4.1. English

We outline six syntactic patterns of degree resultatives; then we summarize them in a table. The first syntactic pattern in English (type 1) is verb + fake reflexive + predicate. The meaning of the following types of verbs can be intensified by adding a reflexive pronoun and a resultative predicate: Intransitive verbs (such as laugh), optionally transitive verbs (such as eat), and verbs that can have a causative interpretation when used transitively (such as jump). The added resultative predicate provides a scalar endpoint. It typically has a negative connotation, denoting a state such a death, sickness, decay, etc., as in 2a above. This state, understood metaphorically, specifies an (end)point on a scale (as discussed in section 3). The resultative construction as a whole, however, does not necessarily have a negative connotation. For example, sick is a negatively evaluated state, but laughing oneself sick involves maximal mirth without adverse associations. In other cases, such as working oneself to death, there is a finer line between a literal interpretation and a merely intensifying interpretation. Still, one can say Every week, I work myself to death, and I love it. The modifier every week makes it clear that no literal reading is intended, while the second conjunct indicates a positive appraisal. Among the most common verbs that appear with this kind of intensification are laugh, dance, work, drink, and eat. The resultative predicate may be an AP (laugh oneself sick) or a PP (drink oneself to death). There may be restrictions on which verb combines with which predicate, as discussed in the next section.

The reflexive in this type of resultative construction is fake (Simpson Reference Simpson, Lori, Malka and Annie1983) because either the verb does not subcategorize for an object, or the object does not satisfy the verb’s usual selectional restrictions. For example, sing is usually intransitive, although it can take objects that are within its referential extension, such as a song or the national anthem. In particular, it does not generally allow an animate object, yet in sing oneself hoarse, the object is [+animate]. Fake reflexives cannot bear contrastive stress, a characteristic that helps in identifying them:

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The second syntactic pattern in English (type 2) is verb + X’s body part + {off/out}. This construction also contains mostly intransitive or optionally transitive verbs. The NP that denotes the body part does not satisfy the verb’s selectional requirements; thus, it is not a genuine argument but rather a fake object (extending the use of the term fake reflexive). The verbs cry, freeze, fuck, laugh, scream, and work are commonly used in combinations such as freeze X’s extremities off, cry X’s eyes out, scream X’s head off, and work X’s tail off. Often the possessive pronoun is bound by the subject, as in 12, whereas other times, the possessive may be free, as in 13.

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With verbs of communication (understood broadly enough to include sing) that take a goal/beneficiary argument, a free possessive pronoun is understood to be that argument.

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When the possessives are bound, they require local antecedents just as fake reflexives do, as in 15a; they reject the use of own, as in 15b, as well as any form of contrastive stress, as in 15c.

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The third syntactic pattern in English (type 3) is verb + [the + taboo term] + [out of NP]. This type of construction nearly always involves verbs that require a direct object. Examples include expletives, such as scare the hell out of someone, annoy the shit out of someone, beat the living crap out of someone, etc., as well as milder taboo terms that a parent, for example, might not be upset if a child used, such as those having to do with death or religion, including scare the living daylights out of someone, beat the devil out of someone. As noted earlier, however, while the expletive is the direct object of the verb, it is not an argument, nor does it satisfy the verb’s usual selectional restrictions. Thus, once again, one is dealing with a fake object. The argument—patient in this case—is the NP in the PP [out of NP].

Sometimes, this construction may contain a verb that usually does not take a direct object; instead, it takes a PP where the object of P is an argument of the verb. A blog post by Zimmer (2016) and Perek (Reference Perek2016) note relevant cases, such as 16, involving listen to, from COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). In 16, what would have been the object of to in the absence of a fake object (that is, your tape, as in listen to your tape) appears as the object of out of.^{Footnote 8}

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The fourth syntactic pattern in English (type 4) is verb + NP + predicate. Very often this is an ordinary transitive construction with a resultative secondary predicate added, as in love someone to death, bore someone stiff, scare somebody shitless. It has a passive counterpart (compare 17a–c with 17d–e, ungrammatical passive sentences corresponding to type 3).

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Just as with English type 1, sometimes this construction contains an object that does not satisfy the selectional restrictions of the verb, and, in that sense, is fake; thus, the resultative predicate licenses a fake object. Furthermore, sometimes one finds verbs that can be understood as causative when they have an object (for example, work in They worked us too hard). In fact, the same range of verbs that allow a fake reflexive in English type 1 also appear in English type 4 with a fake object. Interestingly, even these English type 4 examples have passive counterparts, as shown in 18 (though sometimes the get-passive sounds distinctly better than the be-passive).

