adjectival phrases in English (fwd)

[Edith A Moravcsik]

Here is Mike Tomasello's response to my response to his original message.
The latter two texts have already been sent on to FUNKNET.

Edith

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2000 09:09:31 +0100
From: Michael Tomasello <tomas at eva.mpg.de>
To: Edith A Moravcsik <edith at csd.uwm.edu>
Subject: Re: adjectival phrases in English

Edith,

Of course you can share the correspondence.


1.  But I will say that I do not share your intuitions about:

?/*this/that important of an event

Both variants seem fine to me.


2.  Also, the conterpart to  "too much of a friend" is the
also-OK-in-my-dialect

too little of a friend  (or, not enough of a friend)


3.  You ask: "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

But this genitive does not involve quantification.  (And  'suspicious of
his sister' is simply a verb-particle construction, no?).


4.  Final point.  You say" 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.

But these mean two very different things - so 'of' is not optional here
in the same way as in the contruction being discussed.

Best,

Mike