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From twig-skinny to Kate Moss skinny: expressing degree with common and proper nouns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2019

TURO VARTIAINEN
TURO VARTIAINEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Languages, University of Helsinki, PO Box 3, 00014, University of Helsinki, [email protected]
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Abstract

This article provides a constructional (CxG) analysis of N-ADJ compounds in which the noun receives a degree reading (e.g. bullet-straight, Kennedy-handsome). A semantic analysis based on similes and scale matching is provided, and the recent history and increased productivity of the construction are examined in light of data from both the Corpus of Historical American English and a range of present-day corpora. The article introduces new evidence of the increased functional flexibility of both common and proper nouns in English and discusses the ongoing conventionalisation of proper noun degree modifiers in both American English and other varieties of English. The results of the study suggest that the recent introduction of proper noun degree modifiers has been supported by both constructional (semantic) change and macro-trends that have affected English usage more generally.

Keywords

degree modifiersnounscompoundingproductivityConstruction Grammar
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 23 , Special Issue 4: Different perspectives on proper noun modifiers , December 2019 , pp. 901 - 927
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. I also thank Jukka Suomela and Tanja Säily for methodological discussions. All remaining errors are, of course, my own. I also acknowledge the generous funding by the Academy of Finland grant 276349 to the project ‘Reassessing language change: the challenge of real time’.

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