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Nominals - lexical vs. syntactic

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Latest post Sun, Jan 15 2006 10:45 PM by Sam C. 1 replies.
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Anonymous  +  181813 Wed, 11 Jan 06 11:02 PM

Hi

I'm doing my masters degree in English and I have a question I hope someone can help me with. I have an assignment in which I have been given a text. In this text I have to identify the post-head dependents in the nominals used in the text. In connection with this I have to explain how these nominals are related to the head in terms of the lexical vs. syntactic distinction. And this is where I run into trouble. I mean, as I have understood it, a lexical nominal is basically something (a phrase) that I can look up in the dictionary; but what about syntactic - Aren't all phrases bound by syntax to some extent.

So, I guess my question is this: How would you define "the lexical vs. syntactic distinction"? In my paper, I conclude that in a phrase like "Prisoner of war" the post-head dependent is related lexically to the head, while the post-head dependent in a phrase like "a prosecutor in Boston" is syntactically related to the head - but it is still quite unclear to me.

I hope you can help. Thanks in advance.

Uni
Anonymous
Sam C  +  183814 Sun, 15 Jan 06 10:45 PM
sorry, but i don't think you'll find a neat notional definition.  there are clues for distinguishing them though.

their intonation, for one.  in 'a prosecutor in boston' the stress is on 'prosecutor', the head.  in 'prisoner of war' the primary stress is on 'war'.

if you take 'prisoner of war' as a lexeme - as you say, roughly corresponding to headwords of dictionaries - is it syntactically opaque?  can you insert other constructions into it like you can 'a prosecutor in boston':

 (1)    There is a prosecutor called Sam in Boston.
 (2)   *There is a prisoner called Sam of war.

you can rephrase (1) to have a relative clause instead of the PP, but can you do the same with (2)?

how about one-substitution?

 (3)    There is a prosecutor in New York and one in Boston.
 (4)   ?He is a prisoner of war and one of conscience.

'one' in (3) refers to 'prosecutor', not 'prosecutor in New York'.  in (4) it refers to 'prisoner of war', not just 'prisoner', so the collocation 'prisoner of conscience' does not occur.

food for thought.

sam
Sam C
Joined on Mon, Dec 19 2005
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