The English noun phrase: gradience and change

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Anette Rosenbach
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: from 2003 to 2008
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5413224

The present project approaches the question of gradience and change in the English noun phrase (NP), focussing on gradience between Determination and Modifikation. What is traditionally referred to as determination and modification will be viewed here as the prototypical clustering of certain semantic features (e.g. referentiality, restrictiveness) which typically map to certain formal properties (e.g. adjacency to head, co-occurence with articles). Accordingly, gradient constructions are defines here as diverging from the prototype, sharing both properties of determination and modification. Moreover, it will be investigated in how far the existence of gradient constructions can give rise to gradience in use, in that (i) the language provides two constructions to convey the same meaning, or (ii) one construction can be interpreted in two ways. For example. referential anchoring (associated with determination) is typically expressed by a s-genitive (the Steiners' house) but can also be conveyed by a noun + noun (N+N) construction (the Steiner house). The empirical analysis will focus on s-genitives (John's book, women's magazines) and N+N constructions (stone wall, Oxford shirts) and will comprise the following steps: 1. Adequate features will be extrapolated to capture determination and modification which are synchronically, diachronically, and typologically plausible. 2. The historical development of s-genitives and N+N constructions will be investigated in a corpus analysis. 3. Gradience in use will be tested in a series of psycholinguistic studies. The empirical analysis should cast light on the question in how far different constructions can affect each other in their historical development, due to semantic and constructional overlaps between them. The ultimate goal of this project is (1) to deepen our insights into the structure and the development of the English NP, which is still little understood, and (2) to propose a psycholinguistic account of gradience and change.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants