Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawnstorm  Question aside: Why isn't the /p/ included among the phonemes? |
There are two /p/'s in
pushed open, but for the sake of efficiency, not to mention phonological theory; i.e., English has just the one /p/ phoneme, not two), just the one is sufficient to note.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Dawnstorm And I'd split the /o/-phoneme into the phones [o] and - is that the "great, lost" phone #8? I'm not an expert, really. |
Yes and no. Again, it all depends on how deep you want to go. We're dealing with phonetics (the study of human sounds) at that level, not phonemes (the study of distinctive sounds that are represented by abstract units that you cannot pronounce.) The phrase
spin pots, for example, has two [p]'s that are represented by the phoneme /p/. The [p] in
spin is different from the [p] in
pots. The latter has a great puff of air when it's released, whereas the former doesn't have as great a puff of air. You can test this yourself using a piece of paper. Hold it in front of your lips, say
spin; the paper shouldn't move; then say
pots. The paper should move. Now, those two sounds are different phonetically, but they aren't phonemically. They are not distinctive in English; they aren't part of English's phonemic alphabet; speakers can't tell them apart like [p] and [b], for example, which are contrastive and distinctive. The two p's we're talking about are, however, distinctive in other languages, like say Hindi, in which aspirated and unaspirted p's exist. In short, not all p's are the same across languages.
Just as all human languages (to my knowledge) have [p]'s--but then again there's that joke about languages spoken in Nunavut, which I won't go into here--all languages have verbs, but verbs aren't interpreted the same way in all languages. Headedness varies. In some languages, the verb's object comes before the verb (SOV, e.g., Japanese), and in other languages it comes after the verb (SVO; e.g., English). That's just the beginning, though. There are the adverbs to consider. Where do they go? Are they pre- or post-modifiers, or both? That's a question language learners deal with when learning a language whose headedness is different from their first language. Add to that the headedness of verb-verb compounds, which are found with some regularity in the world's languages, and some learners will indeed pause when it comes to English phrasal verbs like
pushed open.
How is it structured? Does tense play a role? Is
pushed a participle functioning as an adverb? Of course, it's not, but that's actually the whole point.
We don't know what the learner is thinking, because
we don't know the person's first language background, nor do
we know that person's learning style, or how that person is interpreting the verb phrase; e.g., push to open; open by pushing, and so on. (I trust that addresses Andrew's concerns regarding my question whether
open is a verb or an adverb. It's not a linguistic analysis, per se, Andrew. It's more along the lines of knowing what's behind a question, and not necessarily for the sake of the person who posted the question initially, but rather for the audience as a whole.)
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Dawnstorm 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? |
Those are very good questions. What I can tell you is that
pushed open is considered a phrasal verb in English. For a deeper analysis, you could goggle V-V compounds--Japanese and Chinese are just two. You may find, especially if you teach English as a second or other language, that language errors, like *
pushed opens, betray a hidden code, which means our students aren't making what appear to be mistakes but rather are factoring language at a very complex level. It's that level of computation that excites me. ("Make errors!" I demand of my students. "Teach me your code"; i.e., show me how you are interpreting the language.)
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Dawnstorm (Ad hoc, I find it different from all other "verb+bare infinitive"-constructions, such as "He helped open the door.") |
Very interesting, indeed. How so? (Show me your code.
)
All the best.
Re: adverb 
)
Linear Mode
