My central concern is the special use of proper names in the English noun phrase first discussed by Rosenbach (2006, 2007, 2010; Koptjevskaja-Tamm & Rosenbach 2005): proper names which are used as modifiers with an identifying function, e.g. theBushadministration (‘Which administration does the noun phrase refer to? The one headed by Bush’). On the basis of a corpus study, I argue that existing analyses of Rosenbach (2007) and Schlücker (2013) fail to account for all cases; they also fail to capture the seemingly contradictory syntactic and functional properties of these proper names in a unified way. My alternative analysis is framed within Halliday's (1994) functional model of the English noun phrase, but radically thinks beyond the typical association of functions with word classes (see also Rijkhoff 2009). My proposal is that the majority of these proper names can be analysed as epithets, a function typically associated with adjectival modifiers such as theredcar. A smaller set, proper name modifiers such as aKerrysupporter, are analysed as complements (Payne & Huddleston 2002). I end by discussing the implications of this dual analysis for another open question, whether proper name modifiers are morphosyntactically phrasal modifiers or part of compounds.

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In this article we make a case for recognizing deictification as a type of grammaticalization and semantic shift in the NP analogous to auxiliarization in the VP. The specific analogy we point out is between lexical verbs that grammaticalize into secondary auxiliaries bound by the finite, as in is going to, has to + verb, and lexically full adjectives that grammaticalize into postdeterminers bound by the primary determiner, as in a different, the same + noun. We present five case studies of the development of postdeterminer meanings, based on the analysis of diachronic and synchronic data. The adjectives studied are opposite, complete, old, regular and necessary, whose postdeterminer uses relate to the basic deictic systems of space, quantity, time and modality. Our analysis of the data shows that the mechanism of secondary deictification can be given a unified characterization as the semantic shift by which a general relation expressed by the adjective is given a subjective reference point in or relative to the speech event.

In this article we are concerned with English adjectives expressing 'general comparison ', viz. same, identical, equal, comparable, similar, related, other, different, further, additional More specifically, we will examine the polysemy between 'attributive' and 'referentiaF uses of those adjectives. The analytical distinctions and semantic characterizations we will propose come, besides from critical dialogue with the literature, in large measure from the patterns thrown up by an extended data-base, viz. approximately 2,400 examples extracted from the COBUILD corpus on the ten adjectives listed above. In section l, we will, äs a starting point of this examination, look at Halliday and Hasan's (1976) binary distinction between attribute uses expressing 'interaal comparison' andpostdeterminer uses realizing 'referential comparison'. We will make a first correction to this distinction by noting that some 'referential' uses are üi fact classifier uses. In section 2, we will offer a further critique of Halliday and Hasan's binary distinction, both from a grammatical and a semantic perspective. If one traces grammatical properties of attributes such äs equivalence with predicative alternate and gradability in the data, then it appears that attribute uses of comparative adjectives can express either 'internal' or 'external' comparison. The text-grammatical property of phoricity, on the other hand, is associated with postdeterminers äs well äs classifiers. In section 3, we then propose Breban's (2002) alternative generalization for the polysemy at stake: the attribute uses are fully lexical, while the postdeterminer and classifier uses result from the grammaticalization of the lexical notions of likeness and non-likeness. This delexicalization and grammaticalization process involves a shift from expressing degrees of likeness between entities to simply identifying instances or types äs 'different' or 'identical' ones to other instances or types in the discourse. In section 4, we present the quantified results of our corpus study, which we Interpret in the light of the grammaticalization hypothesis. Not only does this give us an insight into the current semantic organization of the domain of comparison in English, but it also reveals the varying degrees to which the different adjectives of comparison have grammaticalized.

On the basis of extensive corpus analysis, we reconstruct the history of very and the paths of change along which it acquired new meanings. We propose an analytical model that, firstly, assigns general semantic functions to the (sub)modifier relations in the English noun phrase and, secondly, identifies subsenses of these functions on the basis of collocational, semantic and pragmatic distinctions observed in different contexts.

This paper is concerned with the English adjective same. As noted in the OED (s.v. same, a.), this adjective almost exclusively occurs as part of the determiner units the + same and demonstrative + same, which function as one word. In previous studies, I have argued that same performs the role of postdeterminer supplementing the identifiability of the noun phrase referent, which is expressed by the or the demonstrative, in three different ways: by confirming it more strongly (emphasising postdeterminer use), by setting up an identifying link between the referent and another discourse referent (phoricity‐marking postdeterminer use), or by conveying that the referent is associated with different situations present in the discourse (single‐referent‐marking postdeterminer use). The claim I will develop here is that the phoricity and single‐referent‐marking postdeterminer uses are the result of two distinct processes of secondary grammaticalisation from the earlier emphasising postdeterminer use starting in the Middle English period. On the basis of the analysis of historical data from the LEON corpus (1251–1500), I will confirm and elaborate this claim, paying particular attention to the semantic and syntactic features of the (surrounding) context and the extra‐textual motivations triggering the grammaticalisation processes.

In this article, it is proposed that processes of grammaticalization are determined and constrained not only by the source semantics of the grammaticalizing item, i.e.lexicalpersistence in the sense of Hopper (1991), but also by the original structure the item occurs in. This previously unrecognized feature of grammaticalization is referred to asstructural persistence. The need to distinguish a structural equivalent to lexical persistence is argued on the basis of a particularly exemplary case, viz. the grammaticalization processes found with one lexically specific set of grammaticalizing elements in English, adjectives of difference such asother,different,various, etc. Before their grammaticalization, these adjectives occur in two different structural configurations, viz. (1) external comparison, in which the adjective describes a relation of difference between the referent of the noun phrase and a second, separately coded, entity, and (2) internal comparison, in which the entities that are said to be different are all denoted by the noun phrase containing the adjective. Even though they undergo the same general semantic process of grammaticalization and delexicalization in both structures, the adjectives acquire a different grammatical function in each of them. The different outcomes of the grammaticalization process can only be explained by relating them to the specific properties of the two source structures.