Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T14:25:34.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adjective phrases with doubly modified heads: how lexical information influences word order and constituent structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2017

THOMAS BERG
THOMAS BERG*
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Hamburg, Überseering 35, 22297 Hamburg, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study presents a corpus-based analysis of adjective phrases consisting of a grading element (‘grader’), a deadjectival adverb and an adjectival head. The interest of this pattern derives from the fact that these three constituents can occur in three different orders, as exemplified by more cognitively complex, cognitively more complex and more complex cognitively. The analysis builds primarily on the distinction between domain and non-domain adverbs. ADJPs with domain adverbs have different patterns from ADJPs with other adverbs. Whereas the adverb–grader–adjective order predominates in ADJPs with domain adverbs, the grader–adverb–adjective order is the most frequent type in ADJPs with non-domain adverbs. Within the set of non-domain adverbs, a secondary distinction is made between lexical and more grammatical types. Lexical adverbs are found to preferentially associate with the grader–adverb–adjective order while the more grammatical adverbs gravitate towards the adverb–grader–adjective order. The following five factors account for the empirical results: branching direction, the frequent-unit-first hypothesis, proximity, analogy/uniformity and modifier–head order. Structural representations are argued to draw on lexical information which is not coded by terminal nodes.

Keywords

adjective phraseconstituent structureword ordergrammar–lexicon relationship
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 341 - 361
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The following people have made their direct or indirect mark on this study and their help is much appreciated: Marion Neubauer assisted me in the process of data collection, André Geisler performed an analysis of domain and non-domain adverbs, Günter Radden's finesse convinced me once more of the virtues of the contrast principle and Bernd Kortmann gave me wise editorial advice. Above all, I am very impressed by the masterly reviews, which have given me a welcome opportunity for substantial improvement.

References

Behaghel, Otto. 1932. Deutsche Syntax, vol. IV. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Bellert, Irena. 1977. On semantic and distributional properties of sentential adverbs. Linguistic Inquiry 8, 337–51.Google Scholar
Berg, Thomas. 2003. Right-branching in English derivational morphology. English Language and Linguistics 7, 279–303.Google Scholar
Berg, Thomas. 2009. Structure in language: A dynamic perspective. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Berg, Thomas. 2011. Recursion introduces a left-branching bias (where possible). Linguistics 49, 977–90.Google Scholar
Berg, Thomas (in press). Frequency and serial order. Linguistics .Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan W. 1973. Syntax of the comparative clause construction in English. Linguistic Inquiry 4, 275–343.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. & Brinton, Donna M.. 2010. The linguistic structure of Modern English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Burton-Roberts, Noel. 2011. Analysing sentences: An introduction to English syntax. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 1999. Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2000. Parts of speech as language universals and as language-particular categories. In Vogel, Petra & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), Approaches to the typology of word classes, 65–102. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Crystal, David. 2004. Making sense of grammar. Harlow: Pearson.Google Scholar
Desagulier, Guillaume. 2014. Visualizing distances in a set of near-synonyms. In Glynn, Dylan & Robinson, Justina A. (eds.), Corpus methods for semantics, 145–78. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S. 1992. The Greenbergian word order correlations. Language 68, 81–138.Google Scholar
Erman, Britt. 2014. There is no such thing as free combination: A usage-based study of specific construals in adverb–adjective combinations. English Language and Linguistics 18, 109–32.Google Scholar
Ernst, Thomas. 2002. The syntax of adjuncts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1991. Isomorphism in the grammatical code: Cognitive and biological considerations. Studies in Language 15, 85–114.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2014. On system pressure competing with economic motivation. In MacWhinney, Brian, Malchukov, Andrej & Moravcsik, Edith (eds.), Competing motivations in grammar and usage, 197–208. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1971. Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances. In Jakobson, Roman & Halle, Morris, Fundamentals of language, 67–96. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Joseph, John E. 2016. Historical perspectives on gender and identity. In Preece, Sian (ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and identity, 19–33. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Keizer, Evelien. 2012. English proforms in Functional Discourse Grammar. Language Sciences 34, 400–20.Google Scholar
Laenzlinger, Christopher. 1998. Comparative studies in word order variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins .Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .Google Scholar
McConnell-Ginet, Sally. 1982. Adverbs and logical form: A linguistically realistic theory. Language 58, 144–84.Google Scholar
Oostdijk, Nelleke. 2001. The English adjective phrase. In Aijmer, Karin (ed.), A wealth of English, 23–37. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carita. 1997. Degree modifiers of adjectives in spoken British English. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Radford, Andrew. 1988. Transformational grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rys, Jonah & Cuypere, Ludovic De. 2014. Variable satellite placement in spoken Dutch. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 19, 548–69.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Karen. 2013. Frames and constructions in metaphoric language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins .Google Scholar
Yngve, Victor H. 1960. A model and an hypothesis for language structure. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104, 444–64.Google Scholar