Lexical flexibility in English: A preliminary study

Abstract

This talk presents preliminary results from my dissertation research on lexical flexibility (the ability for words to be used in multiple parts of speech like noun, verb, and adjective), focusing on data in English.

Full text

Lexical flexibility in English: A preliminary study
Daniel W. Hieber
University of California, Santa Barbara
danielhieber.com
10/16/2019
College of William & Mary, Department of Linguistics, Williamsburg, VA
1

What part of speech is friend?
•Noun
•Verb
•Adjective
[Takeapoll]
2

friend as Noun
•I got a spooky box from my best friends.
•Secrets don't make friends, Luke.
•Just think I saw an old college friend on TV meeting Hilary Clinton.
TwitterdatafromW&Mstudents
3

friend as Verb
•What's your user? I would love to friend you and look at it when
finished!
•If we don't have mutual friends we can't get friended.
•I accidentally downloaded Facebook and created a profile and
friended a bunch of people.
4

friend as Adjective
•the guy became the national symbol of friend zone in just a day
•Facebook just put me in the damn friend zone with my wife
•can someone help me with some friend drama?
5

What does the dictionary say?
•Dictionary.com: verb, noun
•Merriam-Webster: verb, noun
•Why not adjectives?
6

Nouns Modifying Nouns
•Are they compounds?
•health care vs. healthcare
•friend zone vs. friendzone
Temptedtoanalyzenounsmodifyingnounsascompounds.Doesthiswork?
7

health care vs. healthcare (Google Books)
Insomecases,nounsmodifyingnounsdobecome compounds.
Butnotineverycase.
8

Nouns Modifying Nouns
•Are they compounds?
•health care vs. health care
•friend zone vs. friendzone
•We don’t analyze these as adjectives because:
•tradition
•the change is unmarked
friendzone doesn’t(yet)appearintheGoogleBookscorpus
Linguistsselectiveabouttheircriteria
Cherrypicktoaccommodate:
‐tradition
‐theirtheoreticalperspective
9

Aside
•the truth is they friendzone everyone who tries to be with them
•just ate two slices of veggie pizza for lunch so basically I'm all
healthed up for at least a month
friendzone–does appearonTwitter;entire phrasecanbecomelexicalized (anew
meaningfulwordinitself)
healthed – veryunexpecteduseofthiswordasaverb
10

able
•N: that feeling of abling to run 22 miles a week
•V: always abling and abetting the horses
•A: an able mind overcomes challenges
11

time
•N: still one of my favorite series of all time
•V: I'm so bored in this class that I'm timing how long I can hold my
breath
•A: 2 years ago today (or yesterday depending on your time zone)
12

Parts of Speech in English
•How common is flexibility in English?
•rigid vs. flexible words
lexical vs.grammatical words
Englishissometimesclaimedtoberigid,sometimesflexible
13

A crosslinguistic problem
14

Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan; Pacific Northwest)
1. mamuːk-ma quːʔas-ʔi
working-PRES(INDIC) man-DEF
‘the man is working’
2. quːʔas-ma mamuːk-ʔi
man-PRES(INDIC) working-DEF
‘the working one is a man’
15

Nuuchahnulth (Wakashan; Pacific Northwest)
1. mamuːk-ma quːʔas-ʔi
working-PRES(INDIC) man-DEF
‘the man is working’
2. quːʔas-ma mamuːk-ʔi
man-PRES(INDIC) working-DEF
‘the working one is a man’
Flexibilityispresentforbothwords
16

Central Alaskan Yup’ik (Eskimo-Aleut)
3. angya-qa ‘my boat’
ner’a-qa ‘I am eating it’
angya-a‘his/her boat’
ner’a-a‘he/she/it is eating it’
angya-at ‘their boat’
nera-at ‘they are eating it’
Entireparadigmmatches
17

Central Alaskan Yup’ik
“In the Eskimo mind the line of demarcation between the noun
and the verb seems to be extremely vague, as appears from the
whole structure of the language, and from the fact that the
inflectional endings are, partially at any rate, the same for both
nouns and verbs.” (p. 1057)
Thalbitzer, W. 1911. Eskimo. In Franz Boas (ed.), Handbook of American Indian Languages
(Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 40), 967–1069.
18

