English Adjectives Of Comparison —— Lexical and Grammaticalized Uses

----- 英语中的比较形容词

ISBN: 9783110205800 出版年：2010 页码：407 Breban, Tine De Gruyter Mouton

The book is concerned with a hitherto underresearched grammaticalization process: the development from quality-attributing adjective to determiner in the English noun phrase. It takes a bottom-up approach, based on extensive synchronic and diachronic corpus studies of six English adjectives of comparison: other, different, same, identical, similar and comparable. Their functional diversity in current English is proposed to constitute a case of layering, representing the original descriptive use, which expresses how like/unlike each other entities are, and a range of grammaticalized referential uses, which contribute to the identification and/or quantification of the entities denoted by the NP. Diachronic and comparative data material is invoked to verify and further develop the grammaticalization hypothesis. The development of adjectives of comparison involves several key concepts identified in the literature. Crucially, it is described as a case of textual intersubjectification driven by the optimalization of recipient-design. The actual grammaticalization paths are diverse and are characterized by lexical as well as structural persistence, i.e. the same lexical meaning develops into different grammatical functions in different syntagmatic configurations. In order to define the NP as a locus of diachronic change, this study offers a new angle on the description of adjectives and the modelling of NP structure.