Book contents
- Word Grammar, Cognition and Dependency
- Word Grammar, Cognition and Dependency
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Word Grammar in Its Intellectual Contexts
- 2 Raising in Phonology
- 3 Grammar Change in the Network
- 4 Word Formation Change in Word Grammar
- 5 The Metaphorical Bases of Constituency and Dependency
- 6 From Social Psychology to Cognitive Sociolinguistics
- 7 Hudson on Heads
- 8 Ordinary French Houses
- 9 Dependency Grammar and Subordination
- 10 Verb Phrases as Attributive Nominal Modifiers
- 11 Testing the Predictions of Word Grammar, the Minimalist Programme and the Matrix Language Frame Model for German/English Mixed Determiner–Noun Constructions
- 12 Factors Influencing Dependency Distance
- Index
- References
10 - Verb Phrases as Attributive Nominal Modifiers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2024
By
Book contents
- Word Grammar, Cognition and Dependency
- Word Grammar, Cognition and Dependency
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Word Grammar in Its Intellectual Contexts
- 2 Raising in Phonology
- 3 Grammar Change in the Network
- 4 Word Formation Change in Word Grammar
- 5 The Metaphorical Bases of Constituency and Dependency
- 6 From Social Psychology to Cognitive Sociolinguistics
- 7 Hudson on Heads
- 8 Ordinary French Houses
- 9 Dependency Grammar and Subordination
- 10 Verb Phrases as Attributive Nominal Modifiers
- 11 Testing the Predictions of Word Grammar, the Minimalist Programme and the Matrix Language Frame Model for German/English Mixed Determiner–Noun Constructions
- 12 Factors Influencing Dependency Distance
- Index
- References
Summary
English allows participial forms of verbs to modify nouns, as in the following example: The Rapids in 1834 was a straggling village whose 44 residents clustered mainly along the river on the east side of a single dirt path – the future Front Street. (iWeb Corpus) In this paper, I will address the question of whether attributive V-ing premodifiers in noun phrases are adjectives or verbs. I discuss the evidence for treating (some of) these formatives as adjectives, e.g. deverbal adjectives such as interesting, satisfying, etc., and I will look at the evidence for regarding others, such as straggling in the example above as verbs. I will then discuss so-called ‘synthetic compounds’, such as cake-eating (bear), beer-swilling (neighbour) and wall-straggling (flower). These will be analysed as verbal constructions rather than as adjectives. The evidence will involve the semantics and combinatory properties of V-ing premodifiers in English noun phrases. I will show that V-ing premodifiers can take a full range of dependents and that, with some restrictions, combinations of dependents, e.g. a complement and an adjunct, are also possible.
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- Word Grammar, Cognition and Dependency , pp. 231 - 251Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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