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English very, French très, and Spanish muy. A Structural Comparison and Its Significance for Bilingual Lexicography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Norman P. Sacks
Norman P. Sacks*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Abstract

The traditional treatment of the adverb has posed problems of classification in the three languages under consideration. English very has traditionally been classified as an adverb, and the efforts of structural linguists to reclassify it as an intensifier may be extended to French très and Spanish muy as well. However, the three intensifiers do not pattern in the same way, for very patterns with adjectives and adverbs, but not with verbs or nouns; très and muy pattern with adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and with the past participle of verbs. The patterning of très and muy with nouns raises the question of the basis for differentiating adjectives from nouns. While the distinction between these two form classes in English is sometimes arbitrary, the line separating them is even less clear-cut in French and Spanish, languages in which nominalization is more widespread than in English. The unsatisfactory treatment of the three intensifiers in bilingual dictionaries of the French- English and Spanish-English type is due to the failure of lexicographers to link illustrative phrases and sentences to relevant structural features of the languages concerned, a practice all too common in dictionaries not compiled in accordance with scientific principles of lexicography.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 86 , Issue 2 , March 1971 , pp. 190 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1971

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References

Note 1 in page 199 H. A. Gleason, Jr., Linguistics and English Grammar (New York: Holt, 1965), p. 129.

Note 2 in page 199 Manuel Criado de Val, Fisonomia del idioma espanol (Madrid: Aguilar, 1954), p. 148.

Note 3 in page 199 The Greek grammarian, Dionysius Thrax, defined the adverb as a part of speech without case inflection, further specifying the verb, and the Latin grammarian, Priscian, called the adverb an indeclinable part of speech by which meaning is added to the verb. See R. H. Robins, Ancient and Medixml Grammatical Theory in Europe (London : Bell, 1951), pp. 40, 66.

Note 4 in page 199 Antonio de Nebrija, Gramatica de la lengua castellana, ed. Pascual Galindo Romeo and Luis Ortiz Munoz (Madrid: Junta del Centenario, 1946), pp. 84–85.

Note 5 in page 199 Maurice Grevisse, Le Bon Usage: Cours de grammaire française et de langage français, 5th ed. (Paris: Geuthner, 1953), p. 680. Grevisse says also that the adverb is equivalent to a “complément de circonstance,” which recalls the German term for “adverb,” namely, Umstandswort (“circumstance word”).

Note 6 in page 199 Federico Hanssen, Gramatica historien de la lengua castellana (Halle A. S.: Niemeyer, 1913), p. 267.

Note 7 in page 199 Otto Jespersen, A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Pt. ii (Syntax), i (Heidelberg: C. Winters, 1914), 367.

Note 8 in page 199 George O. Curme, Syntax (Vol. m of A Grammar of the English Language, Boston: Heath, 1931), pp. 150, 507; Parts of Speech and Accidence (Vol. II of A Grammar of the English Language, Boston: Heath, 1935), pp. 48, 81; and Principles and Practice of English Grammar (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1947), pp. 20, 26, 146, 223.

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Note 12 in page 199 The Philosophy of Grammar, p. 342.

Note 13 in page 199 William Ward, Grammar of the English Language (New York: A. Ward, 1767), p. 246. For the influence of Ward's grammar in fixing the rules found in modern traditional textbooks of English grammar, see Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957), p. 337.

Note 14 in page 200 Charles Fries, American English Grammar (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1940), pp. 200–05.

Note 15 in page 200 Fries, The Structure of English (New York : Harcourt, 1952), pp. 92–93.

Note 16 in page 200 Paul Roberts, Patterns of English (New York: Harcourt, 1956), pp. 48–55.

Note 17 in page 200 Roberts, Understanding English (New York: Harper, 1958), pp. 166, 200–02.

Note 18 in page 200 Roberts, English Syntax: A Programed Introduction to Transformational Grammar, alternate ed. (New York: Harcourt, 1964), pp. 241–42.

Note 19 in page 200 W. Nelson Francis, The Structure of American English (New York: Ronald Press, 1958), pp. 278–80.

Note 20 in page 200 James Sledd, A Short Introduction to English Grammar (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1959), pp. 109–11.

Note 21 in page 200 Lessons 7 and 11.

Note 22 in page 200 Linguistics and English Grammar, pp. 130–31. Ad-verbials of place as noun modifiers may be derived by a deletion transformation applied to a relative clause. Thus, the man downstairs may be derived from the man who is downstairs. See Roberts, English Syntax, Lesson 26.

Note 23 in page 200 Examples of the Classical Latin use of multum as an intensifier are vir multum bonus in Cicero and janua mul-tum facilis in Horace. Edouard Bourciez (Eléments de linguistique romane, 4th éd., Paris: Klincksieck, 1946, p. 103) considers multum in these examples to be an adverb used to express the superlative “analytiquement”; and W. D. Elcock (The Romance Languages, New York: Macmillan, 1960, p. 71) finds multum here to be an adverb used to convey the absolute superlative.

Note 24 in page 200 The Romance Languages, p. 71.

Note 25 in page 200 Eléments de linguistique romane, p. 695.

Note 26 in page 200 Walter von Wartburg and Paul Zumthor, Précis de syntaxe du français contemporain, 2nd ed. (Berne: Francke, 1958), pp. 276, 278, 353–54.

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Note 29 in page 200 George and Robert Le Bidois, Syntaxe du français moderne, 2nd éd., H (Paris: A. Picard, 1967), 596–97.

Note 30 in page 200 C. de Boer, Syntaxe du français moderne, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden, 1954), pp. 194–95.

Note 31 in page 200 Georges Gougenheim, Système grammatical de la langue française (Paris: D'Artrey, 1939), pp. 246–47.

