Premodifiers in English: Their Structure And Significance (Studies in English Language) - Softcover

Feist, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 110765484X ISBN 13: 9781107654846

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2014

Synopsis

The order and behaviour of the premodifier (an adjective, or other modifying word that appears before a noun) has long been a puzzle to syntacticians and semanticists. Why can we say 'the actual red ball', but not 'the red actual ball'? And why, conversely, do some other premodifiers have free variation in sentences; for example we can say both 'German and English speakers' and 'English and German speakers'? Why do some premodifiers change the meaning of a phrase in some contexts; for example 'young man', can mean 'boyfriend', rather than 'man who is young'? Drawing on a corpus of over 4,000 examples of English premodifiers from a range of genres such as advertising, fiction and scientific texts, and across several varieties of English, this book synthesises research into premodifiers and provides a new explanation of their behaviour, order and use.

About this title

About the Author

Jim Feist is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 110765484X
• ISBN 13: 9781107654846
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 290