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This raises the question of whether English type 1 really should be separated from English type 4. We demonstrate an advantage to maintaining this distinction when we turn to Dutch later. In the active sentences in 18, the syntactically complex structure (subject, primary verb, fake object, resultative predicate) gives rise to different interpretations of who is doing the action. In some instances, the subject is understood to have caused the object to do the primary action (as with 18a). In others, the subject is understood to have done the primary action plus caused the object to do that action (as with 18b). Still in others, the subject and object are both understood to have done the action, but the subject “out-does” the object (as with 18c, similar to She outdrank us). Finally, the subject can be understood to have done the action with a resultant negative effect on the object (as in 18d–e).

Also, just as with English type 3, sometimes this construction contains a verb that usually does not take a direct object, but, instead, takes a PP where the object of P is an argument of the verb. That argument winds up promoted to direct object position, as in 19.

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The next syntactic pattern (type 5) is verb + NP + [out of X’s body part]. This is also an ordinary transitive construction with a resultative secondary predicate. NPs that denote body parts and associated concepts range over brain, wits, mind, skin, skull, etc., and the possessive must be bound by the experiencer argument of the verb, as shown in 20.

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We distinguish English type 5 from English type 4 because its passive counterpart is more common than the active construction.

The next syntactic pattern (type 6) is verb + the {clothing/body part} + [off NP]. This construction has a transitive verb whose object denotes a piece of clothing or a body part, but that object is fake. The genuine argument of the verb—experiencer in this case—is the NP object of the preposition off ({charm/annoy/scare} the pants off somebody). An example from our corpora is provided in 21.

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We show in section 6.4 that the examples with clothing differ from the examples with body parts in certain ways. Therefore, we talk about English type 6a, which concerns clothing, and English type 6b, which concerns body parts.

In table 1, we present the six types of degree resultatives we have characterized above.

Table 1.

Six types of degree resultatives in English.

In sum, English presents six distinct constructions that degree resultative phrases occur in, where four of them contain a reflexive or body part/clothing bound by an argument of the verb. We consider this distribution in section 4.3 below.

4.2. Dutch

We outline four patterns of degree resultatives in Dutch, then summarize them in a table. However, before listing and exemplifying the types, we need to explain that Dutch word order generally places the finite verb in verb-second position and places other forms (perfect or passive participles, for example) at the end of the VP. For the sake of simplicity of exposition, we characterize our construction types in terms of the verb being at the end of the VP, since that is where the main verb will be if auxiliaries are used. Please keep that in mind when comparing the examples to the type pattern.

The first syntactic pattern in Dutch (type 1) is fake reflexive + predicate + verb. The examples in 22 contain fake reflexives with resultative predicates in a structure that looks identical to English type 1.

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There is an important difference between the English and Dutch instances of type 1, however. The Dutch cases typically employ what is known as the short forms of the reflexive, for example, zich ‘him/her/itself’ rather than the long form zichzelf. This has to do with the fact that the reflexive is inherent in these constructions: The verb cannot take an object that is distinct in reference from the subject. Inherent reflexives in Dutch are generally short forms (but see discussion in Hendriks et al. Reference Hendriks, John and Jennifer2014). This is the reason why we did not conflate English type 1 with English type 4 in our discussion of English above; maintaining the distinction facilitates comparison of the two languages.

Dutch uses the short forms of inherent reflexives (Everaert Reference Everaert1986, Reinhart & Reuland Reference Reinhart and Eric1993, Bouma & Spenader Reference Bouma and Jennifer2008), but it appears that the complementary distribution of short and long reflexives described in the linguistic literature is showing signs of weakening. New usage of long reflexives is attested on the online social network Twitter, where they creep, albeit still rarely, into inherent-reflexive positions.^{Footnote 10} The long forms cannot be interpreted contrastively in their innovative use as fake reflexives, whereas they can be in their other uses. In 23a, a fake reflexive of Dutch type 1 appears in the nonstandard long form mezelf, where mezelf cannot bear contrastive stress (whereas dood ‘dead’ can, as indicated). In 23b, an ordinary transitive resultative of Dutch type 4 (discussed below and comparable to English type 4 discussed above) contains the expected long form mezelf, which can bear contrastive stress (as indicated).

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The second syntactic pattern in Dutch (type 2) is (possessive) body part₁ + [{uit ‘out’/op ‘on’} X’s body part₂] + verb. In 24, Dutch examples of this construction have many similarities to the English construction of type 2. The direct object in Dutch, however, can denote either a body part (as in 24a, the eyes) or a sign of degradation or distress (that is, affliction) of a body part (as in 24d, the blisters). The object of the preposition (uit ‘out’ or op ‘on’) denotes another body part and is preceded by a possessive pronoun. However, only those direct objects that denote actual body parts can appear with an overt possessive (Cappelle Reference Cappelle2014). In 24a–c, the direct object appears without a possessive; the version with a possessive—comparable to English—is given in square brackets. Note that 24d–e involve affliction of a body part, hence there is no example with a possessive on the direct object.

