Re: How do you know if an English word is: verb, adj, etc.?

In our last episode,
<e09359f6-15d7-4d0e-9c23-6d8e32796863@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, the
lovely and talented maasultan@xxxxxxxxx broadcast on alt.usage.english:

What all of you are saying is true but that is not where I am
heading!

If you have a number (say 10) you can check if that number >0 by
writing thing like: If 10 < 0 then....etc.

Now, say I have an English word such as "large" and I want to say
thing like: If "large" is adj, then...etc.

I need a rule or something so a computer code can check to make a
decision. Is there such a rule in ENGLISH?

No, which is why people get paid lots of money to write parsing engines,
many of which are very poor and none of which is perfect.

Mathematics is an artificial language built on relatively few principles.
English is a natural language. And even though mathematics ought to be easy
to express in ways that computers can understand, in fact it is not easy to
write routines that can decide whether 3-1/3 + 6-2/3 < 10. It seems easy if
you write in a higher level computer language, but that only because most of
the heavy lifting has been done in the processor hardware or in the binary
software.

Digital computers do not deal well with ambiguity, but natural languages
cannot exist without abiguity. There are numerous very long lists of
English adjectives, English nouns, and so forth, composed by human beings or
based on works composed by human beings. Google for WordNet; there are many
other projects with available files. The problem is that many words appear
on several lists. As is often noted in this newsqroup, all or nearly all
English words can be used as verbs. We may disapprove of this as much as we
please, but most native speakers have to admit that they do understand
sentences in which an existing word is used as a verb for the first time ---
or at least the first time we have heard of it.

As you say, 'large' is an adjective, but if I complain "They did not
large my popcorn enough!" most antive speakers will be appalled at my
English, but at the same time they will know what I meant. Some may even
think I am witty, in a slight degree, if I say this in a theater which
sell popcorn only in sizes called "large," "larger," and "extra-large."
This happens with considerable more justification, as when "microwave"
became a verb. "Bake" is not really adequate, is it?, although they
call the things "ovens." Now no human being can say whether "microwave"
is a verb or a noun adjective, because it is not any one of these, but
is all three.

For this reason, people who try to write parsers tend to try to
look at larger chunks than single words.

--
Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"In America only the successful writer is important, in France all
writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in
Australia you have to explain what a writer is." ---Geoffrey Cottrell
.

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