Search results
May 1, 2023 · These lexical blends (or word blends) are seen as errors, a view that is justifiable on the basis that speakers usually ‘repair’ them (i.e., revise them in way that does not divide up minimal forms). In cases of this kind the inputs are usually taken to be single words (rather than words-as-parts-of-larger-units), and these tend to be ones that are synonymous or otherwise close in meaning.
1975: 318; Brown 1980: 20; Taylor 2012: 270). And whereas the inputs to lexical blends tend to be synonymous or nearly so, the inputs to syntactic blends tend to be more different in meaning, often with each input contributing meaning not found in the other (though as will be seen in Section 2, this is not widely recog-nized).
Figure 7.3. Syntactic structure for That fluffy cat will chase the raccoon. Compositionality is not just a matter of what linguistic pieces you put together: it also matters how you put the pieces together, too. This is relevant to the notion of constituency, or unithood, from Chapter 6 (Syntax). For example, per compositionality, the meaning ...
Aug 23, 2022 · Blending is a way of forming new lexical units by putting together parts of existing words. Blends can also be called portmanteau words or telescope words. One defining feature of blends that is recognized in most morphological classifications is that blends combine the initial part or whole of one word with the final part or whole of another ...
- Phrase Structure Rules
- Projection from The Lexicon
- Intermediate Projections
- Complements Versus Adjuncts
- Labeled Bracketing
From a mathematical point of view, such rules form part of a so-calledcontext-free grammar, and they therefore have—bydefinition—certain formal properties. Specifically, the lefthand sideof a phrase structure rule consists of exactly one symbol, whereas therighthand side of a phrase structure rule may consist of one or moresymbols. The rightward-po...
Syntactic category
The question that we focus on for most of the rest of this chapter iswhat information needs to be included in the treelets. A first importantpiece of information is clearly a lexical item's syntactic category. Thiscan easily be represented as the lexical item's mother, as shown in (14).
Phrasal projection
A second piece of information that needs to be represented is the factthat lexical items serve as heads of phrases. Again, we can represent thisby having an appropriately labeled node dominate the lexical item. We canthink of the representation as being generated in two steps: first, aphrasal node of as yet undetermined category is added to the treelets in(14), and then the lower syntactic category's type percolatesup thetreelet (to use a widespread metaphor) to determine the type of the enti...
Syntactic dependents
The structures in (16), consisting of a lexical item, its syntacticcategory, and a phrase corresponding to the category, are a treelet'sirreducible core—its spine. In many cases, a treelet alsocontains further slots for various other syntactic dependents.Thispermits the straightforward representation of the various subcategories ofverbs, the fact that prepositions take objects, and so on. Treelets forprepositions and for ditransitive, transitive, and intransitive verbs areillustrated in (17)....
Empirical motivation
Notice that in such flat structures, the subject and any objects of the verb c-command each other. However, we concluded on the basis of the distribution of reflexive pronouns (recall Assignment 1, Exercise 2) that subjectsasymmetrically c-commandobjects. That is, subjects c-commandobjects, but objects don't c-command subjects. Since the representationsin (19), at least those in (19a,b), fail to represent this fact, they mustbe rejected. What is necessary is a node that groups the verb togeth...
Terminology
For expository convenience, we now review and introduce some usefulterminology to describe hierarchically structured treelets as in (20). Wesay that the lexical item projects the syntactic structure in thetreelet. The lexical item's syntactic category, the head of theprojected structure—here, V—is also called the lexicalprojection. V' is the intermediate projection, and VP is themaximal projection or phrasal projection. We extend thenotion of spine introduced earlier to include all three of t...
The assumption in (26) raises the question of whether therepresentation in (24) is consistent with the do so substitutionfacts in (25). The sequence being substituted for in (25a) (eat fiveapples before lunch) is exhaustively dominated by V', and so therepresentation is indeed consistent with (25a). But (24) is not consistentwith the grammaticality...
Although tree diagrams are easier for humans to process, bracketedstructures are often desirable for various reasons. Publishers preferlabeled bracketings because they are cheaper to typeset. In largesyntactically annotated corpora such as the Penn Treebank or the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus ofMiddle English, syntactic structure is also represented...
Summary. Blending is a type of word formation in which two or more words are merged into one so that the blended constituents are either clipped, or partially overlap. An example of a typical blend is brunch, in which the beginning of the word breakfast is joined with the ending of the word lunch. In many cases such as motel (motor + hotel) or ...
People also ask
Are syntactic and lexical blends the same?
Is a combination lexical or syntactic?
What is blending in linguistics?
What is a syntactic blend?
Does syntactic category play a role in blend structure?
Are lexical blends errors?
The existence of syntactic constraints in “splice” blends calls into question the theoretical use-fulness of the classification of blends into splice blends and substitution blends. The existence of syntactic and lexical constraints on alignment also supports the alignment/selection model in
