grammar out of lexis

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 11:52 am

Do you agree with this?

"lexis is complexly and systematically structured and (...) grammar is an outcome of this lexical structure" (Hoey 2005)

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 11:58 am

And do you agree with this?

“When a word is polysemous, the collocations, semantic associations and colligations of one sense of the word differ from those of its other senses” (Hoey 2005)

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 12:35 pm

That seems to be the standard line now from corpus linguists, doesn't it. Assuming they are right (and there seems little reason to expect they are drastically wrong), I'd say that I agree.

Is Hoey a better read than Sinclair ever was, metal? I should take a closer look at his Lexical Priming. I recall seeing the examples from the following paper in said book when I last had a quick browse through it.

http://www.monabaker.com/tsresources/Le ... ofText.htm

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 12:47 pm

I should take a closer look at his Lexical Priming.

Haven't you read it?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:01 pm

First I would need to buy it.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:05 pm

fluffyhamster wrote:First I would need to buy it.

You might, but it may not stop you saying things such as "it's not much of a topic". That just seems to be something which is a primed part of Fluffspeak.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:17 pm

My prime response to that is more 'Shut that door!'. That, or a headbutt.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:22 pm

fluffyhamster wrote:My prime response to that is more 'Shut that door!'. That, or a headbutt.

Let it out - if you have to.

Anuradha Chepur · Post by **Anuradha Chepur** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:28 pm

I agree with the OP. But Hoey is not the first one to say so.
Jackendoff (Foundations of Language, 2002), and other of his
earlier works focus on the position and role of semantics in grammars.
A lot of grammar is certainly pre-determined by semantics.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 3:23 pm

But Hoey is not the first one to say so.

Indeed not.