Fusion in language: A case for supralexical units.
Item
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Title
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Fusion in language: A case for supralexical units.
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Identifier
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AAI9224800
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identifier
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9224800
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Creator
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Coreil, Clyde.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William Stewart
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Language, Linguistics | Education, Language and Literature | Education, Educational Psychology
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Abstract
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Apparently, linguistic fusion results in an enormous number of lexicalized phrases, or what I call "supralexical units." These extend along a continuum from literal constructions like "Don't worry about it" to semi-idioms like "a white lie" to full idioms like "kick the bucket." The principle of fusion also helps account for metaphors like "John is a lion." According to the Supralexical Hypothesis, one differentiating factor in these classifications is the number of semantic features that are added or deleted in the process of supralexicalization.;I identify fifteen characteristics of fused structures, including productivity, which results in "take one's blood pressure/pulse/temperature" but not "weight/height." The relevant semantic feature is apparently "measurement of a physiological process" which excludes weight and height. In the particular fused structure, such lexical items lose some of the properties that had characterized them as independent, and they become, to varying degrees, morpheme-like in nature.;Supralexical units seem to be preferred over analytic approximations, which would often be termed "unidiomatic" by native speakers: e.g. *"start sleeping" vs "go to sleep." Management of fused structures (which represent a possible method of quantifying idiomatic speech) seems to be an important component of competence in a given language.;I present an experiment in which I asked 343 subjects to express preference in 40 pairs of sentences, which differed only in that one contained a supralexical unit, and the other, an analytic approximation: e.g., *"I wrote my homework. / I did my homework." Results show a significant difference at the P {dollar}<{dollar}.05 level between each of five groups of speakers: Intermediate ESL, Advanced ESL, Bilingual, Black English, and Standard English. Apparently, this method of testing is quite sensitive to supralexical differences both in the lower and the upper ranges of fluency in a given dialect. I mention possible implications of this research for several areas, including lexicography, the study of dialects, language acquisition and attrition, and various other aspects of language change.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
