some public relations consultancy was paid a huge fee. The original plan was to have pink sweaters for girl students and blue for boys (this in the 1980s!) but that was laughed out of existence at the outset.

Tom Bloor

nouns as premodifiers