Foundations of Language

2. • LEXICAL FORMATION RULES
•LEXICAL REDUNDANCY RULES
•INHERITANCE HIERARCHIES

3. LEXICAL
FORMATION
RULES

4. A word is an arbitrary association of a sign with
a meaning. The sign has two aspects:
phonological structure (how it is pronounced)
and syntactic structure (how it combines with
other words in sentences).
Thus a basic formation rule for lexical items
specifies that they are triples of phonological
structure,syntacticstructure,and meaning.Every
framework of grammar adopts such an
assumption,at least implicitly.

5. Among lexical formation rules is the principles of
morphosyntax, which make it possible for words to
have internal syntactic structure. For instance, the
word perturbation is built from the verb perturb,
which is converted to a noun by attaching the ending
-ation. It is common to analyze words like this in
terms of a tree structure altogether parallel to
syntactic tree structures, except that the trees are
inside of a word, as in . Moreover, the trees can be
hierarchical,

6. Turning to phonology, an item's
phonological structure determines how it is
pronounced. The formation rules for lexical
phonological structure have to specify the
range of possible pronunciations for words
in the language: the inventory of
phonological segments and how they
combine into syllables and larger units

8. lexical redundancy rule
A verb pronounced /X/ that denotes an action can be
related to a noun pronounced IX+šən that denotes the
performance of such an action (or, alternatively, the
product of such an action)
This rule involves correlations in phonology, syntax, and
semantics between the paired items. Its effect is to mark
the parts of the paired items that are shared, in effect
noting the redundancies between them. Such a rule is of
interest to the extent that it relates many different pairs of
items in the same way

10. How should the grammar account for the fact that
many verbs expressing transfer (or intended
transfer )appear in two possible syntactic frames?
a. Beth gave/handed/sent/offered a teapot to
Nancy,
b. Beth gave/handed/sent/offered Nancy a teapot.
a.Beth told a story to Nancy,
b Beth told Nancy a story.