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The emergence of a new adverbial downtoner: Constructional change and constructionalization of Dutch [ver van X] and [verre van X] ‘far from X’ KU Leuven
© 2018 John Benjamins Publishing Company. The English expression far from, denoting spatial or metaphorical distance, has developed into an adverbial downtoner (De Smet, 2012). In this corpus-based study, our first purpose is to analyze to which degree the Dutch counterparts of the English [far from X] construction, that is [ver van X] and [verre van X], have also developed into downtoners. We show that synchronically ver van mostly has a ...
From Noun to Evaluative Adjective: Conversion or Debonding? Dutch Top and Its Equivalents in German KU Leuven
© Society for Germanic Linguistics 2015. In this study, we address the ways in which nouns can give rise to new adjectives in Dutch and German. More specifically, the focus is on words with an evaluative meaning that can be used in a wide range of morphological and syntactic constructions in recent (and informal) language. For example, the German noun Hammer 'hammer' can be used in Hammervorstellung 'very good performance' or hammer film ...
Cette mesure est-elle vrannent cle? A constructional approach to categorial gradience KU Leuven
© 2014 Cambridge University Press. This article investigates the recently developed adjectival properties of the French noun clé 'key', as attested in for instance un poste très clé 'a really key position' and Cette mesure est-elle vraiment clé? 'Is this measure really key?'. The main purpose of this study is triple: it consists in analysing (i) which adjectival uses can be found in modern French, (ii) to what extent they are accepted by native ...
When Two Paths Converge: Debonding and Clipping of Dutch Reuze KU Leuven
Dutch reuze(n)(-) has a wide range of synchronic uses that form part of a broad categorical and semantic continuum. Derived from the noun reus 'giant', it is often used to express a comparison in nominal and adjectival compounds (for example, reuzegroot 'as big as a giant', lit. 'giant-big'), but it can also have a merely intensifying function (for example, reuzeleuk 'very nice', lit. 'giant-nice'). Moreover, it currently occurs as a free ...
Bleaching, productivity and debonding of prefixoids: A corpus-based analysis of 'giant' in German and Swedish KU Leuven
© John Benjamins Publishing Company. In this paper, we present a contrastive survey of a morpheme originally meaning 'giant' in German and Swedish. In both languages, this morpheme has developed into a prefixoid with simile or intensifying meaning. More recently, these prefixoids have been shown to occur as free morphemes as well, and it is the purpose of this paper to explore whether a quantitative analysis of synchronic corpus data can be used ...
How nouns turn into adjectives. The emergence of new adjectives in French, English and Dutch through debonding processes KU Leuven
© John Benjamins Publishing Company. This study focuses on French, English and Dutch adjectives that arise through debonding from N+N (and N+A) compounds or compound-like sequences (e.g. the adjectival uses of English 'key' and French clé "key"). Debonding is a type of degrammaticalization defined by Norde as "a composite change whereby a bound morpheme in a specific linguistic context becomes a free morpheme" (Norde, 2009: 186). We investigate ...
The status of N+N constructions with a productive N2. The case of N-cle key N' KU Leuven
This article investigates the status of French N+N constructions in which the N2 productively combines with different N1's (e.g. réunion marathon 'marathon meeting', examen marathon 'marathon exam', plaidoyer marathon 'marathon plea', etc). In the literature, this construction has been analyzed in very different ways, going from regular N+N compounding to the syntactic combination of a noun with a second noun converted into an adjective. In a ...