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If true body parts appear as both the direct object and object of the preposition, they must be semantically related: The first body part (the direct object) is typically a meronym of the second body part (the object of the preposition; we include lijf ‘body’ in 24c). That is, the first denotes a part of the second.

The idioms in 25 have variants in which the possessor is expressed by a short reflexive pronoun. In these instances, instead of the possessive pronoun, the object of the preposition (that is, body part₂) appears with the definite article.^{Footnote 11}

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Perhaps this is because the possessive pronouns in examples such as 25 are locally bound by the subject. Indeed, local binding is required, as shown in 26.

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The construction requires coreference, in one instance with a possessive and in the other with a reflexive. This is not uncommon; in many languages reflexives appear instead of possessives with inalienable objects (Herschensohn Reference Herschensohn, Christiane and Terrell1992, Postma Reference Postma, Hans, Pierre and Johan1997, Lødrup Reference Lødrup1999).

As expected and just like the English cases cited above, the possessive in examples such as 24 cannot be strengthened by eigen ‘own’, nor can it bear contrastive stress. Further, the reflexive in examples such as 25 cannot bear contrastive stress, nor can it be replaced with the long-form reflexive (but note the proviso mentioned above). Contrast 24a,b to 27a,b, and 25 to 27c.

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The construction in 25, then, is ditransitive, where both objects (the reflexive zich and body part₁ de longen ‘the lungs’) are fake. One might well want to categorize this construction as Dutch type 2b: reflexive + body part₁ + [{uit/op} Def Art body part₂] + verb.

Quite generally, Dutch type 2 (including Dutch type 2b) does not occur with verbs that usually link an argument to direct object position (genuinely transitive verbs); and all the direct objects in this construction discussed so far have been fake. Given that, one does not expect to find arguments in direct object position in Dutch type 2. However, a few verbs of communication are exceptional (such verbs appear in English type 2, but their behavior is different in Dutch). In 28a, the object of the preposition, Annie, is the goal argument of the communication verb praten ‘talk’. This verb occurs in a degree resultative in 28b, where the goal argument has been promoted to direct object of the verb. Given that body part₁ is present as well (de oren ‘the ears’), 28b is a ditransitive construction, where the first object is an argument of the verb (the goal) and the second one is not. As in the ditransitive construction in 25, which has a reflexive, in 28b body part₂ (het hoofd ‘the head’) is introduced by a definite article rather than a possessive; both body parts are understood to belong to Annie (the first object, still the goal argument of the verb).

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Other communication verbs exhibit somewhat different behavior. Example 29a contains the verb vragen ‘ask’, which can occur with an argument in direct object position and another argument as the object of the preposition. Just as with praten above, the object of P is the goal argument. In 29b, vragen occurs in a degree resultative, but the goal argument has been promoted to direct object (as in 28b).

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At this point we need to recognize the construction Dutch type 2c: NP + Def Art body part₁ + [{van} Def Art body part₂] + verb. Thus, Dutch type 2 has three instantiations, with two of them being ditransitives. We have analyzed them as instances of one type of construction for two reasons. First, there are two body parts in all of them, with the first one being a meronym of the second. Second, the body parts are understood to belong to an individual expressed as an argument of the verb. The three subtypes of Dutch type 2 can be conflated formally as follows: ({NP/reflexive}) + {(X’s)/Def Art} body part₁ + [{uit/op/van} {X’s/ Def Art} body part₂] + verb.

The next syntactic pattern in Dutch (type 3) is {fake reflexive/NP} + NP + verb. This construction is not a structural counterpart to English type 3. In fact, Dutch has no structural counterpart to English type 3 and English has no structural counterpart to Dutch Type 3. However, the Dutch and English type 3 constructions do have in common the fact that a taboo item often appears in both (such a term referring to a disease).

Dutch type 3 with a fake reflexive looks very much like Dutch type 1, especially given that the NP result is, arguably, a predicate (see remarks on a variety of NP predicate types in resultatives as well as copular and other constructions in Hoekstra & Mulder Reference Hoekstra and René1990, Fernández Leborans Reference Fernández, Ignacio and Violete1999:2359–2365, Müller Reference Müller2002, chapter 5, Bentley Reference Bentley, Andreas and Elisabeth2017). However, we argue that the construction with a fake reflexive and the one with a referential NP should be grouped together under type 3 for two reasons. First, when there is a fake reflexive in Dutch type 3, the phrase following it is always an NP that denotes an unpleasant result for the subject, such as a bump on the head, a horrible disease, or an accident. Consider the examples in 30.

