From an icy hell of a night to a hell of a fine story
The development of the English binominal noun phrase and beyond
English evaluative binominal noun phrases (EBNPs; an icy hell of a night) have been discussed for over 50 years, and a number of different analyses have been presented. This paper argues that one problem shared by previous research is that the of-binominals classified as EBNPs are actually three different constructions: the EBNP and two other of-binominals, evaluative modifiers (EM; one hell of a party) and binominal intensifiers (BI; a hell of a good dog). Using the classification criteria presented in previous studies and corpus data, I argue for distinguishing these two of-binominals from the EBNP. Furthermore, this paper links the development of the EM and the BI to the grammaticalization of premodifiers and other of-binominals.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Evaluative binominal noun phrase
- 2.1Property 1: Of
- 2.2Property 2: Determiner 1
- 2.3Property 3: Determiner 2
- 2.4Property 4: Headedness
- 2.5Property 5: Relation between N1 and N2
- 2.6Property 6: Scope of Determiner 1
- 2.7Property 7: Premodification
- 2.8Property 8: Constituency
- 2.9Property 9: Restrictions on N1
- 2.10Property 10: Restrictions on N2
- 2.11Property 11: Number Agreement
- 3.Evaluative Modifier
- 3.1Property 1: Of
- 3.2Property 2 & 3: Determiner 1 & 2
- 3.3Property 4: Headedness
- 3.4Property 5: Relation between N1 and N2
- 3.5Property 7: Premodification
- 3.6Property 9 & 10: Restrictions on N1 & N2
- 3.7Property 11: Number agreement
- 4.Binominal intensifier
- 4.1Property 1: Of
- 4.2Property 2 & 3: Determiner 1 & determiner 2
- 4.3Property 5 & 7: Relation between N1 and N2 & premodification
- 4.4Property 8: Constituency
- 4.5Property 9 & 10: Restrictions on N1 & N2
- 4.6Property 11: Number agreement
- 5.Two case studies
- 6.Relation to other constructions
- 6.1Similarities to adjectives
- 6.2Parallels to other of-binominals
- 7.Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
-
Corpora