Chapter published in:
Category Change from a Constructional PerspectiveEdited by Kristel Van Goethem, Muriel Norde, Evie Coussé and Gudrun Vanderbauwhede
[Constructional Approaches to Language 20] 2018
► pp. 119–148
Why would anyone take long?
Word classes and Construction Grammar in the history of long
David Denison | University of Manchester
I review the word classes proposed for long in such idiosyncratic English usages as I won’t be/take long, all night long. Although adverb fits most of the contentious data best, sometimes the word class is underdetermined. I suggest that long exhibits adjective ~ adverb underspecification from Old and Middle English onwards and can also be a semi-grammatical, decategorialised word. We need not assume that every word in every grammatical sentence must belong to one and only one word class (Denison, 2013). At the phrasal level the distribution is less anomalous and correlates with semantic and pragmatic features. Accordingly, it is sensible to describe the history of such usages in Construction Grammar terms. Recent Danish developments make an intriguing comparison.
Keywords: category, word class, vagueness, underdetermination, Construction Grammar, Danish
Published online: 22 March 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.20.05den
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.20.05den
References
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ECCO Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Available online at http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/.
EEBO Early English Books Online. Available online at http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home.
KorpusDK http://ordnet.dk/korpusdk/
PPCMBE=Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini, & Ariel Diertani (2010) Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English. Available online at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCMBE-RELEASE-1/index.html.
PPCME2=Kroch, Anthony, & Ann Taylor (2000) Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (2nd edition). Available online at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCME2-RELEASE-3/index.html
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