Chapter published in:
Category Change from a Constructional Perspective
Edited 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

| 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
References

Data sources and abbreviations

BNC = The British National Corpus (Version 3) (BNC XML Edition) 2007 Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium.Google Scholar
COHA=Davies, Mark (2010– ) The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 million words, 1810–2009. Available online at http://​corpus​.byu​.edu​/coha/.
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.
OED=Oxford English Dictionary (OED Online) 2000- Oxford University Press, http://​www​.oed​.com/
PPCEME=Kroch, Anthony, Beatrice Santorini, & Lauren Delfs (2004) Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English.Google Scholar
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
SKDE=Tracy, Rosemarie, & Elsa Lattey 1999-  Sprachkontakt Deutsch-Englisch: Code-switching, Crossover & Co. DFG-funded project at Mannheim and Tübingen.Google Scholar
YCOE=Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, & Frank Beths (2003) The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose.Google Scholar

Secondary works

Boas, H. C., & Sag, I. A.
(Eds.) (2012) Sign-Based Construction Grammar. Stanford CA: CSLI Publications/Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J.
(1997) Mixed categories as head sharing constructions. Proceedings of the LFG97 Conference. Retrieved from http://​www​-lfg​.stanford​.edu​/lfg​/ms​/ms​.html
Brinton, L. J., & Traugott, E. C.
(2005) Lexicalization and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, J.
(2015) Language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, J., & Moder, C. L.
(2017) Chunking and changes in compositionality in context. In M. Hundt, S. Mollin, & S. E. Pfenninger (Eds.), The changing English language: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 148–170). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Croft, W.
(2001) Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Denison, D.
(2013) Parts of speech: Solid citizens or slippery customers? Journal of the British Academy, 1, 151–185. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2017) Ambiguity and vagueness in historical change. In M. Hundt, S. Mollin, & S. E. Pfenninger (Eds.), The changing English language: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 292–318). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. E.
(2006) Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(2013) Constructionist approaches. In T. Hoffmann, & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of construction grammar (pp. 15–31). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hengeveld, K.
(1992) Parts of speech. In M. Fortescue, P. Harder, & L. Kristofferson (Eds.), Layered structure and reference in a functional perspective (pp. 29–55). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hoffmann, T., & Trousdale, G.
(2013) Construction Grammar: Introduction. In T. Hoffmann, & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of construction grammar Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hopper, P. J., & Traugott, E. C.
(2003) Grammaticalization (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huddleston, R., & Pullum, G. K.
(2002) The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, R.
(2003) Gerunds without phrase structure. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 21, 579–615. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kay, C., Roberts, J., Samuels, M., & Wotherspoon, I.
(2015) The historical thesaurus of English. Retrieved from University of Glasgow http://​historicalthesaurus​.arts​.gla​.ac​.uk/
Malouf, R. P.
(1998) Mixed categories in the hierarchical lexicon. (Doctoral dissertation). Stanford University.Google Scholar
(2000) Mixed categories in the hierarchical lexicon. Stanford CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Mitchell, B.
(1985) Old English syntax. Oxford: Clarendon Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nunberg, G., Sag, I. A., & Wasow, T.
(1994) Idioms. Language, 70, 491–538. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J.
(1985) A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London/New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Randall, B.
(2005–2007) CorpusSearch 2: Designed by Beth Randall, Ann Taylor and Anthony Kroch. Retrieved from http://​corpussearch​.sourceforge​.net​/credits​.html
Santorini, B.
(2010) Annotation manual for the Penn Historical Corpora and the PCEEC. Release 2. Retrieved from http://​www​.ling​.upenn​.edu​/hist​-corpora​/annotation​/index​.html
Traugott, E. C., & Trousdale, G.
(2013) Constructionalization and constructional changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
van der Wurff, W.
(1990) The easy-to-please construction in Old and Middle English. In S. Adamson, V. A. Law, N. Vincent, & S. Wright (Eds.), Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics: Cambridge, 6–9 April 1987 (pp. 519–536). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vartiainen, T.
(2016) A constructionist approach to category change: Constraining factors in the adjectivization of participles. Jounal of English Linguistics, 44(1), 34–60. CrossrefGoogle Scholar