The problem I see with calling it "zero-derivation" is that that is a type of "derivation" (exactly what KathTheDragon mentioned). Seeing those English examples ("white > whiten"), I now realize you probably don't distinguish the concept of "inflection" from "derivation" (seeing them as synonyms of affixation instead), so Sal and I on one side and you on the other have been talking past each other the whole time.zompist wrote: ↑Sat Aug 03, 2019 5:18 pmBut we already have this concept— we call it zero-derivation. There's absolutely no problem with inflections changing syntactic category— e.g. white > whiten, note > notate, real > realize, heal > health. Zero-derivation just says you don't need an actual inflection.
The distinction is pretty commonly made, even if grammar authors don't often spell it out. Here's a page about it:
http://taalportaal.org/taalportaal/topi ... 3298791594
Trying to put it in your terms, what I'm saying is that I think a distinction is warranted between the type of (derivational) zero-derivation that creates new words (non-productively and with unpredictable meanings) and the type of (inflectional) "zero-derivation" that is a mere grammatical pattern (creating word forms productively and with completely predictable meanings).
Imagine a conlang where saht 'a fork', prototypically a noun both statistically within the conlang and also semantically, can take the form of a verb, saht 'be a fork', because every noun can become a verb meaning "be an X" as part of the grammar. However, the noun can also be said to derive (read: create) a verb through zero-derivation: saht 'poke through [solid food while cooking to test if it's soft enough] (transitive)'. In Sal's terms, we'd say 'a fork' and 'be a fork' are different morphosyntactic words but the same lexical word, but 'a fork' and 'poke through [food]' are both different morphosyntactic words and also different lexical words.
Also, Salmoneus gave examples of an imagined isolating language, but this can equally apply to languages with surface affixes. For example, Old French amer 'to love' inflects into the participle amant 'loving [sb]', but unpredictably also derives the noun amant 'lover'. Meanwhile, trover 'to find [sth]' only has the participle inflection trovant 'finding [sth]', with no unpredictably derived noun *trovant like the one amer produces.
Neither Salmoneus nor I have said anything about categorizing roots into word classes (and I suspect the two of us would agree with you that it's not reasonable). I think your comments about roots come from Salmoneus giving examples from an imagined isolating language where roots are also actual words, but the focus is on the actual words, not the roots.Now, you could totally talk about roots that aren't specified for syntactic category— in English, Mandarin, Quechua, or (as I showed above) Latin. But I don't see the need to decide that they belong to a "noun-y lexical class", and I don't see a principled way to decide what class that is. Sometimes it's clear etymologically, but etymology is not accessible to most speakers.
Yes, but this only means there is no hard absolute rule that can apply to all languages. Identifying word classes is usually very useful.As I said, if you think in terms of prototypes, the traditional definitions make more sense. You can use syntax alone, abstractly, to define syntactic categories, but deciding which ones to call "nouns" and which are "verbs" is basically semantic.
Or we admit that categories are not absolute but fuzzy.The Latin gerund is very noun-like [...] Seeing it skirts the word classes of Latin as it does, we could probably consider the Latin gerund to be morphosyntactically noun-like while still belonging to the Verb Lexical Class.
I think there are two differences between adjectives and verbs in Mandarin:E.g., in Mandarin, "adjectives" don't pattern like nouns, but like verbs— they can take adverbials, they can be perfective. And "verbs" can be used in comparative constructions. (There may be something that distinguishes verbs from adjectives, but I can't think of it offhand.)
1. Unlike most verbs, they cannot be perfective, or take any aspect particle at all. (You might be thinking of being able to take the sentence-final particle 了 le, which most of the time expresses change of state. This has a different etymology* and meaning than the perfective particle 了 le.)
2. The semantic effects of negation with 不 bu4 and 沒(有) mei2(you3) are different.
- - - When modifying verbs, 不 bu4 is the default unmarked negator for verbs with present-tense meaning ("doesn't do"), and for verbs with past-tense meaning it expresses the subject didn't do the action intentionally ("didn't do on purpose").
- - - When modifying adjectives, 不 bu4 is the default unmarked negator regardless of semantic tense.
- - - When modifying verbs, 沒(有) mei2(you3) is the default unmarked negator for verbs with past-tense meaning ("didn't do, hadn't done"), but for verbs in the present tense it makes it clear that there is an expectation the subject will do the pending action in the future even though they haven't done it yet ("hasn't (yet) done") (for present-tense verbs it is usually accompanied by 還 hai2 'still').
- - - When modifying adjectives, 沒(有) is a dynamic negator regardless of semantic tense ("hasn't gotten [adjective], hadn't become [adjective]"). EDIT: But much more commonly, it is accompanied by the adverbs 這麼 zhe4me 'like this' or 那麼 na4me 'like that' to express negated comparison of equality: 沒有那麼累 mei2you3 na4me lei4 'to be not that tired'.
* The perfective particle comes from the verb 了 'to complete' (as a verb it survives into modern Mandarin with the pronunciation liao3). The sentence-final particle comes from 來 'to come' (surviving as a verb with the pronunciation lai2), in fact, some northern Mandarin dialects still have 來著 laizhe as a synonym particle.
