The word status of Chinese adjective-noun combinations

Linguistics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zheng Xu
Keyword(s):  
Word Formation ◽  
Selectional Restrictions ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Construction Morphology ◽  
The Status ◽  
Degree Adverbs ◽  
Oxford University Press

Abstract The status of Chinese adjective-noun combinations ([A N]) has been debated for decades. This paper argues that Chinese [A N] are word-level expressions constructed in an autonomous word formation component of the grammar. I propose a monomorphemic constraint on the adjective of [A N]. Together with evidence from the tests of modification by degree adverbs, conjunction reduction, and XP substitution, this constraint supports the wordhood of Chinese [A N]. Additional evidence is that Chinese [A N] have a potential naming function and are subject to selectional restrictions. Neither anaphoric accessibility nor the restrictions on the ordering of adjectives are reliable criteria for establishing the status of Chinese [A N]. The various properties of Chinese [A N] are accounted for under the framework of Construction Morphology (Booij, Geert. 2010. Construction Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.).

Inheritance and motivation in Construction Morphology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert Booij
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Abstract Word ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Hierarchical Network ◽  
Construction Morphology ◽  
The Status ◽  
Hierarchical Lexicon ◽  
Complex Words

The basic question to be addressed in this chapter is: what is the status of the notions ‘inheritance’ and ‘default inheritance’ in the theoretical framework of Construction Morphology (CM)? This framework, developed in Booij (2010), assumes a hierarchical lexicon with both abstract morphological schemas and stored complex words that instantiate these schemas. The lexicon of a language can be modelled in such a way that the abstract word formation schemas dominate their individual instantiations. Thus, the lexicon is partially conceived of as a hierarchical network in which lower nodes, the existing complex words, can be assumed to inherit information from dominating higher nodes. Advantages of a full-entry theory over an impoverished entry theory are outlined, and the chapter includes discussion of polysemy, allomorphy, and the class of items that fall between derivatives and compounds using ‘affixoids’.

scholarly journals Tim William Machan. (2009). Language Anxiety: Conflict and Change in the History of English. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 28-32
Author(s):  
Nadeane Trowse
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Anxiety ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Oxford University Press

Tim William Machan’s book Language Anxiety: Conflict and Change in the History of English illuminates the status of English in the context of a conflictual history. It has been on my desk for some time while I have engaged in inner and outer debate about it, mostly about why I find it so rich and students find it less so. To support my teaching of the history of the English language, I wanted a carefully researched book that displayed English and its evolution as a site of difficulty as well as opportunity. I wanted a book that could show that English is a language whose history is laden with issues of colonialism, hegemony, power imbalances, and prescriptivism—the latter complicit in all the preceding. I wanted a book that would detail the need to nuance notions of grammar and its unproblematic goodness. I wanted a book to ground, historically and socio-linguistically, Deborah Cameron’s (1995) arguments in Verbal Hygiene. Machan provides all those things. This review celebrates Machan’s undoubted achievement in producing such a book, while noting that I still search for a book more persuasive to students.

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