Riau Indonesian (Austronesian)
4. ayam makan
chicken eat
•The chicken is eating.
•The chicken is being eaten.
•The chicken is making somebody eat.
•Somebody is eating for the chicken.
•Somebody is eating where the chicken is.
•the chicken that is eating
•where the chicken is eating
•when the chicken is eating
•how the chicken is eating
FamouslyclaimedbyDavidGiltolackpartsofspeechentirely.
19

Mundari (Austroasiatic)
5. buru=ko bai-ke-d-a
mountain=3
PL
.
S
make-
COMPL
-
TR
-
INDIC
‘They made the mountain.’
6. saan=ko buru-ke-d-a
firewood=3
PL
.
S
mountain-
COMPL
-
TR
-
INDIC
‘They heaped up the firewood.’
20

Flexibility with Fully-Inflected Words
7. Chitimacha (isolate; Louisiana)
dzampuyna
‘they usually thrust/spear (with it)’ = ‘a spear’
8. Mohawk (Iroquoian; Ontario / Quebec)
ieráhkhwa’
‘one puts things in with it’ = ‘a container’
Mohawk:verbsshowaclinefromfullylexicalizedtofullyproductive/analyzable;some
wordshavebothuses
Ihaveyettofindalanguagewhereflexibilityhasn’tbeenobservedinsufficientlygreat
amountsthatitmeritscommentintheliteratureoragrammaticaldescription.
21

The Problem of Lexical Flexibility
22

How to analyze lexical flexibility?
•conversion / zero-derivation vs. underspecification
•lexical flexibility is used in a neutral sense here
conversion– traditionalapproach,favoredbygenerativists/formalists(exception:
DistributedMorphology)
underspecification–newerapproach,graduallygainingproponents
23

What is a word?
•lexeme
•abstract representation (cognitive or grammatical) of a group of related
wordforms
•whatever it is that’s common to those wordforms (usually a stem)
•lemma – conventional wordform used to represent a group of
wordforms
•keyword: conventional
•token – a specific instance of a lexeme in discourse
Determiningwhattwousesofaformcountasthesamelexemeistricky.
Whatwe’reinterestedinwhenwe’retalkingaboutwhatcountsasinstancesofthesame
“word”isactuallyalexeme.
lexeme –abstractrepresentation(cognitiveorgrammatical)ofrelatedwordforms;
whateveritisthat’scommontothosewordforms(usuallyastem)
‐example:help,helps,helped
‐example:eat,ate,eaten
‐example:am,is,are,was,were,be
lemma /headword –conventionalwordformusedtorepresentthisbundle;justamatterof
convention
24

How to determine wordhood?
•words have many senses
Ifawordhasmanydifferentsenses,wheredowedrawthelinebetweenonelexemeand
thenext?
25

Senses of run
•Dictionary.com lists 148 senses of run, some nouns, some verbs
(but again no adjectives)
•fast pedestrian motion: I run every day
•conduct a political campaign: he ran a fair campaign
•come undone: these stockings run easily
•operate or function: does it run well?
•get or become: the well ran dry
Shouldwecountalloftheseasthesame“word”/lexeme?Wheredowedrawtheline?
26

How to determine wordhood?
•words have many senses
•grammatical categories vs. cognitive associations
•categories are prototypal
•derived words have unpredictable meanings
Cognitiveliteraturesuggeststhatwehavecognitiveassociationsbetweenhistorically
relatedorsynchronicallysimilarwordforms,evenifthey’retotallydifferentlexemes.
‐responsetimes
‐primingeffects
Wedo havesomeassociationbetweenthemanysensesofrun –probablyafamily
network.
prototypal – Theyclusteraroundaprototype
‐prototypicalnoun:man
‐non‐prototypicalnoun:running
Prototypicalityestablishedthrough:
‐listingexperiments
‐response/recalltime
‐corpusfrequency
‐historicalprimacy(usually)
Predictability–sincethemeaninghaschanged(enough),itmustbeanewword
‐BUT,somelanguageshavecasesofconversionwhicharepredictableaswellascases
27

whicharenot(Mandinka)(probablymostlanguages)
27

Semantic Predictability
•brother vs. brethren
•cloth vs. clothes
•new vs. news
•(hunting) blind vs. (window) blinds
•custom vs. customs
•arm vs. arms
•wood vs. woods
Inflectionalsocancreateasignificantshiftinmeaning
brother,cloth –historicaldivergence
blind–windowinterpretationnotavailableinthesingular
custom – internationaltravelsensenotavailableinthesingular
arm – militaryforcesensenotavailableinthesingular
wood – singularandpluralrefertodifferenttypesofthings(amaterialvs.acollection)
28

