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What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

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Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#91

Post by Cushman »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #86
Cushman wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, apart from the invective. How do you feel about "hiking worn boots" or "mixed-breed adorable puppy"?

"Hiking boots" has the same problem -- the boots aren't themselves hiking, they're boots for use in hiking. That's another noun-noun compound. "Mixed-breed puppy" is, to me, not such a clear case ("breed" is clearly originally a noun, but maybe this use is common enough to have converted). But you don't need to use spurious examples -- in another comment, you provided a very genuine one: "red" and "wooden" are both c…

Well, yeah, I jumped in to defend the idea that the word "the" counts as an adjective. It seems vaguely possible that my argument is not backed by much besides bluster. (And of course the downvotes are my just reward.)

To the extent I'm arguing something non-disingenuous, it's just that language is best analyzed with a bit of a fuzzy lens, and words don't fit into neat boxes.

Take your claim that "hiking" is a noun: To me, it analyzes as an inflection of a verb ("hike") that can be used to indicate an action ("I was hiking"), the performer or target of an action ("I don't hate hiking, hiking hates me") or as a modifier for something else ("those crummy old worn-out tan leather gusseted hiking boots").

On what basis do you say that it is a noun? Specifically, when looking at the list "crummy old worn-out tan leather gusseted hiking", with modifiers lined up in order of significance, what about the word "hiking" jumps out at you as plainly different in use or meaning? "The boots aren't hiking, they're for hiking"? Clearly-- in this phrase, the word "hiking" means the boots are for hiking!

To me, the most intellectually honest thing is to see compound nouns as a sort of epicycle-style theory to explain why words in our non-modifier class are actually used as modifiers all the time, just according to a subtly different set of rules than applies to the modifier class. I don't think there's anything really wrong with that, since it explains things well enough and we might never have something like universal gravitation to set the record straight.

What I'm saying is, I don't think I have a problem.

Except, of course, when the "rules of grammar" are used as a proxy to cast minorities and lower-class people as unintelligent. That, I have a problem with, and it's quite a popular pastime in the English-speaking world. That's why I think it's important to think scientifically about the extent to which grammar is, and is not, a real thing. (Including, sometimes, hypothesizing things that don't make sense, just to see what happens.)

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#92

Post by thaumasiotes »

Cushman wrote: post #91
thaumasiotes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hiking boots" has the same problem -- the boots aren't themselves hiking, they're boots for use in hiking. That's another noun-noun compound. "Mixed-breed puppy" is, to me, not such a clear case ("breed" is clearly originally a noun, but maybe this use is common enough to have converted). But you don't need to use spurious examples -- in another comment, you provided a very genuine one: "red" and "wooden" are both c…

Well, yeah, I jumped in to defend the idea that the word "the" counts as an adjective . It seems vaguely possible that my argument is not backed by much besides bluster. (And of course the downvotes are my just reward.) To the extent I'm arguing something non-disingenuous, it's just that language is best analyzed with a bit of a fuzzy lens, and words don't fit into neat boxes. Take your claim that "hiking" is a noun:…

> Take your claim that "hiking" is a noun: To me, it analyzes as an inflection of a verb ("hike")

I wouldn't say you're wrong about this. However, I'd be much more willing to defend the idea that, as it appears here, "hiking" is a one-word noun phrase containing a verb form (and that compound nouns are formed NP-NP, not N-N). Traditional grammar has gifted us with a rich vocabulary of specialized terms for specialized syntactic functions, and the traditional term for a verb form which functions as a noun is "gerund". (Um, technically, infinitive forms can also function as nouns.)

