adjectival phrases in English (fwd)

[Edith A Moravcsik]

Below you will find a message from Mike Tomasello and a response
by me. Mike has allowed me to send this on to FUNKNET.

Edith


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 09:26:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: Edith A Moravcsik <edith at csd.uwm.edu>
To: Michael Tomasello <tomas at eva.mpg.de>
Subject: Re: adjectival phrases in English

On Thu, 27 Jul 2000, Michael Tomasello wrote:

> I'm sure I'm missing something (I am not a linguist), but isn't the
> reason exceptional adjective phrases take a different form is that they
> come from genetives.  Many people say:
>
> this big of an apple
> too big of an apple
>
> Just as they say
>
> He's too much of a friend to do that.
>
> I saw no talk of this genetive structure as responisble for many of the
> characteristics enumerated.  Did I miss something?
>
> Mike Tomasello
>
>

***************************************************************************

Dear Mike,

Thank you for your contribution! The fact that constructions such as
"too Adj a N", "this Adj a N" also have alternative expressions with
an "of" inserted, such as "too Adj OF a N", "this Adj OF a N" may
indeed somehow be related to the fact that in "too Adj a N" etc., the
adjectival phrase precedes the article. The question is exactly what
this relationship is.

The proposed relationship would be perfect if all exceptional adjectival
phrases had an alternative "of-ful" version and if all "of-ful"
constructions had an "of-less" alternative. But this does not seem to be
the case. First, when the modifier in the adjectival phrase is "this"
or "that", rather than "too", the "of-ful" alternative is not available
I believe:

     this/that important an event
  ?/*this/that important of an event

Second, not all "of-ful" constructions admit the "of-less" alternative:

      too much of a friend
     ?too much a friend

Thus, the "of-deletion rule" would need to be formulated as a less-than-
fully general rule. Also, one would still want to know why the
"of" is optional in just these constructions when it is not optional in
other constructions:

      the leg of the table
     *the leg the table

      suspicious of his sister
     *suspicious his sister

The only other case that I can think of right now where "of" is optional
is the complement of the verb "approve":

      He approved of the proposal.
      He approved the proposal.

In sum: there may indeed be some relationship between the
"of-less" and "of-ful" constructions; but it would take further work
to specify the details of the relationship.

Best - Edith











   ************************************************************************
                         Edith A. Moravcsik
                         Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics
                         University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
                         Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413
                         USA

                         E-mail: edith at uwm.edu
                         Telephone: (414) 229-6794 /office/
                                    (414) 332-0141 /home/
                         Fax: (414) 229-2741