Re: Which part of speech?

On Tuesday, May 10, 2005, at 10:55 , Gregory Gadow wrote:
[snip]
> Ray, Mark, Christopher, thanks for the insights.
You're welcome   :)

> The question came up with me trying to decide how these and other time
> words would be classed in my conlang. There are some strict rules in how
> nouns and qualitatives (a mostly interchangeable class of adjectives and
> adverbs) can be used, so it's not really a trivial decision.
Indeed not - see the continuing discussion below.

> I think the
> best solution is to have "today", etc. as nouns, with qualitative forms
> derived from them.
I think that may well be the best solution in your conlang.
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On Wednesday, May 11, 2005, at 03:20 , David J. Peterson wrote:
[concerning "last night" in: "I was reading the CONLANG list last night."]

> Damian wrote:
> <<
>> So then how do you parse "last night" as an adverb?  Wouldn't
>> it just be simpler (in the Occam's Razor sense) to assign a
>> zero-derived case to every noun naming a day?
> >>
>
> Simpler in what sense?  It would actually seem needlessly complicated
> to me.
Yes, I agree. English nouns simply do not have case markings (the
possessive 's is a clitic which attaches to whole phrases). To have
zero-derived cases then poses the question of how many zero-derived cases.
  Does the sentence "John gave Mary a kiss" have zero-marked nominative,
dative and accusative cases?

I agree with David - this approach IMO makes things more complicated.

> Chris wrote:
> <<
> Zero-derived case or null preposition--it depends on your theory of case
> assignment, mostly. Minimalism prefers the latter,
.....
> >>
Yes, a zero preposition could, I guess, be argued. David gives several
pairs of sentences showing how NPs are used adverbially when they are the
objects of prepositions. Long years ago (the 1950s) in the terminology
used in the UK, we called such phrases 'adverbial phrases', naming them by
their function; today, they are normally called 'prepositional phrases'.*

(*In our 1950s terminology, 'prepositional phrase' meant a phrase that
functioned as a preposition, such "in accordance with"; but these are
generally called 'complex prepositions' nowadays.)

Another argument might be that 'night' cannot be used adverbial by itself.
  We have to say things like 'by night' or 'at night', cf:
"Owls normally hunt by night".

Therefore we could, I guess, say that when 'night' is qualified by an
adjective, the preposition is may be omitted (or 'understood'), i.e.
[during] last night.

So if PPs function as adverbs (they may also function as adjectives "the
man _in the moon_"), then it could be argued that "last night" in the "I
was reading the CONLANG list last night." has a zero preposition. But then
that would make "last night" a PP - umm....

> So while positing a null preposition does seem "attractive", it doesn't
> seem to account for the data.
I agree.
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On Wednesday, May 11, 2005, at 02:11 , Christopher Wright wrote:

[snip]
>
> But yes. In English, these are nouns; in Latin, they're adverbs.
Not correct. While _hodie_ (today), _heri_ (yesterday) and _cras_
(tomorrow) are certainly adverbs in Latin, _nox_ (genitive: noctis)
certainly is not. It is a noun.

The Latin for "I was reading the CONLANG list last night." is:
_proximo nocte_ tabulam Conlangicam legebam.

'proximo nocte' is the ablative case which, among other uses, is used for
"time when".

In fact, comparing or contrasting '(last) night' with 'today' & 'tomorrow'
  is a bit misleading. The word that should be considered is _tonight_ -
and that, according to the dictionaries, is:
- a noun meaning 'this night: the night of the present day';
- an adverb meaning 'on this night: on the night of the present day.'

> There's
> nothing that says a [semantic] word must have the same part of speech
> assigned to it in every language. Right?
Obviously not, and if you read my previous email carefully you will see
that I agree. For while I argued (and still do) that _today_, _tomorrow_
and _yesterday_ may function either as a noun or as an adverb in English,
in Latin _hodie_, _cras_ and _heri_ may function *ONLY as adverbs*.

BUT -
There is nothing that says a [semantic] word has only one part of speech
assigned to it in English. Right?

Certainly _night_ is a noun in English. Whether in "He's working on the
night shift" it is an adjective or an 'epithet noun' is arguable. However
in the phrase "last night", the word night itself is a noun as is shown by
its being qualified by the adjective 'last'. But the _phrase_ 'last night'
  functions *adverbially* in "I was reading the CONLANG list last night."

It is not necessary for any word in the phrase to be an adverb for the
whole phrase to function as an adverb - such phrases used to be called
_exocentric_ (The X-bar system - at least in most versions - prohibits the
existence of exocentric constituents, and the use of the term is now
somewhat debatable).

In a language like English (or modern Chinese) which is largely isolating
with a few grammatical inflexions, IMO the maxim of my English teacher way
back in the 1950s still holds good:
"By their deeds shall ye know them"

In short, no arguments so far presented dissuade me from the notion that
'today', 'tomorrow', 'yesterday', 'tonight' may function in _English_
either as nouns or as adverbs. As for 'last night' in "I was reading the
CONLANG list last night.", my empirical approach says just this:
- 'night' is a noun
- 'last night' is a noun phrase with the adjective 'last' qualifying the
noun 'night'
- the phrase 'last night' in "I was reading the CONLANG list last night."
functions as an adverb (of time).

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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