English Adjectives of Comparison: Lexical and Grammaticalized Uses

408 Pages·2010·3.67 MB·English

by  Tine Breban

English Adjectives of Comparison
Topics in English Linguistics
63
Editors
Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Bernd Kortmann
De Gruyter Mouton
English Adjectives
of Comparison
Lexical and Grammaticalized Uses
by
Tine Breban
De Gruyter Mouton
ISBN 978-3-11-020580-0
e-ISBN 978-3-11-021601-1
ISSN 1434-3452
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Breban,Tine,1980(cid:2)
English adjectives of comparison : lexical and grammaticalized
uses/byTineBreban.
p.cm.(cid:2)(TopicsinEnglishlinguistics;63)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-3-11-020580-0(alk.paper)
1.Englishlanguage(cid:2)Adjective. 2.Englishlanguage(cid:2)Gram-
mar. 3.Grammar,Comparativeandgeneral. I.Title.
PE1241.B74 2010
425(cid:2)dc22
2010002364
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Acknowledgements
IoweagreatdebtofgratitudetoKristinDavidse,whoactedassupervisor
of my doctoral research. She has always generously shared her time, in-
sights and her friendship. During the revision stages, this book has greatly
benefitedfromthecarefulreadingandexpertcommentsofDavidDenison
andElizabethTraugott.Manyoftheideasinthisbookhavebeeninspired
and shaped by the comments and suggestions of editors, anonymous
referees and conference participants who have read/heard earlier papers
onadjectivesofcomparison,inparticularSylviaAdamson,CostasCanakis,
Bert Cornillie, Walter De Mulder, Roberta Facchinetti, Teresa Fanego,
Olga Fischer, Elke Gehweiler, Victorina Gonzalez-Diaz, Go¨ran Kjelmer,
Ekkehard Ko¨nig, Peter Lauwers, Peter Matthews, Carita Paradis, John
Payne, Lotte Sommerer and Freek Van de Velde. I thank all my collea-
gues of the Functional Linguistics Leuven research unit, An La¤ut, An
Van linden, Christopher Shank, Ditte Kimps, Ellen Aspeslagh, Hendrik
De Smet, Hubert Cuyckens, Isolde Vande Walle, Jean-Christophe Ver-
straete, Kristin Davidse, Liesbet Heyvaert, Lieselotte Brems, Lieven
Vandelanotte,LobkeGhesquie`re,NeleOlivier,PeterPetre´,PeterWillemse,
Sigi Vandewinkel and Tinne Van Rompaey. It is an honour and a pleasure
being part of the team! I am especially grateful to Hendrik and Lieven
for all their practical help in technical matters of many kinds. A special
wordofthanksisduetoHubertCuyckens,whosemastercourseongram-
maticalization provided the spark that resulted in this book. Finally, I am
grateful to Birgit Sievert and Wolfgang Konwitschny from Mouton de
Gruyter for their practical assistance.
My sincere thanks go to the Research Foundation-Flanders and the
Research Council of K.U.Leuven, which provided the necessary financial
and logistic support to execute my research and to write this book. My
doctoral research was carried out as part of the projects FWO G.0218.01,
OT/04/12 and OT/00/05. The postdoctoral research scholarships granted
by the Research Council of K.U.Leuven (January to September 2007)
and the Research Foundation-Flanders (October 2007 to September 2010)
o¤ered me the luxury of time to revise and complete this book.
Finally, I could not have written this book without the unfailing and
boundlesssupport and love of myfamily, myparentsGuyandAnnemarie,
my brother Bertjan, my aunt Gudula, and my Kessel-Lo family Leen and
Tom.

