Dwight Bolinger

Adjectives in English: Attribution and predication

Abstract The traditional relative-clause transformation fails to account for many if not most instances of attributive adjectives. Its attractiveness has possibly been due to two factors: to our tendency to think up easy examples, which are apt to have semantically barren words like man whose reference systems are close to their grammatical categories, and to the suggestive power of classical syllogisms. One proof of failure is that instead of clearing up ambiguity the transformation creates it. There is a clear functional difference between predicative modification and attributive modification. Two solutions are offered to account for the restrictions. The first is that be predications in so far as they are involved at all are of the aspectual type be n temp which selects adjectives whose meanings can have a temporal spread. The second is that two types of generation be recognized, one, termed reference-modification, being in the kernel and allowing for a ‘kind of’ slot among the determiners, the other, termed referent-modification, being by way of a predication which is joined by conjunction rather than by subordination.

Intonation and its parts : melody in spoken English

Part I. Introduction: 1. Pitch 2. Accent 3. Intonation Part II. Accentual Prosody: 4. Vowels and syllables 5. The shape of utterances: two kinds of rhythm 6. Accents of power 7. Accents of interest Part III. Melodic Prosody: 8. Profiles 9. Intonations and gesture 10. Parts and their meanings 11. Contours in general 12. Contours in particular Conclusion Appendixes Reference matter.

The Atomization of Meaning

History repeats itself, with variations. Two decades ago American structuralists were trying, with indifferent success, to apply to morphology the same analytical techniques that had proved successful in the analysis of sound. For a number of reasons-including the lack of a suitable theory of meaning-the attempt made no headway at a time when phonology was still scoring advances with help from both acoustics and information theory. Morphemics still remains, in current texts on linguistics, a kind of relic of the 1940s. Now we witness a revived attempt from a different direction, but with essentially the same desire: to try out in a new field the techniques that have been developed in an older one. The new field is meaning, the old one is syntax, and the techniques are those of generative grammar. For the moment, morphemics is only slightly involved, but the signs are clear.

Yes—No Questions Are Not Alternative Questions

The first person as best I can recall who suggested that yes—no questions be regarded as a special type of alternative question was H. O. Coleman in 1914. He was followed by Harold Palmer in 1922 (78) and by Gerhard Dietrich in 1937 (242–43). Navarro Tomas in 1944 mentioned Dietrich’s treatment (167) but expressed doubts about it. In 1957 I reviewed the arguments and added some doubts of my own (114–15).

On pre-accentual lengthening

Among the numerous factors known or suspected to affect the length of a syllable in English is the nature of the immediately following syllable. It is widely recognized (P. Fijn van Draat, 1910, p. 14; Jones, 1956, §§ 886–7; Bolinger, 1965, pp. 168–9; Lehiste, 1972, p. 2021) that in a succession of monosyllabic words a word containing a full vowel will be longer when followed by another such word than when followed by a word containing a reduced vowel. 1 Van Draats example is Money makes the mare to go versus Money makes the mare go : in the latter, ‘We pronounce mare in two syllables.’ In the former one can say that the reduced to ‘borrows time’ from the full mare .

Truth Is a Linguistic Question.

Truth is the most fundamental of all questions of appropriateness in language. Communication presupposes non-concealment between interlocutors, which logically excludes all forms of deception, not merely propositional lies. The lie, broadly conceived, is therefore a proper object of study for linguists, and a necessary one at a time when lying is cultivated as an art. As members of society, we have an obligation to contribute our skills in this as much as in other ways. Happily, a number of linguists have begun to respond by investigating the lies implicit in presuppositions, deletions, indireetions, and loaded and jargonesque elements in the lexicon.*

Ambient it is meaningful too

In one of the many insightful passages in his Meaning and the structure of language (Chafe, 1970), Wallace Chafe characterizes sentences like Its hot, Its late , and Its Tuesday as referring to ‘all-encompassing states’. ‘They cover,’ he says, ‘the total environment, not just some object within it’ (101). His treatment, in common with most others – but in his case partly because of the centrality of the verb in his System – denies any value to it: ‘it need not reflect anything at all in the semantic structure’. I believe that the notion of ambience is correct, though that of totality must be qualified; but I think that not only is it more than an empty surface element: it has as its referent precisely the ‘environment’ that is central to the whole idea. There is a hint of this notion in a recent observation by Arthur Schwartz (1972: 70–71) concerning it seems: ‘the surface it is not really a pronominal substitute for the proposition, but closer to the impersonal situational it of It is cold today or It is crowded in here’ .

SEMANTIC OVERLOADING: A RESTUDY OF THE VERB REMIND

A line must be drawn between meanings which are the reference of a word and other meanings which are inferred from its use in particular contexts, even though the inferential meanings may in time become referential. The verb remind is referentially akin to make think, only inferentially akin to resemble. Shared restrictions can be used to prove either case, but the proofs for inference (between remind and resemble) are weightier.

The uniqueness of the word

Abstract The word is unique both in form and in meaning. 1. 1. In form. The word is the source, not the result, of phonemic contrasts. Therefore, it may incorporate as part of its structure phonic elements which do not belong to the regular system of phonemes, and may select particular phonemes or ranges of allophones in a way that is not determined by any of the rules of phonemic distribution in the dialect of the speaker. Or it may go to the opposite extreme and ignore a wide range of phonemic contrasts. It may incorporate non-phonic elements likewise, and reflect or not reflect their presence phonically. It may be mapped onto a different phonemic system and still remain recognizable. 2. 2. In meaning. As a reaction to popular unawareness of certain of the niceties and asymmetries of word meaning, linguists have combated the idea that words “have” meaning and have tried to subordinate it in various ways. Yet it is precisely the relative fixity of word meaning that makes it a viable unit of communication. If each word did not have a comparatively definite semantic spectrum, it would be impossible for speakers to name old elements in new situations. We could not use language, as we do, to encompass a reality in which our ability to organize our actions depends on reading the familiar into the unfamiliar, transforming the old into the new.

Transformulation: Structural translation

Abstract Translation may be viewed amorphously as the rendition of a text from one language to another. This is translation from the standpoint of la parole: the text, the act of speech or writing, is the thing. Or it may be viewed as a systematic comparison of two languages : this is translation from the standpoint of la langue. But the system in the comparison has been one-sided. There has been plenty of system in bilingual dictionaries: English dog translates French chien, and not an item in the interminable list has been overlooked if we could help it. In the grammar, even our manner of talking betrays our want of method. We reject I to him talk often as a rendition of Je lui parle souvent because it is “too literal”, when we should complain of it because it is incomplete. In our dictionaries we range lexical parallels beside one another and call them “equivalents”, and in our grammars we range structural parallels beside one another and call them “contrasts”-hearkening in the first to the similar mea...