Arnold Zwicky's Blog

A new feature in the set of “Linguistics notes” Pages on this blog: data postings, two so far. Each of them has three parts: an inventory of postings on the topic (from Language Log and this blog); “raw data” (a collection of numbered notes on examples (jottings on examples, observed on the fly or taken from e-mail, mailing lists, or blog postings); and an index to the examples, keyed to the numbered notes. All three types of material will be regularly updated.

The first two data postings:

one syntactic, on VPE (so-called Verb Phrase Ellipsis) — VPE postings, VPE examples, VPE index

and one morphological, on 2pbfVs (two-part back-formed Vs) — 2pbfV postings, 2pbfV examples, 2pbf index

The VPE data. Consider example #30, marked up to indicate the antecedent (underlined) and the ellipsis (with empty underlining).

I lost weight with Jenny Craig, and you can ___, too.

This is coded:

FIN ant, BSE ell

That is, the antecedent is a FIN VP, and the ellipsis is a BSE VP (understood: lose weight with Jenny Craig).

The 2pbfV data. Consider example #77:

carbon-date:
[from carbon-dating and/or carbon-dated; lots of hits]

It is not possible to carbon date rocks.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_it_possible_to_Carbon_14_Date_a_rock

etc.

This is coded under the head verb, date:

DATE: speed date (#76), carbon date (#77)

This entry was posted on July 29, 2015 at 2:52 am and is filed under Anaphora, Back formation, Data, Ellipsis, Morphology, Syntax. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.