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In 30a, the audience is startled as though they have had an accident; in 30b, the subject we can be seen as left suffering from typhus; in 30c, Mies might end up giving herself a stroke. As in other degree resultatives, none of these result phrases are to be taken literally; they are meant to indicate high intensity. Thus, there is no possibility for a counterpart to any of the examples in 30 with a long reflexive form and/or contrastive stress that would receive a literal reading (that is, there are no sentences comparable to 23b).

A second reason to keep Dutch type 3 with a fake reflexive separate from Dutch type 1 is its resistance to being compositional semantically. At times the NP that co-occurs with the reflexive takes on a special meaning, making the construction an idiom (as in 31a). Other times the NP does not occur outside this particular construction type; that is, it is a “cranberry word” (see Trawiński et al. Reference Trawiński, Manfred, Frank, Lothar, Nicole, Stefan and Brigitte2008), for which a proper meaning is (nearly) impossible to give (as in 31b,c).

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Nobody seems to know (including the main dictionaries of Dutch) what schompes or rambam mean, apart from the fact that they are assumed to be the names of imaginary diseases; startling oneself “a little hat” is not easy to explain either.^{Footnote 12}

In some instances it seems that analogy with another expression lies at the source of examples like those in 31. To see what we mean, consider another example of an idiomatic intensifying degree resultative: zich een rotje schrikken lit. ‘oneself a firecracker startle’ = ‘startle heavily’. The word rotje ‘firecracker’ makes no literal sense in this context. However, there is a common idiom zich rot schrikken ‘startle oneself rotten’ and another common one zich een hoedje schrikken ‘startle oneself out of one’s mind’ (seen in 31a above). Zich een rotje schrikken may have emerged as a contamination of these two idioms.

In both examples in 30 and in more idiomatic ones as in 31, the NP is headed by the indefinite singular article een, except when the NP denotes a disease (or quasi-disease), in which case the article is singular and definite (het for neuter nouns; de for singular nouns, where masculine and feminine are conflated).

One also finds degree resultatives that fit the pattern of Dutch type 3 but with a fully referential NP instead of a fake reflexive. This NP is an ordinary direct object of the verb, receiving a theta-role, as in 32. We analyze the constructions in 32 as examples of Dutch type 3 because the second NP within the VP still indicates an unpleasant result for the subject within the same range of unpleasant results. Unlike 32a,b, the example in 32c contains not a disease name but a taboo term, de moeder ‘the mother’, a recent innovation in informal Dutch. It is not in our Delpher data, but attested on the Internet from 2010 onward.

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The next syntactic pattern in Dutch (type 4) is NP + predicate + verb. This type is very much like English type 4, as seen in 33.

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The examples in 33 have verbs of contact-by-impact (just like the Dutch type 3 examples in 32). The particular examples in 33 were chosen specifically to illustrate a degree reading. For other combinations of predicate + verb, such as kapot slaan lit. ‘kaput hit’, there is ambiguity between a literal reading of ‘hit something causing it to become broken’ and a degree reading of ‘hit something hard’. Both English and Dutch make copious use of contact-by-impact verbs in type 4 constructions.

The object in examples such as 33 is an argument of the verb, and the sentences are grammatical with or without the degree resultative. However, just as happens with English type 4, there are some Dutch verbs that generally do not take an object; yet, in combination with a resultative predicate, an object is licensed, so an object can occur in Dutch type 4 (compare English examples in 18). The resultative predicate in such instances can be a simple particle (such as uit ‘out’) or a degree resultative phrase. The examples in 34 contain schelden ‘swear, call names, scold’, which does not take a direct object except when it cooccurs with a resultative phrase.

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The Dutch construction does differ in some ways from the English one, however. For example, English freely uses many psych verbs in type 4 (as in annoy someone to death), but Dutch has limitations on psych verbs. Consider the verb ergeren ‘annoy’. This verb can be used as a simple transitive, as in 35a, where the experiencer is the direct object. However, unlike in English, a degree resultative phrase cannot be added, as shown in 35b.

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Alternatively, ergeren can be used with a fake reflexive (the short form only, which cannot receive contrastive stress), where the experiencer is the subject and the entity causing the annoyance is the object of P, as in 36.

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To this structure, a degree resultative phrase can be added, so in contrast to 35b, 37a is grammatical, again with the idiom groen en geel. Example 37b, which is ambiguous between a degree and literal reading, is grammatical as well.

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Here {groen en geel/ dood} is predicated of the fake reflexive and thus, per force, of the subject. Thus, the structures in 36 and 37 can be seen as a variant of type 4. We refer to the first one as Dutch type 4a and to this one as Dutch type 4b: fake reflexive + predicate + [P + NP] + verb.

