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English Noun Phrases from a Functional-Cognitive Perspective: Current issues
Edited by Lotte Sommerer and Evelien Keizer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 221] 2022
► pp. 279–310

From an icy hell of a night to a hell of a fine story

The development of the English binominal noun phrase and beyond

| University of Graz

English evaluative binominal noun phrases (EBNPs; an icy hell of a night) have been discussed for over 50 years, and a number of different analyses have been presented. This paper argues that one problem shared by previous research is that the of-binominals classified as EBNPs are actually three different constructions: the EBNP and two other of-binominals, evaluative modifiers (EM; one hell of a party) and binominal intensifiers (BI; a hell of a good dog). Using the classification criteria presented in previous studies and corpus data, I argue for distinguishing these two of-binominals from the EBNP. Furthermore, this paper links the development of the EM and the BI to the grammaticalization of premodifiers and other of-binominals.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Evaluative binominal noun phrase
    • 2.1Property 1: Of
    • 2.2Property 2: Determiner 1
    • 2.3Property 3: Determiner 2
    • 2.4Property 4: Headedness
    • 2.5Property 5: Relation between N1 and N2
    • 2.6Property 6: Scope of Determiner 1
    • 2.7Property 7: Premodification
    • 2.8Property 8: Constituency
    • 2.9Property 9: Restrictions on N1
    • 2.10Property 10: Restrictions on N2
    • 2.11Property 11: Number Agreement
  • 3.Evaluative Modifier
    • 3.1Property 1: Of
    • 3.2Property 2 & 3: Determiner 1 & 2
    • 3.3Property 4: Headedness
    • 3.4Property 5: Relation between N1 and N2
    • 3.5Property 7: Premodification
    • 3.6Property 9 & 10: Restrictions on N1 & N2
    • 3.7Property 11: Number agreement
  • 4.Binominal intensifier
    • 4.1Property 1: Of
    • 4.2Property 2 & 3: Determiner 1 & determiner 2
    • 4.3Property 5 & 7: Relation between N1 and N2 & premodification
    • 4.4Property 8: Constituency
    • 4.5Property 9 & 10: Restrictions on N1 & N2
    • 4.6Property 11: Number agreement
  • 5.Two case studies
    • 5.1Hell of
    • 5.2Beast of
  • 6.Relation to other constructions
    • 6.1Similarities to adjectives
    • 6.2Parallels to other of-binominals
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Corpora
Published online: 21 January 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.221.08ten
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