"exceptional AdjPh-s"

[Edith A Moravcsik]

   This is an update on "exceptional adjectival phrases". Below I will
summarize the responses that I received to my message posted at the end of
July (25th?), most of which came directly to my e-mail address. The
responses have been from the following: Hartmut Haberland, Dick Hudson,
Bingfu Lu, Lise Menn, Jason Merchant, and Michael Tomasello.

   The issue pertains to English adjectival phrases like those occurring
in "This is TOO GOOD a bargain to give up.", or "You would not expect THIS
FAMOUS a person to mingle with the crowds." Such phrases differ from other
adjectival phrases in both their linear and in some of their selectional
properties. POSITIONALLY, either they occur preceding the indefinite
article (see the examples above) or they are postposed to the noun (e.g.
"a person THIS FAMOUS"), neither of which is an option for "regular"
adjectival phrases of the same general structure, such as "very famous".
Regarding COOCCURRENCE: the modifiers that occur in them ("too", "this",
"how", etc.) form a limited set and the noun that occurs with these
phrases must be singular and have the indefinite article if the adjectival
phrase is preposed, while in postposed position the noun may be plural
(e.g. "cars this shiny"). The question is why these phrases behave
differently from others and exactly the way they do. In what follows, I
will refer to these constructions as "exceptional adjectival phrases".

The responses address three issues:

    - preposed position
    - postposed position
    - crosslinguistic distribution

l. PREPOSED POSITION

   A/ Bingfu pointed out that the term "pre-article position" used in my
summary seemed misleading because it gave the false impression that these
phrases could occur in front of any article rather than just in front of
the in definite article.

   B/ Jason Merchant called attention to his article co-authored with
Chris Kennedy which just appeared in _Natural Language and Linguistics
Theory_ ("Attributive and comparative deletion", NLLT, 2000, 18.1,
89-146). It is  mostly on pages 104-109 and 124-125 that such phrases are
discussed in pre-nominal position. The paper also contains a number of
relevant references including D. Bolinger's 1972 book on degree words.

   C/ Both Lise Menn and Michael Tomasello pointed out the similarity
between "this big a problem" and "this big of a problem" and suggested
that the "of-less" exceptional adjectival phrases, jus as the "of-ful"
ones, be considered quantificational genitive (Tomasello) or partitive
(Menn) phrases.

   This is an attractive proposal although I believe these adjectival
phrases are still somewhat special even in comparison to
quantificational/partitive phrases. They may nonetheless be seen as a
proper subclass of the latter although, according to Lise, not all of-less
phrases have entirely grammatical of-ful versions, at least from a
prescriptivist point of view. She said "too much of a politician" was OK
but "too nice of a day" would seem questionable for copy editors and
teachers. On the varying judgments about the grammaticality of of-ful
phrases, see also the Kennedy-Merchant paper mentioned above (125-126,
footnote 24).

   The ways in which exceptional adjectival phrases differ from other
quantificational/partitive phrase are as follows:

   (a) In preposed position, the "of" is optional in these phrases while
it is not in other quantificational/partitive phrases:

     this important of an event
     this important an event
     three tons of coal
    *three tons coal

   (b) The constraint that preposed exceptional adjectival phrases must
occur with singular nouns and the indefinite article does not hold for
other quantitative/partitive phrases: there is

     three tons of COAL;

but also

     three tons of THE COAL
     three tons of APPLES

   (c) Exceptional adjectival phrases can be postposed to the noun while
other quantitative/partitive phrases cannot:

     an event this important
     *coal three tons

   D/ Bingfu addressed the issue of what the common semantic denominator
might be to the adjectival phrases that behave exceptionally and suggested
a generalization somewhat broader than the one he proposed in his earlier
message. The earlier formulation was this:

   "Modifiers contributing more referentiality to their mother NP tend to
precede."

Since this would not apply to some of the exceptional adjectival phrases
since they include an indefinite article and are thus not necessarily
referential, he proposes the revised version:

   "Modifiers that contribute more referentiality to their mother NP or
that themselves are more referential tend to precede."

   He says that "such Adj", "this Adj" (and "that Adj") are clearly
deictic and are thus covered by this generalization. In addition, he feels
the other subtypes of exceptional adjectival phrases are also covered.
Regarding "too Adj" he notes: "Too Adj" is deictic in the sense that it
implies the meaning of 'outstanding'." Re "how Adj" and "what Adj", he
says that they imply "that the related NP is likely at least a specific
entity". - Although I fully agree that "this" is deictic, I am less
certain about the evaluation of the other modifiers. What seems to me to
be needed is definitions of "deictic", "referential" and "specific" to
form the basis of these evaluations.

2. POSTPOSED POSITION

   A/ Dick Hudson pointed out that my use of the term "peripheral
position" in reference to both the pre-article and the post-noun positions
of exceptional adjectival phrases was imprecise: in post-nominal position,
these phrases do not have to be final, such as in "a picture this big of
Mary" or "a fish about this big that I caught last week". This is clearly
so; although if we analyze "a picture this big" and "the fish about this
big" as a "smaller" nominal phrase included in the larger NP, it may hold
that exceptional adjectival phrases are peripheral to SOME nominal phrase,
although not necessarily to the entire noun phrase.

   B/ Jason mentioned Karen Lattewitz's l998 dissertation (U. of
Groningen), which contains some comparative discussion on "heaviness" as a
condition for postposability, which, Jason suggests, is part of what is
involved in exceptional adjectives being postposable. While the Mod+Adj
structure is not a sufficient condition for postposing (cf. "a house too
big" but *"a house very big"), it may still be a factor.

3. CROSSLINGUISTIC DISTRIBUTION

   A/ MANDARIN CHINESE
      Bingfu points out that the Mandarin Chinese equivalents of "this
Adj", "so Adj", and "how Adj" differ from other adjectival phrases in the
same way the English versions do: they precede, rather than follow,
"yi-ge" ("one-classifier"), where "ye" corresponds to the English
indefinite article. However, Mandarin "too Adj" does not have this
property.

   His examples:

   Zheme   congming yi-ge  haizi!
   so/this smart    one-CL boy
   'So/this smart a boy!'

   Hac/duo congming yi-ge  haizi!
   how     smart    one-CL boy
   'How smart a boy!'

   *Tai congming yi-ge  haizi!
    too smart    one-CL boy
    'Too big an boy!'

   B/ GERMAN
   Hartmut Haberland says that, unlike in English, phrases like "zu gross"
'too big' normally cannot occur in postnominal position in German: "ein
Klavier zu gross" "a piano too big" is not possible with the meaning that
the corresponding English phrase has (although it can be used in a sense
where "ein Klavier" is a measure term; thus, if a line of pianos is to be
fitted into a concert hall and it does not fit, one can say that the line
is "ein Klavier zu gross" 'one piano too long' (cf. English "We drove one
exit too far.")).

   He points out, however, that in poetic or slightly stilted language,
the post-nominal position for some such phrases is possible, as in "die
Donau so blau, so blau, so blau...: 'the (River) Danube so blue, so blue,
so blue'. - He also notes that if phrases like "so gross" have a
complement - e.g. "so gross wie..." - such phrases must be post-nominal.

   Thus, the equivalents of English exceptional adjectival phrases are not
exceptional on German in that they normally do not occur in post-nominal
position. Whether they are exceptional in pre-nominal position in that
they precede the indefinite article (e.g. "So gross ein Klavier habe ich
noch nie gesehen!" 'Such big a piano I have never seen!') or whether they
take the regular post-article position ("Ein so grosses Klavier habe ich
noch nie gesehen."), or perhaps both options are fine, remains to be seen.





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