For the vast majority of speakers, psych verbs such as shockeren ‘shock’, storen ‘bother, disturb’, irriteren ‘irritate’ are acceptable only in simple transitive constructions (as in 35), so they do not show up at all in degree resultatives. However, irriteren is used like ergeren ‘annoy’ in 36 by a growing group of speakers, although prescriptivists still frown upon this. For us, the interesting point is that those speakers who can substitute irriteert ‘irritates’ for ergeren in 36, can also do this in 37. In table 2, we present the four types of Dutch degree resultative constructions we have characterized above.

Table 2.

Four types of degree resultatives in Dutch.

In sum, Dutch presents four distinct constructions that degree resultative phrases occur in, where only one variant of one type (type 4a) does not contain a reflexive or body part/clothing bound by an argument of the verb. We consider this distribution in section 4.3 below.

4.3. Generalizations

Three generalizations emerge from the English and Dutch data with respect to transitivity, argument structure and grammatical functions, and body anchoring. Those generalizations lead us to a conclusion about the origin of the second-order resultative constructions.

To begin, we examine transitivity. All degree resultative phrases occur in a clause with a direct object, whether that direct object is genuine or fake. We attribute this requirement to the the first-order construction—the original literal resultative predicate. That is, nearly all sentences with secondary resultative predicates have a direct object. An exception is seen in 38a, but it has a transitive counterpart, seen in 38b.^{Footnote 13}

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Other exceptions include verb + particle combinations such as {Piss/Fuck/Bugger off!}, where an ordinarily telic interpretation can reasonably be called resultative (Cappelle Reference Cappelle, Marja and Sinikka2007).

The next generalization concerns argument structure and grammatical functions. A particular interplay between argument structure and grammatical expression is a characteristic feature of degree resultatives. All degree resultatives have a direct object. However, in most types of degree resultative constructions the direct object is not licensed by the verb. Furthermore, if the object is licensed, it does not always satisfy the verb’s selectional restrictions outside the resultative construction; the only exceptions are English type 5 and Dutch type 4a.

Further, some types of degree resultatives tend to involve only one argument of the verb, which appears as subject; the fake reflexive in English type 1 and Dutch types 1 and 3 is bound by that subject, as is the possessive within the body part NP in English type 2 (for those examples in which the possessive is bound) and Dutch type 2a. Note that the possessive in Dutch type 2a occurs with the object of a preposition, but due to the relationship of meronymy between the two terms referring to body parts, the possessive relation extends to the body part denoted by the direct object. Dutch Type 2b has both a fake reflexive and a body part NP; the reflexive, which is bound by the subject, is interpreted as a possessive to the body part. Thus, the monovalent nature of these verbs shines through despite the presence of a direct object.

Additionally, sometimes arguments of the verb are linked to atypical grammatical functions. For example, in English types 3 and 6 the argument that is usually linked to direct object position appears, instead, in object of P position, while the NP that appears in direct object position is not an argument but rather an indicator of degree. Furthermore, in Dutch type 2c, a goal argument of a verb of communication that usually appears as the object of P appears in direct object position. Finally, in English types 2, 3, and 4, an oblique argument that is usually the object of P can appear as a possessive or as the object of a different P. In sum, degree resultatives in English and Dutch do not conform to ordinary patterns in linking arguments to grammatical functions. However, the relationship between argument structure and grammatical expression plays out differently in each language.

The final generalization concerns body anchoring. Degree resultatives are semantically “anchored” to the body of the affected argument. That argument may be repeated as a fake reflexive or it may be obligatorily coreferenced with a possessive (English types 1, 5; Dutch types 1, 2b, 3, 4b). Many degree resultatives explicitly mention body parts (English types 2, 5, and 6b). English type 6a treats clothing items as inalienable as body parts (Gordon Reference Gordon1986, Chappell & McGregor Reference Chappell and William1996).^{Footnote 14} The taboo terms found in English type 3 can be viewed as referring to internal, inalienable body parts (in that they will always belong to the affected argument, even if they are physically separated). This is clear for bodily effluents (kick the shit out of NP), but it is also true for the frequent expletive hell (knock the hell out of NP), where one still feels the historical effects of an exorcism (Hoeksema & Napoli Reference Hoeksema and Donna2008). Likewise, in Dutch type 3, illnesses such as tuberculosis are internal to the body, and even fictional/imaginary/nonexistent conditions such as schompes and rambam are perceived as inalienable. The secondary predicates used as intensifiers in English types 1 and 4 tend to denote properties of the body (to pieces, stiff, sick) or of the mind (silly, numb). Silly, for example, in a sentence like I’ll slap you silly, conveys senselessness, a state of being unable to think. However, these predicates never denote more controllable or behavioral properties (such as rich, good, sweet, polygamous). The same wholeness is observed in Dutch type 3, where the second NP of the ditransitive is all-encompassing: an accident, typhus, a stroke—never something incidental such as a hangnail or a stubbed toe. Diseases seem like very different entities from body parts. However, some recent discussions of inalienable possession have stressed that this category extends beyond body parts, to properties of mind and body, such as happiness and health (see, among others, Rooryck Reference Rooryck2017).

