David Rose On Three King's Hats

David Rose wrote to asflanet on 23 Mar 2024, at 22:55:

That was the joke... whose hat? – England’s king’s, or whose king’s hat? – England’s

Now I have to explain the punchline ;-/

In both interpretations, group and word rank can be analysed in a single display

Whose king’s hat?

 

a and #b are symbols for Head and Modifier, so no need to restate. The hash # means non-recursive (only one ‘s). So subjacent duplexes rather than hypotactic series.

The other interpretation is more structurally complex. It isn’t a hypotactic series because the Deictic is realised by an embedded nom gp [England’s king], which itself has a Deictic Thing structure.

Whose hat? 

and then at 23:22:

I should add an alternative analysis for whose king’s hat? that treats subclassification of the Thing as a potentially recursive word complex (after Martin, Doran, Zhang). Here’s king’s subclassifies hat. The Thing is not just a hat, it’s a king’s hat. 

 

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the original contrast was between the king of England's hat and England's king's hat. Here Rose has "moved the goalposts" to two interpretations of England's king's hat.

[2] To be clear, this analysis assumes there is a type of hat called a 'king's hat'. What is labelled 'subjacency duplex' is, in each case, a word consisting of a stem and a suffix. The analysis mislabels the stem morpheme as a word (name, noun).

[3] This is a serious misunderstanding. Even a two-unit complex, a duplex, is generated by a recursive system. In a two-unit complex, the feature 'stop' is selected on the first pass through the system. That is, the system is recursive, but the option of re-entering the system is not taken in this case. But this is, in any case, irrelevant here, since the logical structure of this nominal group is a triplex, not a duplex.

[4] To be clear, it is a hypotactic series because the logical structure of the nominal group is a triplex.

[5] To be clear, the Deictic is not realised by the embedded nominal group [England's king]. It is realised by the two nouns England's and king's which, not being a nominal group, do not have a Deictic^Thing structure.

[6] As in the first analysis, what is labelled 'subjacency duplex' is, in each case, a word consisting of a stem and a suffix. The analysis mislabels the stem morpheme as a word (name, noun). A logical analysis clarifies the nominal group structure.