Note 32 in page 200 Le Bon Usage, pp. 278, 712–13.

Note 33 in page 200 These glosses were in a Navarro-Aragonese dialect.

Note 34 in page 200 Joan Corominas, Diccionario cr'itico etimologico de la lengua castellana, m (Berne: Francke, 1954), s.v. mucho. Menéndez Pidal finds the boundaries between the “adjetivo adverbial” and the “adverbio” to be confused. He calls attention to the adverbial use of the adjective mucho in muchos son alegres, to the alternation of mucho with muy in Berceo, the Alexandre, the Apolonio, in Juan Ruiz, and in the Yuçuf. In Old Castile, one finds today “es mucho buena, mucho grande” even among educated people. Muy, not mucho, is preferred with an adjective preceding the noun headword (e.g., sauana de rançal e muy blanca, and e muy grandes mesnadas), but mucho, not muy, is used when the “adverb” is separated from the word it modifies. Mucho is preferred as the modifier of a verb, and muy as the modifier of an adverb. See Ramon Menéndez Pidal's edition of the Cantar de Mio Cid, 3rd ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1954), i, 196, 238, 292, 315. For a summary of the use of muy and mucho in Old Spanish, see also Hanssen's Gra-mâtica historica, pp. 268–69.

Note 35 in page 200 Hayward Keniston, The Syntax of Castilian Prose: The Sixteenth Century (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1937), pp. 327, 588–91.

Note 36 in page 200 Rufino José Cuervo, Apuntaciones criticas sobre el lenguaje bogotano (Bogota: Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 1955), p. 263.

Note 37 in page 200 Keniston, Spanish Syntax List: A Statistical Study of Grammatical Usage in Contemporary Spanish Prose on the Basis of Range and Frequency (New York: Holt, 1937), p. 252.

Note 38 in page 200 Gramutica historica de la lengua castellana, p. 267. In Blasco Ibânez' Cahas y barro we find “Es el hombre mâs hombre de toda la Albufera.”

Note 39 in page 200 Marathon Montrose Ramsey, A Textbook of Modern Spanish, rev. by Robert K. Spaulding (New York: Holt, 1956), p. 172.

Note 40 in page 200 In the Gramutica de la lengua castellana by Andres Bello and Rufino José Cuervo (Paris: Roger et Cher-noviz, 1905), the use of muy “Corrientemente” with mejor in speaking of health, as in La enferma esta muy mejor, is attested (p. 271).

Note 41 in page 200 Emilio M. Martinez Amador, Diccionario gramaticat (Barcelona: Sopena, 1954), pp. 889–90.

Note 42 in page 200 Charles E. Kany, American-Spanish Syntax, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951), pp. 312–13.

Note 43 in page 200 A Textbook of Modern Spanish, pp. 171–72.

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Note 45 in page 200 Antonio de Nebrija, Gramutica de la lengua castellana, p. 85.

Note 46 in page 200 Grammar of the English Language, pp. 19, 28, 195, 198, 206.

Note 47 in page 200 English Syntax, pp. 41–42.

Note 48 in page 200 Le Bon Usage, p. 712.

Note 49 in page 200 Syntaxe du français moderne, p. 194.

Note 50 in page 200 Grammaire historique de la langue française, VI, 9.

Note 51 in page 200 Précis de syntaxe du français contemporain, pp. 353–54.

Note 52 in page 200 Syntaxe du français moderne, II, 596.

Note 53 in page 200 Système grammatical de la langue française, p. 246.

Note 54 in page 200 Précis de syntaxe du français contemporain, p. 259.

Note 55 in page 200 Le Bon Usage, pp. 76–77.

Note 56 in page 200 Stephen Ullmann, Style in the French Novel (Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 18, 121–30.

Note 57 in page 200 Gramutica de la lengua castellana, p. 15.

Note 58 in page 200 Rodolfo Lenz, La oracion y sus partes, 4th ed. (Santiago de Chile: Nascimento, 1944), p. 209.

Note 59 in page 200 Spanish Syntax List, p. 43.

Note 60 in page 200 Manuel Criado de Val, Fisonomia del idioma espanol, pp. 22, 38.

Note 61 in page 200 Pp. 67–68, 1368–73.

Note 62 in page 200 Samuel Gili y Gaya, Curso superior de sintaxis espanola, 9th ed. (Barcelona: Spes, 1964), pp. 223–24.

Note 63 in page 201 Werner Beinhauer, El espanol coloquial (Madrid: Gredos, 1963), p. 118. This is a Spanish translation of the German original titled Spanische Umgangssprache, the second edition of which was published in Bonn, 1958, by Dummlers.

Note 64 in page 201 The MLA project Modern Spanish, 2nd ed. (New York: Harcourt, 1966), contains the following paragraph references to nominalization: §§59, 61, 79, 86, 94, 104.

Note 65 in page 201 W. Nelson Francis, The Structure of American English, pp. 237–42, 280.

Note 66 in page 201 Robert L. Politzer, Teaching French: An Introduction to Applied Linguistics, 2nd ed. (New York: Blaisdell, 1965), p. 105; Robert L. Politzer and Charles N. Staubach, Teaching Spanish: A Linguistic Orientation, rev. ed. (New York: Blaisdell, 1965), p. 107. On the “adverbialization” of adjectives, exemplified by phrases and sentences such as viven felices, see Gili y Gaya's Curso superior de sintaxis espanola, pp. 222–23, and Keniston's Spanish Syntax List, p. 138. For a possible transformational analysis of the Diven felices type, see Robert P. Stockwell, J. Donald Bowen, and John W. Martin, The Grammatical Structures of English and Spanish (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 201.

Note 67 in page 201 Archibald A. Hill, Introduction to Linguistic Structures (New York: Harcourt, 1958), pp. 167–68.