Based on these generalizations, we offer an account for the emergence of second-order readings of literal resultatives. When a result is extreme in that it hits an absolute endpoint plus it has a holistic effect on the entity it is predicated of, a degree interpretation becomes available simply by virtue of that literal meaning. That is, since the literal meaning is extreme in appropriate contexts, it can be used as a hyperbole in other contexts that are close to appropriate, and, eventually, it can be used entirely metaphorically in any context. Body anchoring is the key here: It assures such a holistic effect and thus predisposes the construction toward allowing a degree reading to emerge.

Further, the play between argument structure and grammatical functions typical of these constructions also contributes to the likelihood of a second-order reading. Here the literal reading can range from odd to truly bizarre to impossible. How does one annoy pants, for example, or charm socks or sing lungs? Thus, when faced with annoying pants off a person, one scrambles to see the pants as a relevant extension of the person and, thus, seeks a reading in which, say, the person is so very annoyed, she starts shedding clothing (perhaps because she is shaking so hard?). The metaphorical reading itself predisposes one toward a degree interpretation. One can certainly find resultatives under a literal interpretation with objects that are fake, as in 39a, and even with objects that are fake reflexives, as in 39b.

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However, the very creativity of using fake objects and fake reflexives pulls one to the margins of what the grammar will allow, forcing speakers to interpret language creatively. This is now the realm of the nonliteral, and that gives one license to associate other readings with a given construction.

6.1. Work-Related Verbs

There are many work-related verbs, and there are several secondary predicates that appear with them in degree resultatives. Consider first occurrences of work itself, as in work one’s fingers to the bone or work one’s tail off. While both mean working hard, the former mainly concerns labor involving the hands, such as cleaning, scrubbing, typing, knitting, sewing. A quarterback training hard may be said to be working his tail off, but not to be working his fingers to the bone. This observation is reflected in the set of verbs associated with one’s fingers to the bone and one’s tail off (we restrict ourselves to clear degree resultatives, and ignore ones that might be more (nearly) literal in drastic situations, such as I’ll cut your tail off if I ever see you near my daughter again). Note that for both these secondary predicates, work is the most frequent verb on the list of collocates given in table 3. In fact, the two sets are very similar, with one exception: freeze is also relatively common with one’s tail off, but not with one’s fingers to the bone. We come back to the verb freeze in the next subsection.

Table 3.

Verbs collocating with tail off, fingers to the bone, and vingers blauw.

The resultative play {his/her} fingers to the bone can describe playing guitar or some other instrument in which the fingers are the only crucial articulator (for example, guitar or piano rather than bassoon or trumpet) but not, for example, team sports, as in #The Sixers played their fingers to the bone, or frolicking children, as in #We let the kids at our daycare play their fingers to the bone. That is, while a degree resultative using one’s fingers to the bone clearly relies on metaphor, the literal meaning of the secondary predicate still lingers.

Note that the senses of play that do not combine with one’s fingers to the bone are perfectly acceptable with other types of resultative predicates, as in The Sixers were playing their tails off or The kids at the daycare were playing their hearts out. These data show that degree resultatives are sensitive to polysemy. Still other uses of play are illustrated in 43.

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Dutch has an idiom involving fingers, zijn vingers blauw ‘one’s fingers blue’, which may be used for intensifying purposes. Like its English counterpart, it is used with verbs involving hand actions, albeit a different set of verbs. In particular, verbs of writing and counting (typically counting money, involving manipulation of coins or bills) are involved (we leave out a lot of verbs that appear less frequently with vingers blauw). The examples with werken ‘work’ are less common, and they sound less idiomatic to our ears. All but one of the 10 examples are from serialized novels or news articles translated from English. We suspect that the originals had the idiom fingers to the bone, for which vingers blauw is the best Dutch approximation. In table 3 and the following tables, # indicates number of instances found in the data.

In general, work frequently shows up in degree resultatives, and not just with the two English secondary predicates examined in table 3. In our English corpora, it ranks as the third most frequent verb, behind beat and scare. In our Dutch corpora, werken ‘work’ comes fifth.

What is striking about the two English secondary predicates in table 3 is their strong connection to the most basic sense of work (‘expend effort’). Other secondary predicates exhibit a weaker connection to that basic sense. Consider, for example, our data for one’s ass off. Table 4 shows that not only are there more verbs that collocate with this secondary predicate, but the semantic range of those verbs is greater as well, including laugh and related verbs, such as smile and grin; verbs such as lie and perjure, and a few verbs that typically take an object, such as bore or sue. The more taboo secondary predicate (with ass) is more productive than the less taboo one (with tail) in degree resultatives, which is expected given the prevalence of taboo terms in degree resultatives in general. In a few cases, the verb is transitive and the possessive pronoun is not coreferential with the subject (as in He will sue your ass off).