Semantic Predictability
•inflectional vs. derivational uses of the same morpheme
•English –ing progressive / gerund
•the running man (inflectional)
•the running of the bulls (derivational)
•Chitimacha –ma pluractional
•guxma- ‘eat (multiple things)’ (inflectional)
•haakxtema- ‘design’ (from haakxte- ‘draw’) (derivational)
Can’tevenbesurewhenamorphemeisactinginflectionallyvs.derivationally
Thatis,wedon’tknowwhenitbecomesanewword
29

English –ing: Inflection vs. Derivation
Notethecaptionhere:Thedifferencebetweenaverbandanadjective
30

How to determine wordhood?
•bad question
•good questions
•How common is flexibility / unmarked derivation?
•Does the frequency / degree of flexibility vary from word to word?
•Does the frequency / degree of flexibility vary from language to language?
•Why are some instances of derivation marked, and others not? What’s special
about the (un)marked ones?
Givenwhatwe(don’t)knowaboutlexicalcategories,Ithinkthisisanunhelpfulquestion.
Weknowlexicalrelatednessisgradientandcomplex.Canwesaysomethingaboutit
anyway?
Weshouldtreatlexicalflexibilityasanobjectofstudyinitsownright,withoutassuming
anythingabouttherelatednessofdifferentusesofaword.
Yes. Thesearemylong‐termresearchquestions.Thisresearchprojectaimstotacklejust
thefirstquestion.
31

This Study
32

Research Questions
1. How flexible are the words of English, and English generally?
2. Does flexibility correlate with semantic domain?
Question2isaninitialattempttodeterminewhatmightmotivateunmarkedconversion.
33

Determining Degree of Flexibility
1. For a given word, count how often that word is used as a
noun, verb, or adjective.
2. Calculate a flexibility score for that word – how evenly
distributed its uses are across different categories.
3. Apply this method to each word in the language (or a
representative sample of them)
34

Data & Methods
•Spoken portion of the Open American National Corpus (OANC)
(~3.5 million words) (not Twitter)
•Randomly selected wordforms from 100 different frequency bins
•Created a list of every instance of those 100 words (~380,000
tokens total)
•Annotated each token for its function: noun, verb, adjective
frequencyvs.corpusdispersion–[mentionifyouhavesometimetofill]
Annotated16outofthe100lexemescompletelysofar
35

Results
36

able
•N: [none]
•V: Are you able?
•A: most of the able bodied Americans
Noun:WesawaTwitterexampleearlier,butnoneappearintheOANC.Theformabling
doesn’tappearonce.
‐Noticethatthere’salreadyamarkedderivationforthis:ability
‐Thisphenomenonissometimescalledblocking,thoughit’sunclearifthisisactually
what’shappeninghere
Vastmajorityofinstancesofable areattributivepredicates,whichisinterestingbecause
able ishistoricallyanadjective
Verbalusesareduetocopulaconstructions,whicharestructurallyequivalenttoinflected
verbs
‐Iamahead
‐Iamrunning
AlmostanythingcanbepredicatedinEnglish,unmarked
Omnipredicativity – originallyproposedforNahuatl(Aztec)
‐appearstobeaprevalentfeatureofall,possiblymost,languages
37

