How do grammatical patterns emerge? The origins and development of the English proper noun modifier construction

Abstract

This article studies the emergence of a grammatical pattern, the proper noun modifier construction shown inthe Obama administration,an Edinburgh restaurant. The only dedicated historical corpus study, by Rosenbach (2007, 2010), is limited in terms of time depth and data included, and suggests that only proper noun modifiers denoting places such asEdinburghare found in the early seventeenth century. Using corpus data that span the full history of English, we trace the construction back to two Old English precursors, genitival modifiers without inflectional marking, e.g.Jericho feldes‘the fields of Jericho’, and compounds, e.g.Easter æfen‘Easter eve’. We combine macro-level visualisations of distributions and qualitative micro-analyses to show how these source constructions developed into the present-day English construction. The development defies simplistic views on grammatical change, but illustrates that grammatical patterns develop out of multiple sources under the influence of a multiplicity of factors. New patterns only emerge gradually and exploit existing ambiguities in the language.

On the (non-)equivalence of constructions with determiner genitives and noun modifiers in English

“…Eventually, the synchronic nature of noun modifiers and their overlap with genitives can only be fully understood when taking a diachronic perspective. Future research ought to look in more detail at how the evolution of a general (proper) noun modifier construction described by Breban & De Smet (2019) intersects with the development of genitive constructions, and how it fits into the wider context of the English noun phrase, in particular how it relates to the observed increasing complexity within the prenominal string of the noun phrase (e.g. Biber et al 2009; Biber & Gray 2002, 2011, 2016; Günther 2019).…”

“…An expression like * the building door , although expressing a part/whole relation, seems to be ruled out and it is not quite clear to me yet why. Another puzzle is the observation that identifying human common noun modifiers barely occur; diachronically human noun modifiers only surface rather late in Rosenbach's (2007a) diachronic corpus (see also Breban & De Smet 2019) and constitute only about 1 per cent of all noun modifiers in its most recent time interval (1950–99), the majority of which are proper nouns.…”

“…Lexicalising expressions form a special source of potential variation between genitives and (proper) noun modifiers and actually one that can be found already in Early Modern English: St Valentine's Day vs Valentine's Day vs Valentine day , 63 or Barnardes Castle vs Barnard Castle , Gascoyne's-tower vs Gascoyne-tower. 64 Breban & De Smet (2019) suggest that the emergence of proper noun modifiers has been boosted by a general proper noun modifier construction subsuming various constructions with proper noun modifiers that surface in English at different points in time. The presence of (proper) noun modifiers resulting from lexicalisations (as in Valentine Day , Barnard Castle , Gascoyne-tower ) may have helped to instantiate such a general (proper) noun modifier construction and may have paved the way for the emergence of human proper noun modifiers at a time, when, according to Breban & De Smet's study, proper noun modifiers in general were still very rare and basically restricted to time/religious feast ( Midsomer term ) and place ( London warde ).…”

The impact of semantic relations on grammatical alternation: an experimental study of proper name modifiers and determiner genitives

“… 6 Breban & De Smet (2019) propose that PNMs often occur in onomastic NPs, i.e. NPs that name the referent they refer to and are proper names in their own right.…”

Structural persistence as an explanatory factor in synchrony and diachrony*

“…The development of proper noun modifiers, such as the Obama administration, the Manchester club scene, discussed inBreban & De Smet (2019) constitutes an example of such a reorganisation in which 'a bad example' becomes an integral part of the system, and spreads further through the system Breban & De Smet (2019). show how such proper noun modifiers have their origins (partially) in so-called s-less genitives and other genitive forms that lack morpohological marking historically.…”