Table 4.

English verbs collocating with one’s ass off.

In Dutch, the predicates that most often collocate with werken ‘work’ are uit de naad ‘out of the stitch’ and het schompes (see our comments below 31 regarding this item, which has no apparent independent meaning), as shown in table 5. Other verbs typically denote work-related activities (or sports, which may be either a hobby or a job).

Table 5.

Dutch verbs collocating with uit de naad and zich het schompes.

Perhaps the prominence of lopen ‘walk’ and rennen ‘run’ on this list might seem odd, but only until one examines the context. A typical example is given in 44.

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It turns out that the verbs lopen ‘walk’ and rennen ‘run’ in such examples either denote sport-related running or are used in the sense of work, not locomotion.

6.2. Freeze One’s Extremities Off

A statement such as I am freezing is ambiguous between a reading where a person is in the process of turning into ice and a more common reading where the person feels exceedingly cold. The latter reading presumably originally derived from the former as a hyperbole. Nowadays, it is no longer felt to be a hyperbole, hence the need to reinforce it with a degree resultative construction, usually involving body extremities, as shown in table 6 below. This need for an added degree resultative construction may be strengthened somewhat by the fact that ordinary boosters for freeze seem to be in use only for the literal ‘turning into ice’ reading of the verb. Consider the examples in 45.

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In table 6, we list the nouns in our corpora that fill the X position in freeze one’s X off in degree resultatives only. The nouns listed were found in COHA, but the Internet is replete with examples that involve references to just about any bodily extremity in combination with to freeze off.

Table 6.

Nouns that fill the X position in freeze one’s X off.

The fact that degree resultatives with freeze involve extremities follows from the fact that these may, in fact, literally freeze off occasionally (from frostbite). However, the body parts that most easily freeze, such as ears, toes, or corneas, are not the most popular in the hyperbolic use. Rather, there is a clear preference for taboo terms and mock taboo terms (euphemisms) for more polite conversation (assets, extremities), which are more generally used for intensification (see Napoli & Hoeksema Reference Napoli and Jack2009), and hence less likely to be misunderstood in the more literal sense of limbs freezing off. Indeed, the body parts extend to cases where actual freezing off is less likely, such as freezing one’s ass off.

The Dutch cognate of English freeze is vriezen. The literal ‘turn into ice’ interpretation may be intensified by a resultative CP; thus, it is not among the types found in table 2 (which are limited to secondary predicates).

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In other words, ‘it freezes so hard that it produces cracks’ (or creaky noises). Unlike English freeze, vriezen cannot be used to describe animate beings that are extremely cold, which may well be why the Dutch verb does not occur in degree resultatives. ^{Footnote 19} In contrast, the cognate verb frieren in German is much more like English freeze; it can be used with animate subjects to indicate extreme cold, and, accordingly, degree resultatives occur commonly with this verb, particularly taboo-related ones, as shown in 47.^{Footnote 20}

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With regard to English, then, we note that just as in the case of fingers to the bone combined with work-related and other verbs (see subsection 6.1), the choice of secondary predicates occurring with freeze in degree resultatives is neither completely arbitrary (otherwise one might also expect #I am freezing my heart out or #I am freezing my lips off), nor is it completely motivated by probability in real life.

6.3. Head-Related Activities

A common predicate in degree resultatives is one’s head off, which occurs with a range of verbs (though not freeze), as seen in table 7. Again, we focus on degree readings only, so the many cases of chopping, tearing, blowing, cutting, lopping, knocking, or ripping someone’s head off in our corpora are not included.^{Footnote 21}

Table 7.

Verbs collocating with one’s head off.

The verbs in table 7, diverse though they are, mostly represent actions that involve the use of one’s head, such as yelling, talking, crying, singing, and smoking. Only a few do not fit this pattern, such as work and paint. It is possible that for some speakers, working one’s head off is a more socially acceptable alternative to the more common working one’s ass off. This is certainly what the following exchange from the online Corpus of American Soap Operas dialogues suggests:^{Footnote 22}

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There are also a few cases of psych verbs in table 7: puzzle, worry, wonder. These are atypical—occurring only once each. Thus, although they denote a mental activity, and could hence be seen as an activity that involves the use of one’s head, they take a backseat to activities that can be detected from the outside, such as laughing, screaming or talking.

