Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-14T23:45:41.342Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From twig-skinny to Kate Moss skinny: expressing degree with common and proper nouns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2019

TURO VARTIAINEN
TURO VARTIAINEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Languages, University of Helsinki, PO Box 3, 00014, University of Helsinki, Finlandturo.vartiainen@helsinki.fi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article provides a constructional (CxG) analysis of N-ADJ compounds in which the noun receives a degree reading (e.g. bullet-straight, Kennedy-handsome). A semantic analysis based on similes and scale matching is provided, and the recent history and increased productivity of the construction are examined in light of data from both the Corpus of Historical American English and a range of present-day corpora. The article introduces new evidence of the increased functional flexibility of both common and proper nouns in English and discusses the ongoing conventionalisation of proper noun degree modifiers in both American English and other varieties of English. The results of the study suggest that the recent introduction of proper noun degree modifiers has been supported by both constructional (semantic) change and macro-trends that have affected English usage more generally.

Keywords

degree modifiersnounscompoundingproductivityConstruction Grammar
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 23 , Special Issue 4: Different perspectives on proper noun modifiers , December 2019 , pp. 901 - 927
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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

I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. I also thank Jukka Suomela and Tanja Säily for methodological discussions. All remaining errors are, of course, my own. I also acknowledge the generous funding by the Academy of Finland grant 276349 to the project ‘Reassessing language change: the challenge of real time’.

