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The Noun Phrase in English: Past and present
Edited by Alex Ho-Cheong Leung and Wim van der Wurff
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 246] 2018
► pp. 47–76

Chapter 3
Adjective stacking in Early Modern English

Some stylistic considerations

| University of Liverpool

Previous scholarship dates the development of stacked modification in English to the late Middle English period and the operationalisation of the modern NP functional structure to the end of the seventeenth century (Fischer 2006; Feist 2012). These studies have mainly focused on linguistic factors playing a role in the change, although observing briefly that socio-stylistic considerations also play a role in the development of stacked strings. Through a descriptive, corpus-based study of two-adjective strings in early Modern English, this paper begins to explore the influence of socio-stylistic matters on the change. The results suggest that the functional-stylistic demands of written genres may have favoured the establishment of particular stacked strings in English and this paper argues for a careful consideration of ‘developing’ genres in early Modern English (especially travelogues) as an important locus of change in the evolution of the English premodifying string.

Keywords: stacked adjectives, premodification in the noun phrase, adjectival modifiers, socio-stylistic change, Early Modern English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The notion of stacking and the diachrony of the English NP
    • 2.1Preliminary remarks
    • 2.2 Feist’s (2012) account of the development of the NP adjective string
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1General results
    • 4.2Two-adjective strings in EModE
  • 5.Descriptive modification in EModE
    • 5.1Co-ordinated vs. stacked strings: Genre distribution
  • 6.Indirect and unitary modification
    • 6.1Unitary modification
      • 6.1.1Unitary degree modification
      • 6.1.2Unitary affective modification
    • 6.2Indirect modification
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 June 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.246.03gon
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