Table of contents
Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Part I. Theoretical argumentation for the grammaticalization and
subjectification hypothesis of English adjectives of
comparison in the English NP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. Constructing a dynamic functional combinatory model of the
English NP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.1. The elements of the English NP and the combinatorics
between them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.1.1. HuddlestonandPullum(2002):TheCambridgeGrammarof
the English Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.1.2. Halliday’s (1994 [1985]): An Introduction to Functional
Grammar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.1.3. Bache (2000): Essentials of Mastering English . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.1.4. Langacker (1991): Foundations of Cognitive Grammar . . . . 18
1.1.5. McGregor (1997): Semiotic Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.1.6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.2. A dynamic functional model of the NP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.2.1. The starting point: Bache’s (2000) model of zones and
subzones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.2.2. The categorization zone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.2.3. The determination zone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
1.2.4. The modification zone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
1.2.5. Extending the dynamic functional model to the NP as a
whole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
1.3. Combinatory relations in the dynamic functional model of
the NP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
1.3.1. Classifiers andrecursive hypotactic dependency relations. . . 36
1.3.2. Attributes and independent hypotactic dependency
relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
1.3.3. Determiners and scoping relations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
1.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2. Grammaticalization and subjectification inthe English NP . . 40
2.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
viii Tableofcontents
2.2. Subjectification in the Traugottian sense. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.2.1. Traugott’s concept of subjectification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.2.2. The development of strengthening elements in the
English NP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.2.3. Adamson’s (2000) hypothesis: subjectification and leftward
movement in the English NP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.3. Subjectification in the Langackerian sense. . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.3.1. Langacker’s concept of subjectification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.3.2. The development of determining or grounding elements in
the English NP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
2.3.3. The development of grounding elements and leftward
movement in the English NP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.4. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3. English adjectives of general comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.2. Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) analysis of English adjectives
of general comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.3. Problems encountered by Halliday and Hasan’s (1976)
analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.3.1. Classifier andquantifier uses ofadjectivesofcomparison . . 60
3.3.2. The one-to-one association of attribute use and internal
comparison versus postdeterminer use and referential
comparison. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.4. Further analysis of the referential meaning: including the
classifier use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.5. HallidayandHasan’s(1976)positionalrecognitioncriterion
for attribute and postdeterminer uses of adjectives of
comparison. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3.6. Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4. The grammaticalization hypothesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.2. General semantic characterization of the hypothesized
grammaticalization process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.3. Formal evidence for the grammaticalization hypothesis. . . 84
4.3.1. Coalescence of another and the same. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.3.2. Paradigmaticization of several. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.3.3. Decategorialization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.3.4. Attribute and postdeterminer uses: a shift in syntagmatic
relation?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Tableofcontents ix
4.3.5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4.4. Semantic evidence for the grammaticalization hypothesis. . 99
4.4.1. Grammaticalization and delexicalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.4.2. Loss of semantic autonomy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.4.3. Generalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.4.4. A possible reconstruction of the grammaticalization
process from fully lexical attribute to grammaticalized
postdeterminer, classifier and quantifier uses . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5. The role of subjectivity and subjectification in the gramma-
ticalization of prenominal adjectives of comparison . . . . . . . 111
5.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.2. Traugottian subjectivity and subjectification . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.2.1. Traugott’s definition of subjectivity and subjectification. . . 112
5.2.2. Textual subjectivity and intersubjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.2.3. Textual (inter)subjectification in the proposed
grammaticalization of adjectives of comparison. . . . . . . . . 117
5.3. Langackerian subjectivity and subjectification . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.3.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.3.2. Grounding, grounding predications, and Langackerian
subjectivity and subjectification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.3.3. The role of subjectivity and subjectification in the
development of grounding predications in the NP . . . . . . . 123
5.3.4. Langackerian subjectification in the proposed
grammaticalization of adjectives of comparison. . . . . . . . . 132
5.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Part II. Synchronic corpus study. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
6. Adjectives of di¤erence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
6.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
6.2. Description of the data base and method of analysis . . . . . 149
6.3. Lexical uses of di¤erent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.3.1. General characterization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.3.2. External versus internal construal of the unlikeness
relation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
6.3.3. Bridging examples of di¤erent and the shift from lexical
attribute to grammatical postdeterminer meaning . . . . . . . 156
6.4. Postdeterminer uses of other and di¤erent . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158