Two levels of Abstraction
There seems to be two different levels of abstraction in the use of a word. Take, for instance, words related to marriage. There are at the first level the use of these words to apply to people. In my taxonomy in previous posts, X is married can be understood as X AT married, or, in more idiomatic phrasing, X is in the state of being married. (For the purposes of this post I'll simply ignore the issues revolving around the tense and aspect.) X got married is something like X GOTO married, or X became married. X got divorced, means something similar to X LEAVE married, or X leaves the state of being married. Similarly spouse has the meaning AT married, with wife including the meaning AT woman and husband the meaning AT man in addition the AT married.
Wed, like got married, includes the meaning GOTO married, a wedding is a ceremony in which people GOTO married. With the meaning The minister married the couple, the meaning seems to include something along the lines of minister CAUSE (Couple GOTO married). Notice all of these seem to encode a kind of adjectival meaning (which in my taxonomy shows fits in as a kind of stative verb) of married.
But what of the word marriage. The various words have a meaning such as married above. In my taxonomy, it can be viewed as a stative verb with the LOC "married" and a THEME, in normal usage, of a person.
The word marriage, however, seems to be "up" a level of abstraction; it does not place people into a relation with "being married", either in, entering, leaving, or causing, but rather "looks down" on the meaning if "being married" and uses that meaning as a noun.
Thus in a sentence (from Wikipedia) such as "Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship.", the word "marriage" is the THEME, not a verb, and does not relate a person to the state of "being married", but rather talks about what it means to be married.
So it appears that there are (at least) two different levels of abstraction to a verb in the taxonomy, one where we use the word, and the other were we turn it into a noun and use the noun to refer to the meaning of the verb. There seems to be two different levels of abstraction in the use of a word. Take, for instance, words related to marriage. There are at the first level the use of these words to apply to people. In my taxonomy in previous posts, X is married can be understood as X AT married, or, in more idiomatic phrasing, X is in the state of being married. (For the purposes of this post I'll simply ignore the issues revolving around the tense and aspect.)
X got married is something like X GOTO married, or X became married. X got divorced, means something similar to A LEAVE married. Similarly spouse has the meaning AT married, with wife including the meaning AT woman and husband the meaning AT man in addition the AT married.
Wed, like got married, includes the meaning GOTO married, a wedding is a ceremony in which people GOTO married. With the meaning The minister married the couple, the meaning seems to include something along the lines of minister CAUSE (Couple GOTO married.
Notice all of these seem to encode a kind of adjectival meaning (which in my taxonomy shows fits in as a kind of stative verb) of married.
But what of the word marriage. The various words have a meaning such as married above. In my taxonomy, it can be viewed as a stative verb with the LOC "married" and a THEME, in normal usage, of a person.
The word marriage, however, seems to be "up" a level of abstraction; it does not place people into a relation with "being married", either in, entering, leaving, or causing, but rather "looks down" on the meaning if "being married" and uses that meaning as a noun.
Thus in a sentence (from Wikipedia) such as "Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship.", the word "marriage" is the THEME, not a verb, and does not relate a person to the state of "being married", but rather talks about what it means to be married.
So it appears that there are (at least) two different levels of abstraction to a verb in the taxonomy, one where we use the word, and the other were we turn it into a noun and use the noun to refer to the meaning of the verb.
Wed, like got married, includes the meaning GOTO married, a wedding is a ceremony in which people GOTO married. With the meaning The minister married the couple, the meaning seems to include something along the lines of minister CAUSE (Couple GOTO married). Notice all of these seem to encode a kind of adjectival meaning (which in my taxonomy shows fits in as a kind of stative verb) of married.
But what of the word marriage. The various words have a meaning such as married above. In my taxonomy, it can be viewed as a stative verb with the LOC "married" and a THEME, in normal usage, of a person.
The word marriage, however, seems to be "up" a level of abstraction; it does not place people into a relation with "being married", either in, entering, leaving, or causing, but rather "looks down" on the meaning if "being married" and uses that meaning as a noun.
Thus in a sentence (from Wikipedia) such as "Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship.", the word "marriage" is the THEME, not a verb, and does not relate a person to the state of "being married", but rather talks about what it means to be married.
So it appears that there are (at least) two different levels of abstraction to a verb in the taxonomy, one where we use the word, and the other were we turn it into a noun and use the noun to refer to the meaning of the verb. There seems to be two different levels of abstraction in the use of a word. Take, for instance, words related to marriage. There are at the first level the use of these words to apply to people. In my taxonomy in previous posts, X is married can be understood as X AT married, or, in more idiomatic phrasing, X is in the state of being married. (For the purposes of this post I'll simply ignore the issues revolving around the tense and aspect.)
X got married is something like X GOTO married, or X became married. X got divorced, means something similar to A LEAVE married. Similarly spouse has the meaning AT married, with wife including the meaning AT woman and husband the meaning AT man in addition the AT married.
Wed, like got married, includes the meaning GOTO married, a wedding is a ceremony in which people GOTO married. With the meaning The minister married the couple, the meaning seems to include something along the lines of minister CAUSE (Couple GOTO married.
Notice all of these seem to encode a kind of adjectival meaning (which in my taxonomy shows fits in as a kind of stative verb) of married.
But what of the word marriage. The various words have a meaning such as married above. In my taxonomy, it can be viewed as a stative verb with the LOC "married" and a THEME, in normal usage, of a person.
The word marriage, however, seems to be "up" a level of abstraction; it does not place people into a relation with "being married", either in, entering, leaving, or causing, but rather "looks down" on the meaning if "being married" and uses that meaning as a noun.
Thus in a sentence (from Wikipedia) such as "Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship.", the word "marriage" is the THEME, not a verb, and does not relate a person to the state of "being married", but rather talks about what it means to be married.
So it appears that there are (at least) two different levels of abstraction to a verb in the taxonomy, one where we use the word, and the other were we turn it into a noun and use the noun to refer to the meaning of the verb.
Labels: grammar
posted by decaf owl at 2:22 PM
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