Premodifiers in English : Their Structure and Significance
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| Title: | Premodifiers in English : Their Structure and Significance |
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| Description: | The order and behaviour of the premodifier (an adjective, or other modifying word that appears before a noun) has long been a puzzle to syntacticians and semanticists. Why can we say'the actual red ball', but not'the red actual ball'? And why, conversely, do some other premodifiers have free variation in sentences; for example we can say both'German and English speakers'and'English and German speakers'? Why do some premodifiers change the meaning of a phrase in some contexts; for example'young man', can mean'boyfriend', rather than'man who is young'? Drawing on a corpus of over 4,000 examples of English premodifiers from a range of genres such as advertising, fiction and scientific texts, and across several varieties of English, this book synthesises research into premodifiers and provides a new explanation of their behaviour, order and use. |
| Authors: | Jim Feist |
| Resource Type: | eBook. |
| Subjects: | English language--Adjective |
| Categories: | LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Grammar & Punctuation, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Syntax |
| Database: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
| Abstract: | The order and behaviour of the premodifier (an adjective, or other modifying word that appears before a noun) has long been a puzzle to syntacticians and semanticists. Why can we say'the actual red ball', but not'the red actual ball'? And why, conversely, do some other premodifiers have free variation in sentences; for example we can say both'German and English speakers'and'English and German speakers'? Why do some premodifiers change the meaning of a phrase in some contexts; for example'young man', can mean'boyfriend', rather than'man who is young'? Drawing on a corpus of over 4,000 examples of English premodifiers from a range of genres such as advertising, fiction and scientific texts, and across several varieties of English, this book synthesises research into premodifiers and provides a new explanation of their behaviour, order and use. |
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| ISBN: | 9781107000865 9781139161336 |
