Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)

BTW thanks for your posts on that thread!

On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:04:29 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson
<bpj@...> wrote:
>[snip]
>Från: Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>
>>Linguistically I think of those as "castes" or
>>as "types", not as "casts". I refer to the
>>affixes (or other operations) which change part-of-
>>speech as "typecasting" affixes or operations;
>>in programming I refer to a function whose
>>purpose is to change data-type as a
>>"typecasting" function.
>
>How does "caste" differ from "cast" and "type" and
>"word class" in your terminology? Instinctively
>I'd say that "caste" may differ from "word class"
>in that the former is semantically defined while
>the latter is morphologically defined, but that's
>just my mind trying to make sense of what to me is
>an alien terminology.
I probably mis-used the adverb "linguistically" in my original statement.

"Caste" and "type" are (used by me above as) nouns, and "cast" and "type"
are (used by me above as) verbs.

"Caste" is a linguistic term; it's linguistic meaning is derived from its meaning in
sociology (cf. "the caste system in India"). There are some Indian languages,
including some Dravidian languages, in which some word-classes (nouns?
verbs?) are divided into "castes"; the high-caste ones have a somewhat
different morphosyntax than the low-caste ones.

"Word-class" is a linguistic term, too; I used it almost as a synonym for "part-
of-speech".  I do not know what the difference is, if any, between "part-of-
speech" and "word-class".

Parts-of-speech don't exist in every computer-programming language; COBOL
and related languages speak of "nouns" and "verbs", but not every computer-
programming-language does so.

"Type" and "cast" are computer-programming-language terms.  "Variable"
names are "typed" (here "type" is a verb) or given a "data-type" (here "type" is
a noun).  This feature of a programming-language is "syntactic salt" to make it
harder to accidentally or unknowingly make certain sorts of errors that are
frequentish in other programming-languages.  Each argument input to each
function or procedure or operation has to have a certain type; if the function
returns a value that is also a certain type.

There are lots of operations that one would wish could be done on more than
one type, though; for instance, addition.  You would like to be able to add any
two integers and get another integer (integer addition); you'd also like to be
able to add any two double-precision complex numbers and get another double-
precision complex number (double-precision complex addition). A disadvantage
of a strongly-typed language is that you don't get to do that without explicitly
calling a type-casting function; an advantage is that you won't do it
accidentally or without noticing.

It often happens that one data-type is, conceptually, "included" in another
datatype.  For instance, for any integer, there is a corresponding complex
number.  Suppose you had defined Z and W as complex variables, and wanted
to add 1 to W and store the value in Z.  If you just said "Z = W + 1" that
would probably be a type mismatch error; because "1" is an integer, not a
complex number.
So the language may include a "typecasting" function, which will cast any
integer into its corresponding complex number.
This is not something to skip over in computers; the complex form of "1" looks
nothing like the integer form of "1" in the bits-and-bytes internal
representation of the computer's memory.

My objection to Alex's use of the word "cast" was his apparent feeling that in
deciding about datatypes for computer-programming-languages, you had to
decide one was higher than the other in order to make a "typecasting"
function.

I disagree with the statement I thought he was implying (he never said it
explicitly).

But I also disagree that "cast", in computer-programming-language
terminology, has anything to do with any hierarchy.

"Caste" has to do with hierarchy; "cast" does not.

"Type" is a poor match for "word-class", in analogizing between natlangs and
proglangs.  "Type" is a much better match for "gender" or "noun-class".

>[snip]
>Has someone made a list of such types, whether
>actually distinguished in natlangs or semantically
>distinguishable or logically possible?
Someone is trying! And more power to them.

>[snip]
>In German and the Scandinavian languages the
>adverbal derivation coincides with the neuter
>nominative singular of the adjective (which
>happens to be a zero morpheme in German but not in
>Scandinavian). What about Dutch. English is
>actually quite strange in having made the Old
>English adverbial ending _-lice_ (actually the
>dative of the adjectival ending _-lic_! :-) not
>only very productive but practically required.
Interesting!

>[snip]
>You are definitely on to something here -- cf.
>what I said about semantic overlap between
>adjectivization and genitive in Esperanto.
>
>At least in inflecting languages the difference
>would seem to be that an adjective is a derivation
>(possibly zero-derived from a root) and as such
>may be inflected (for case, number, gender...)
>while a genitive is an inflection and as such not
>further modifiable.
Right.
We don't have degree-of-comparison inflections on genitives;
no "his, hiser, hisest".

>[snip]
>Från: ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>
>>Eldin Raigmore wrote:
>[snip]
>>>However, I remember it said (among other
>>>things) that in most languages...
>>
>>I'd question that "most"!!
>
>Me too. Even AFMOC only two out of an odd dozen
>practice zero derivation.
Well, the "most" applied to the ease of making verbs out of other parts-of-
speech; not to the zero-derivation.

But speaking of that, what (or how many) languages have a "zero-derivation"
method of turning a word from one word-class into another?  And what's the
commonest source class? And what's the commonest result class?

>[snip]
>>This seems to be a peculiar ability of English,
>
>Agreed. A function of the fact that English nouns,
>adjectives and verbs have so little morphology.
Maybe so.

>>and I think it can be a pretty random process.
>
>How so. Purist notwithstanding pretty much any
>word in English can be zero-derived into another
>word-class, especially verbed.
Well-said!
(and good question, too, I think.)

>[snip]
Thanks, Benct.

Reply