I'll pause here to defend myself from an argument you haven't made: there are people who will say that "beef" in "beef stew" is an adjective simply because it modifies a noun. They're wrong. I say that a gerund really is a verb form acting as a noun. The difference is that I'm saying that gerunds can appear in basically all syntactic contexts that permit noun phrases, so the definition I'm using is syntactic (as appropriate for a syntactic term of art like "noun") rather than semantic. I'm not saying gerunds are nouns because they refer to objects -- I'm saying they're nouns because they can be the subjects of verbs (and otherwise appear where nouns appear). To me, the best analysis is just that noun phrases can be constructed from verb forms. Linking back to the subject at hand, I'd agree that "hiking", the word, is not a noun in the same way that "iron", the word, is one, but I am saying that this "hiking", as used in context, is just as much of a noun phrase as "this rusted iron" is.

> Specifically, when looking at the list "crummy old worn-out tan leather gusseted hiking", with modifiers lined up in order of significance, what about the word "hiking" jumps out at you as plainly different in use or meaning?

In all honesty, what jumps out at me is that all of the others are descriptions, while it would be odd to use "hiking" that way. For example, in a certain style of speech, you could see something like this:

    Get out and take your crummy, old, worn-out, leather, gusseted, boots with you.
(In actual rhetoric, the descriptors would probably be different.)

But it's completely impossible for the "hiking" of "hiking boots" to be delimited by commas (in speech, emphatic pauses) that way. If you did it, the meaning of "hiking" would change -- it would mean that the boots were out on a hike. This demonstrates that "hiking" is not a descriptor for "boots" -- rather, "hiking boots" is a single unit. (Yes, with internal structure.)

> To me, the most intellectually honest thing is to see compound nouns as a sort of epicycle-style theory to explain why words in our non-modifier class are actually used as modifiers all the time, just according to a subtly different set of rules than applies to the modifier class.

English is way more liberal with modifiers than that.

    He gave me his I'm-going-to-kill-you look.
I agree that language requires a bit of a fuzzy lens. But grammar is very much a real thing.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#93

Post by vorg »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #83
vorg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here are two English sentences in which a word appears solely to satisfy English syntactic requirements Not sure how that relates to what I'm saying about "the". A minor note: the "is" in "Your house is big" is non-contractable, whereas in "It's raining outside" the "is" contracts, so they're really 2 different words.

The "is" in "your house is big" is not non-contractable, as can be seen here: It's big. What are you saying about "the"? There are lots of words with essentially no (in the case of "it's raining", literally no) semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same. EDIT: I want to also bring two more examples of "the" in English to your attention. The first was recently produced by me: > It's a famou…

> There are lots of words with essentially no semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same

I said "the" is solely a cohesive device, independent of the semantics and in the domain of thematics, so "a" and "the" are used orthogonally. I also said if "part of speech" is defined as being in the grammatical structure of languages, then "the" doesn't have a part of speech -- I was reinforcing the first point I made. All your arguments have only made some point which is tangential to what you've replied to. Linguists don't use the term "part of speech" anymore anyway, they instead define "word class".

As for "the premarital sex" and "the Hindoo", you're creating an implied prior context when you use "the" instead of a regular form such as "all premarital sex" and "Hindoos". The "the" overlays onto the "all", "-s", or "a" to change the grammatical structure.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#94

Post by vorg »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #90
thaumasiotes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "is" in "your house is big" is not non-contractable, as can be seen here: It's big. What are you saying about "the"? There are lots of words with essentially no (in the case of "it's raining", literally no) semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same. EDIT: I want to also bring two more examples of "the" in English to your attention. The first was recently produced by me: > It's a famou…

To pre-empt a potential reply: you can make the fact that the "is" of "your house is big" contracts freely even more stupid-obvious like so: Your dog's big. If it did contract in "your house is big", it would have exactly the same pronunciation, so there's not really much grounds to say it isn't contracted even in that specific sentence.

