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  • Chapter 4 - The Evaluative Of-binominals

  • from Part I - Categorization
  • Elnora ten Wolde, Universität Graz, Austria
  • Book:
    The English Binominal Noun Phrase
    Published online:
    29 June 2023
    Print publication:
    13 July 2023, pp 63-95

  • Summary

    The classification criteria in Chapter 2 are now applied to the final three evaluative of-binominals. The evaluative binominal noun phrase (an egg of a head) is an of-binominal construction in which the first noun ascribes a property to the second. The second noun is head, and the construction exhibits a number of noncanonical syntactic features, e.g. the first determiner has scope over the whole construction, a restricted second determiner, and irregular premodification patterns. The evaluative modifier (a whale of a time) is a new of-binominal that I propose. In the evaluative modifier, the first noun has completely decategorizated and functions as a part of the [N1 of a] chunk that denotes speaker evaluation of the referent denoted by the second noun. Furthermore, I argue that this construction needs to be distinguished from the EBNP. Finally, in the binominal intensifier (a beast of a good read), [N1 of a] functions as an intensifier or booster, modifying the gradable adjectives that follow. This study demonstrates that this final construction is much more prolific than previous research has shown.