Omnipredicativity
38

able
39

ahead
•N: [none]
•V: I’m ahead of him right now
•A: [none]
Adverbslikeahead weregenerallytricky.Frequentlytheyseemlikenounsfunctioning
adverbiallyorfunctioning tomodify.Historicallythey’reoftennounsorlocativephrases(at
head)
‐Igotaheadofhim (reference)
‐thenextguyaheadofme (modification)
Didn’tcountcasesliketheseunlesstheywerereallyclear,butitmakesmethinkadverbs
areanotherareawherewe’readheringtotraditionalwaysofanalyzingtermsevenwhen
theyaren’tappropriatetotheactualdata.
40

ahead
41

anything
•N: I was never exposed to anything of the sort
•V: it’s anything in that hobby line
•A: [none]
Notsurprising.Howeveritshouldbenotedthatyoucanfindmodifyingandverbal
examplesonline,notjustforanything,butforjustaboutanything!
V: Sheloadsmedownwithgoodiesthatshesearchesoutasnotbeingsprayed,shot,
orartificially anythinged
A: thatwasn'tverycountryor veryanything,really
42

anything
43

back
•N: hand print on the back of her leg
•V: as I’m backing off I’m still keeping an eye on it
•A: when I look out my back door
Veryeasytofindinstancesofallthreefunctionsforback,evenignoreattributive
predicativecases
44

back
45

believe
•N: I don’t have any choice but to believe it
•N: all those feelings of believing
•V: I don’t believe she read a lot
•A: the believing scientist
N: infinitivesaretraditionallyanalyzedasaverbalinflection,butinfinitivesaretypologically
noun‐like,andthey’reoftenconsideredanominalformofaverb
46

believe
47

best
•N: summer is the best
•V: the new crew was best
•A: he is one of the best actors
Fortheattributivepredicativeuses,I’dliketogobackandrecodethemasadistinct
category.
V: couldalsohavebeentobestsomeone,butthatusedidn’tappearintheOANC
Futureresearchquestion:Canwedeterminetheprototypicaluseofawordbythe
distributionofitsfunctions?
‐adjective:primarilyadjective,somenoun
‐noun:primarilynoun,someverb,someadjective
‐verb:primarilyverb,somenoun,littletonoadjective
48

best
49

bill
•N: the bill always comes in
•V: they could bill Uncle Sam for that hospital care
•A: bills wise we divide everything
50

bill
51

business
•N: we were in the retail milk business
•V: it’s business and it’s serious
•A: here’s my business card
52

business
53

PreliminaryResultsforEnglish
MostwordsofEnglishdonotexhibitmuchflexibility–onefunctionpredominates
‐Theresultsarealittleboring!Butthatinitselfisinteresting!
‐Thissayssomethingaboutlinguists’perceptionofEnglishasaflexiblelanguage
‐Linguists’perceptionsseemtobebasedonstriking,standoutcasesratherthanactual
data
(Almost)allwordsofEnglishexhibitsome flexibility
Theonlywordwhichis100%consistentinitsdistributionisahead,whichistypically
thoughttobeanadverb!
‐ResultswouldprobablylookverydifferentifIincludedadverbialuses
‐verbshavenominalformsbydefault:verb+nounflexibility
‐anythingcanbepredicatedusingacopulaconstruction:omnipredicativity
back isthemostevenlydistributedbetweenthethreefunctions
‐Arebodyparttermsmoreflexiblethanothersemanticdomains?Why?
‐Potentialanswer:Thewiderangeofspatialandinstrumentalmetaphorsthatbodypart
termsareusedfor
54

Thecategoriesseemtobegradient– mostwordsarenotclear‐cut.
Whichofthesearenouns?Verbs?Adjectives?
55

Preliminary Results from English
•Most words of English are not especially flexible
•One function tends to predominate for any given word
•All (?) words of English exhibit some flexibility
•Possible blocking effects (e.g. ability ↛ the able)
•Body part terms may exhibit more flexibility than other
semantic domains
56

Next Steps
•Add data from Nuuchahnulth (and other languages)
•Annotate more than 100 words per language
•Code data for semantic domain, especially body part terms
•Investigate historical development of flexible uses
•Investigate correlations between frequency and flexibility
Diachrony
‐Specificsenses ofawordjumpthePOSboundary
‐Considerfriend:Whenusedasaverb,itrefersspecificallytosocialmedia
‐Notallofthesensesoffriend immediatelyjumpedthePOSboundaryalongwiththis
sense
57

Thanks!
58

Discussion:HowIgotinterestedinthistopic
‐POStaggingEnglishforRosettaStone
‐lexicalcategoriescoursewithElaineFrancisatLSAInstitute2011
‐Idon’ttypicallyworkwithEnglish– thisisjustabaselineforworkwithotherlanguages
59