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A difficult to explain phenomenon: increasing complexity in the prenominal position

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2018

CHRISTINE GÜNTHER
CHRISTINE GÜNTHER*
Affiliation:
Department of English Language & Linguistics, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germanychristine.guenther@uni-duesseldorf.de
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Abstract

In English, the position of the AP in the nominal phrase is determined by its form: only structurally simpler phrases are said to be licit in prenominal position, more complex ones have to follow the noun. Recent studies have reported an increasing use of nominal premodifiers in English, so the question arises whether this trend affects only simpler phrases or whether a new structural option emerges – complex APs in prenominal position. Drawing on data from COHA, this article investigates which types of AP occur prenominally. The data show that certain types of complex APs are gaining ground in the prenominal position. Most of these can be analyzed as complex words rather than complex phrases and hence do not indicate major syntactic changes in the English NP. However, some of the attestations, such as easy-predicates with a to-infinitival clause, are complex phrases. It is argued that it is the dependency relation between their rightmost element, a lexical verb, and the noun they modify which makes them occur in prenominal position.

Keywords

noun phraseadjectivescomplexityword order variationlanguage change
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 645 - 670
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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