Re: Invention of the Alphabet

>>>>> "Des" == Des Small <des.small@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Des> Regardless of the morphological decomposeability of
Des> "cupboard", as Harlan remarked, it has to have a lexical
Des> entry of its own; many Chinese "compound" words, it has been
Des> alleged, have acquired a similar degree indecomposeability,
Des> and it is not unparsimonious to call them "words" (in the
Des> lexical sense) too.
>> But how about compounds like <fu1qi1> = <fu1> + <qi1> =
>> husband + wife ==> couple? It's both opaque and transparent.
>> It's opaque that we often use <fu1qi1> in the way that you'd
>> use "couple". It's transparent in that it is fully
>> transparent: <fu1> is used so often to mean "husband" that
>> nobody would be unable to recognize it, and so is <qi1>.

Des> If it's conventionally used or usable for unmarried couples
Des> it's opaque.

Even when it's so easily and obviously decomposable into the
constitutents? They're much more transparent than idioms!


Des> Obviously this process is susceptible to vagueness; any
Des> number of tedious goons on a.u.e will surely insist that many
Des> English idioms which opaque to any sane person are really
Des> transparent to them. And "cupboard" and "strawberry" were
Des> once transparent compounds in English, and in the latter case
Des> I happen to know how come. It's no less synchronously opaque
Des> for that, though.

So, shall we consider all idioms to be 'one word', because of the
opaqueness? Something like "to kick the bucket" should be 'one word',
then? And all phrasal verbs should be 'one word', shouldn't they?




Des> Look up "sorites paradox", why don't you, and then come back
Des> to us once you've solved it; in the meantime, we'll just have
Des> to live with some vagueness. There is a lot of it about,
Des> although I don't know exactly how much.

So, the term "word" or "lexeme" is not well-defined. The vagueness
you're talking about is no more concrete than the distinction between
"dialect" and "language". And failing to draw the border clearly, you
can't even define the count meaningful.




--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
.

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