Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawnstorm  1. I've always heard 'phoneme' used the way Casiopea used it. (Question aside: Why isn't the /p/ included among the phonems? And I'd split the /o/-phoneme into the phones [o] and [u] - is that the "great, lost" phone #8? I'm not an expert, really.)
2. I'm very interested in the idea that "open" in "pushed open" can be a verb. (It's especially interesting to hear about the mistake "pushed opens" etc.) Is there a term I can google? (Ad hoc, I find it different from all other "verb+bare infinitive"-constructions, such as "He helped open the door.")
Very interesting thread. Thanks for the discussion.  |
1) I am not surprised at all, the only people who talk about phonemes are linguists, who use it to describe a short sound - I know that already!
To repeat what I said earlier, it could be my memory that is wrong or it could be that the word was hijacked to describe a string of words used in one unit. Don't forget that 'phoneme' literally means 'sound' - being a short sound is not intrinsic to the meaning.
If phoneme is the wrong word, then what is the right word?
2) verb etc. describes how a word is used, not a property of the word, and in many compounds it is not clear what the word is doing.
Explore that idea: try these concepts -
In 'pushed open', open is a preposition carrying the idea of motion as in 'pushed away"
In 'pushed open', pushed is an adverb describing the way the door was opened.
In 'dining table', dining is an adjective describing the table.
Before the linguistic army jumps on me with 1,000 reasons why those words can't perform those functions - I am not saying they do. They are ideas to play with.
If you want to Google, try compound verb, serial verb, or phrasal verb. Phrasal verbs do not have to be verb-verb though, and rarely are. You will find that in practice verb-verb pairs are usually auxiliary+main.
Re: adverb 
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