Chapter 9 - The EBNP Family: A Functional Discourse Grammar Analysis

Summary

The chapter begins with an introduction to the FDG theory and language model. The discussion includes some of the issues in the classification of premodifiers and compares the distinctions made in FDG with the construction-based model. The second section presents an FDG model of each of-binominal, illustrating how the model captures the differences between these constructions. By doing so, current issues in recent FDG research are addressed, such as the role of CxG like constructions in FDG, interfaces and mismatches between levels, and the distinction between operators and modifiers. One important finding is that FDG predicts the changes of premodification patterns found in Chapter 7. The historical analysis in the FDG frameworks shows that we are looking at the reduction of the internal components of the N-of-N template to a simple NP template, with a reanalyzed chunk [N of (a)], functioning first as a modifier and then as a lexical operator. Therefore, although we are structurally looking at an of-binominal, this term is actually a misnomer