References

Antonopoulou, Eleni. 2004. Humor theory and translation research: Proper names in humorous discourse. Humor 17(3), 219–55.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H. 2009. Corpus linguistics in morphology: Morphological productivity. In Lüdeling, Anke & Kytö, Merja (eds.), Corpus linguistics: An international handbook, 899–919. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H. & Lieber, Rochelle. 1991. Productivity and English derivation: A corpus-based study. Linguistics 29(5), 801–43.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H. & Renouf, Antoinette. 1996. Chronicling the Times: Productive lexical innovations in an English newspaper. Language 72(1), 69–96.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2017. Compounds and compounding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Berg, Kristian. Forthcoming. Productivity, vocabulary size, and new words: A response to Säily (2016). Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory.Google Scholar
Bergen, Benjamin & Binsted, Kim. 2004. The cognitive linguistics of scalar humor. In Achard, Michel & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.), Language, culture and mind, 79–92. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Breban, Tine. 2018. Proper names used as modifiers: A comprehensive functional analysis. English Language and Linguistics 22(3), 381–401.Google Scholar
Breban, Tine & Kolkmann, Julia (eds.). 2019. Different perspectives on proper noun modifiers. Special issue, English Language and Linguistics 23(4).Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2010. Language, usage and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cappelle, Bert. 2017. What's pragmatics doing outside constructions? In Depraetere, Ilse & Salkie, Raphael (eds.), Semantics and pragmatics: Drawing a line, 115–51. Amsterdam: Springer.Google Scholar
Chapman, Don & Christensen, Ryan. 2007. Noun-adjective compounds as a poetic type in Old English. English Studies 88(4), 447–64.Google Scholar
Claridge, Claudia. 2011. Hyperbole in English: A corpus-based study of exaggeration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Coulson, Seana. 2001. Semantic leaps: Frame-shifting and conceptual blending in meaning construction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cowie, Claire & Dalton-Puffer, Christiane. 2002. Diachronic word-formation and studying changes in productivity over time: Theoretical and methodological considerations. In Díaz Vera, Javier E. (ed.), A changing world of words: Studies in English historical lexicography, lexicology and semantics, 410–37. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2001. Radical construction grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. (2008–) The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 560 million words, 1990–present. https://corpus.byu.edu/coca /Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. (2010–). The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 million words, 1810–2009. https://corpus.byu.edu/coha /Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2013. Corpus of Global Web-Based English: 1.9 Billion Words from Speakers in 20 Countries (GloWbE). https://corpus.byu.edu/glowbe /Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. (2018–) The 14 Billion Word iWeb Corpus. https://corpus.byu.edu/iWeb/Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles. 1975. Pragmatic scales and logical structure. Linguistic Inquiry 6(3), 353–75.Google Scholar
Fogelin, Robert J. 1988. Figuratively speaking. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Glucksberg, Sam. 2001. Understanding figurative language: From metaphors to idioms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Glucksberg, Sam & Keysar, Boaz. 1990. Understanding metaphorical comparisons: Beyond similarity. Psychological Review 97(1), 3–18.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 2003. Constructions: A new theoretical approach to language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(5), 219–24.Google Scholar
Goldvarg, Yevgeniya & Glucksberg, Sam. 1998. Conceptual combinations: The role of similarity. Metaphor and Symbol 13(4), 243–55.Google Scholar
Günther, Christine. 2019. A difficult to explain phenomenon: Increasing complexity in the prenominal position. English Language and Linguistics 23(3), 645–70. [Published online 2018]Google Scholar
Günther, Christine, Kotowski, Sven & Plag, Ingo. Forthcoming. Phrasal compounds can have adjectival heads: Evidence from English. English Language and Linguistics.Google Scholar
Hilpert, Martin & Diessel, Holger. 2017. Entrenchment in Construction Grammar. In Schmid, Hans-Jörg (ed.), Entrenchment and the psychology of language learning: How we reorganize and adapt linguistic knowledge. Washington, DC: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Israel, Michael, Harding, Jennifer Riddle & Tobin, Vera. 2004. On simile. In Achard, Michel & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.), Language, culture and mind, 123–35. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Kay, Paul. 2013. The limits of (construction) grammar. In Hoffmann, Thomas & Trousdale, Graeme (eds.), The Oxford handbook of Construction Grammar, 32–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lauwers, Peter & Willems, Dominique. 2011. Coercion: Definition and challenges, current approaches, and new trends. Linguistics 49(6), 1219–35.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2000. Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lipka, Leonhard. 1966. Die Wortbildungstypen waterproof und grass-green und ihre Entsprechungen im Deutschen. Tübingen: University of Tübingen.Google Scholar
Marchand, Hans. 1960. The categories and types of Present-day English word-formation: A synchronic-diachronic approach. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Michaelis, Laura A. 2002. Headless constructions and coercion by construction. In Francis, Elaine J. & Michaelis, Laura A. (eds.), Mismatch: Form–function incongruity and the architecture of grammar, 259–312. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal R. 2010. Pear-shaped and pint-sized: Comparative compounds, similes and truth. In Burkhardts, Armin & Nerlich, Brigitte (eds.), Tropical truth(s): The epistemology of metaphor and other tropes, 213–26. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ortony, Andrew. 1979. Beyond literal similarity. Psychological Review 86(3), 161–80.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carita. 2000. It's well weird. Degree modifiers of adjectives revisited: The nineties. In Kirk, John (ed.), Corpora galore: Analyses and techniques in describing English, 147–60. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Plag, Ingo. 2003. Word-formation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Plag, Ingo, Dalton-Puffer, Christiane & Baayen, Harald. 1999. Morphological productivity across speech and writing. English Language and Linguistics 3(2), 209–28.Google Scholar
Rosenbach, Anette. 2007. Emerging variation: Determiner genitives and noun modifiers in English. English Language and Linguistics 11(1), 143–89.Google Scholar
Säily, Tanja. 2014. Sociolinguistic variation in English derivational productivity: Studies and methods in diachronic corpus linguistics. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki XCIV. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1993. Metaphor. In Ortony, Andrew (ed.), Metaphor and thought, 83–111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A. 2008. So different and pretty cool! Recycling intensifiers in Toronto, Canada. English Language and Linguistics 12(2), 361–94.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Trousdale, Graeme. 2013. Constructionalization and constructional changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme. 2013. Multiple inheritance and constructional change. Studies in Language 37(3), 491–514.Google Scholar
Tversky, Amos. 1977. Features of similarity. Psychological Review 84(4), 327–52.Google Scholar
Wald, Benji & Besserman, Lawrence. 2002. The emergence of the verb-verb compound in twentieth century English and twentieth century linguistics. In Minkova, Donka & Stockwell, Robert P. (eds.), Studies in the history of the English language: A millennial perspective, 417–47. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar