Rank shifting

Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Rank shifting

Post by Stephen Hughes »

KimmoHuovila wrote:You are right with your qualifications on how we can assess good Greek. Basically, if native Greek authors use some constructions regularly, it is a good candidate of good Greek. If only non-natives use the construction, then it is a good candidate of "bad" Greek. For my present purposes, this is enough.
We are working with a noun that is quite rare - has few examples. Are you assuming that what is good for one noun is good for all or is there a limitation to the type of nouns that are included in the structures or just for this noun?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stirling Bartholomew
Posts: 1141
Joined: August 9th, 2012, 4:19 pm

Re: Rank shifting

Post by Stirling Bartholomew »

If you search for "rank shift" and "embedding" along with the following title you may be able to read some critical discussion of how these ideas function within SFL and other frameworks. Fawcett points out misunderstandings that surround the use and abuse of "rank shift" in the literature.

A Theory of Syntax for Systemic Functional Linguistics
By Robin P. Fawcett

Fawcett reminded me that recursion and embedding are not identical. Embedding is a general category of which recursion is one sub-category.
C. Stirling Bartholomew
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