Looks like "your house is big" doesn't contract because the voiced "is" becomes unvoiced "-s" when contracting, and two unvoiced "s" sounds don't join together.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#95

Post by thaumasiotes »

vorg wrote: post #93
thaumasiotes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "is" in "your house is big" is not non-contractable, as can be seen here: It's big. What are you saying about "the"? There are lots of words with essentially no (in the case of "it's raining", literally no) semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same. EDIT: I want to also bring two more examples of "the" in English to your attention. The first was recently produced by me: > It's a famou…

> There are lots of words with essentially no semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same I said "the" is solely a cohesive device, independent of the semantics and in the domain of thematics, so "a" and "the" are used orthogonally. I also said if "part of speech" is defined as being in the grammatical structure of languages, then "the" doesn't have a part of speech -- I was reinforcing the…

But "a" and "the" aren't used orthogonally -- they interfere with each other. They participate in the grammatical structure of English in exactly the same way. If you want a more focused reply, I need you to explain what you're talking about at greater length.

As to "your house is big": you said

> Looks like "your house is big" doesn't contract because the voiced "is" becomes unvoiced "-s" when contracting

This isn't true. Just look at the followup I gave, "your dog's big". By analogy to the verb suffixes -s and -ed (and the clitic genitive particle 's), we can see that voiced "is" /ɪz/ would contract to [əz] (still a full syllable), not [s], when following "house". As it's pronounced that way anyway, investigation is pretty futile.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#96

Post by vorg »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #95
vorg wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are lots of words with essentially no semantic content; they belong to various parts of speech just the same I said "the" is solely a cohesive device, independent of the semantics and in the domain of thematics, so "a" and "the" are used orthogonally. I also said if "part of speech" is defined as being in the grammatical structure of languages, then "the" doesn't have a part of speech -- I was reinforcing the…

But "a" and "the" aren't used orthogonally -- they interfere with each other. They participate in the grammatical structure of English in exactly the same way. If you want a more focused reply, I need you to explain what you're talking about at greater length. As to "your house is big": you said > Looks like "your house is big" doesn't contract because the voiced "is" becomes unvoiced "-s" when contracting This isn't…

> But "a" and "the" aren't used orthogonally -- they interfere with each other.

The semantic "a" and thematic "the" don't interfere with each other, and can be taught separately. Perhaps you're thinking of their influence on the end grammar of the sentence.

> They participate in the grammatical structure of English in exactly the same way.

Not exactly the same. As I said above, the "the" overlays onto the grammatical structure after the "a" does.

> If you want a more focused reply, I need you to explain what you're talking about at greater length.

What makes you think I want your replies? I never replied to you initially.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#98

Post by kwhitefoot »

escherplex wrote: post #80
kwhitefoot wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In British English your two university examples mean different things. 'I am going to university' means that I will study at some unspecified university, but 'I am going to the university' means I am going to travel to a specific, presumably already mentioned, university or even more likely to the nearest one. The first would be said by a student while the second by someone who works at a university (lecturer, secret…

Written from the vantage point of a good RP education. Unfortunately in US 'going to shop' out of context would elicit the question 'where?' taking 'to shop' as an infinitive and not as an activity venue.

:-) Yes, I had a good education. My wife often points out when I am lamenting the current state of education that I was lucky enough to go to very good schools in the sixties and that education even then was also pretty bad if you were unlucky, lived in a rural area, deprived inner city, etc.

Anyway, back to my poorly made point: I think that the example sentences show that even 'educated' British and American English are in many ways quite distinct dialects.

Re: What part of speech is “the”? (2006)

#99

Post by belovedeagle »

Cushman wrote: post #39
belovedeagle wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two (worstest/most least, so smallest) are easily classified as wrong because "-est", "most", and "so" only apply to adjectives of positive degree rather than comparative or superlative. So to deny that grammar is "real" using these examples is to attack a strawman.

Oh, I get what you're saying-- so "the" must be a superlative adjective, right? Makes sense really, as it's the "most specific" article.

... no, quite the opposite. Since grammar has no reason to prefer large classification sets (generalization) to small (uniqueness), unlike descriptive linguistics, I'm perfectly happy to say that grammatically "the" is an article and leave it at that.
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