The English Binomial Noun Phrase: A Cognitive-Functional Approach (Studies in English Language)

By: Elnora ten Wolde

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Synopsis: The binomial noun phrase, or of-binomial, is an important phenomenon in the English language. Deﬁned as a noun phrase that contains two related nouns, linked by the preposition of, examples include a hell of a day and a beast of a storm. This pioneering book provides the ﬁrst extensive study of the evaluative binominal noun phrases (EBNP) in English, exploring the syntactic rules that govern them, and the (functional) semantic and pragmatic links between the two nouns. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, corpus data, and two different theoretical approaches (Construction Grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar), it argues that the EBNP now functions as a stage in a grammaticalization path that begins with a prototypical N+PP construction, continues with the head-classiﬁer, and ends with two new of-binominal constructions: the evaluative modiﬁer and binominal intensiﬁer. Comprehensive in its scope, it is essential reading for researchers in syntax, semantics, and English corpus linguistics.