It is not common in linguistics to assign verbs that denote head-related activities to a separate category, like psych verbs or verbs of motion. Yet we are not surprised to find it helpful in circumscribing the set in table 7 rather well. As we noted in the case of fingers to the bone and freeze one’s extremities off, the literal sense of verbs and the literal sense of the predicates they collocate with can affect the appropriateness of the collocation in idiomatic degree resultatives. Indeed, sometimes, the fact that degree resultatives are related to ordinary (literal) resultatives may lead to puns, such as the following, where they refers to the Islamic State.

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Dutch does not have degree resultative idioms comparable to one’s head off. In general, talking about severed heads is less common in the Dutch corpora, including the more literal cases comparable to English I’m gonna blow your head off, although these are grammatical when actual decapitation is described. Consider the examples in 50 (and compare them to example 51 in the next section).

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The examination of degree resultatives, then, makes one note a class of verbs that otherwise might have never been referred to in describing the syntax of English.

6.4. The {Clothing/Body Part} Off NP

In table 1, we distinguished English type 6a from English type 6b. The former involves clothing (the socks off NP); the latter, body parts (the ears off NP). There is a marked difference between the verbs that appear in these two subtypes. In our corpora, psych verbs that typically place their experiencer argument in direct object position (annoy, bore, charm, frighten, scare, shock, terrify, wow, the group referred to as “amuse” verbs in Levin Reference Levin1993) are common in degree resultatives only with the clothing expressions, as in 51 (=21).^{Footnote 23}

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That is, this type of psych verb was most common in English type 6a constructions, as seen in table 8.

Table 8.

NPs denoting body parts and clothing in English type 6; psych verbs versus all others.

Why can we bore, shock or charm the pants or socks off people but not the ears or head off them? Certainly, there are multiple other ways to intensify such verbs: annoy the hell out of someone, annoy someone to death. We do not know why subtype 6a is so rare with psych verbs. What we do find interesting—and worth noting—is that the group of psych verbs with experiencer objects acts as a unified group in preferring subtype 6b over 6a, to the extent that they appear at all in one of the type 6 constructions.

6.5. Thinking Long and Hard

By and large, the set of verbs involved in Dutch degree resultatives is similar to the set employed in English. However, verbs of thinking represent a major difference between the two languages. While these verbs occur in degree resultatives only rarely in our English corpora, they are robustly attested in Dutch degree resultatives of type 1, mostly with the secondary predicate suf ‘drowsy, stupid’. Examples are given in 52.

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The Dutch predicate suf is sufficiently frequent in our material to lend itself to a diachronic study. While the earliest occurrences are all collocated with verbs of thinking—which makes sense, given its meaning ‘drowsy’—we have observed a gradual extension of this secondary predicate to other categories of verbs. First, suf is found with verbs such as zoeken ‘seek’ or studeren ‘study’, which likewise are associated with mental activity. Then, in the course of the 20th century, it extended further to a wide range of other verbs such as werken ‘work’, kankeren ‘complain’ or lachen ‘laugh’. Table 9 summarizes our corpus data for this predicate.

Table 9.

Dutch type 1 degree resultatives with the secondary predicate suf.

The first occurrences of suf as a secondary predicate are ambiguous between a degree reading and a literal result reading, the two being hard to distinguish for verbs of thinking. Verbs of thinking form a “critical context” in the sense of Diewald (Reference Diewald, Ilse and Gabriele2002): a context compatible with a regular interpretation as well as a new grammaticalized interpretation. The increase in frequency in the second half of the 19th century suggests that the degree reading of suf takes hold in that period. Its eventual spread to other types of verbs (that do not denote mental activity) signals that the degree interpretation has become dominant, and that the original nonintensifier resultative meaning no longer prevents suf from combining with verbs not normally associated with drowsiness, such as laugh or complain.

The paucity of examples in English and Dutch of regular, nondegree resultatives with the verb think is probably a pragmatic matter, having to do with the fact that thinking about something does not usually affect the state that something is in. Still, a few such regular resultatives are attested. For instance, 53 is adapted from an internet posting.

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Another example of a resultative with think is the title of the book by the Dutch comedian Toon Hermans, Ik denk me blij ‘I think myself happy’, with positive, uplifting poetry. In 54, we offer an example of our own, with a different verb of thinking, mijmeren ‘muse, ponder’.

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In English, the use of resultatives with verbs of thinking is rare as well, but still possible, as shown in 55.

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Thus, the use of degree resultatives with verbs of thinking is not entirely unexpected, in Dutch and in English. Degree resultatives with verbs of thinking in English are illustrated in 56 below (56a is from Corpus of American Soap Operas).^{Footnote 27}

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In conclusion, verbs of thinking can occur in resultatives. They are more common in degree resultatives than in regular resultatives, due to language-external reasons, in particular, the fact that thinking rarely causes a change of state in the object of the thought.