The book investigates pathways of (inter)subjectification followed by prenominal elements in the English Noun Phrase, by tracing the development of identifying, noun-intensifying and subjective compound uses. By means of in-depth corpus study, the assumed unidirectionality of (inter)subjectification in the NP is verified and refined.

Despite a significant increase in interest over the last two decades in the English Noun Phrase, there are still many open questions and unexplored issues. The papers collected in this volume contribute to this ongoing research by addressing a range of topics concerning the internal structure, use and development of English Noun Phrases. The eleven chapters represent three main themes: 1. Determination, modification and complementation; 2. Shell nouns and the X-is construction; 3. Binominal constructions. These topics are approached in different ways: some chapters are synchronic in nature, others diachronic; and while most subscribe to functional-cognitive modelling, some take a more formal approach. In addition, different methodologies are employed, varying from qualitative and quantitative corpus analyses to experimental methods. As a result, the contributions to this volume represent both the main topics currently discussed in research on the English Noun Phrase, and the diversity in the way these topics are investigated.

Taking a multi-theoretical approach, this book offers the first in-depth study of the function and development of evaluative of-binomials.

The binomial noun phrase, or of-binomial, is an important phenomenon in the English language. Defined as a noun phrase that contains two related nouns, linked by the preposition of, examples include a hell of a day and a beast of a storm. This pioneering book provides the first extensive study of the evaluative binominal noun phrases (EBNP) in English, exploring the syntactic rules that govern them, and the (functional) semantic and pragmatic links between the two nouns. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, corpus data, and two different theoretical approaches (Construction Grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar), it argues that the EBNP now functions as a stage in a grammaticalization path that begins with a prototypical N+PP construction, continues with the head-classifier, and ends with two new of-binominal constructions: the evaluative modifier and binominal intensifier. Comprehensive in its scope, it is essential reading for researchers in syntax, semantics, and English corpus linguistics.

Recent years saw a growing interest in the study of subjectivity, as the linguistic expression of speaker involvement. Intersubjectivity, defined by Traugott as "the linguistic expression of a speaker/writer's attention to the hearer/reader", on the other hand, has so far received little explicit attention in its own right, let alone systematic definition and operationalization. Intersubjectivity and seemingly related notions such as interpersonal meaning, appraisal, stance and metadiscourse, frequently appear in cognitive-functional accounts, as well as historical and more applied approaches. These domains offer (partly) conflicting uses of 'intersubjectivity', differ in the overall scope of the concept and the phenomena it may cover.This book brings together contributions from a variety of different approaches, with the aim of disentangling the current web of intertwined notions of intersubjectivity. Rather than focusing on the potentially conflicting views, the volume aspires to resolve some of the conceptual puzzle by cross-fertilization between the different views, and spark discussion on how to operationalize 'intersubjectivity' in linguistic research. Originally published in English Text Construction 5:1 (2012).

Quantification is central to human experience (cf. Aristotle’s Organon): the most basic aspects of human life and reasoning involve quantity assessment. This study sheds lights on a highly frequent way to express quantification in Spanish, viz. the binominal quantifier (e.g. un aluviónN1 de llamadasN2 ‘a flood of calls’) which assesses the quantity of N2 in terms of N1. This volume offers a corpus-based, cognitive-functional analysis of binominal quantifiers (BQ) in Spanish. The first part is dedicated to the development of BQs and starts from the assumption that BQs are cross-linguistically involved in grammaticalization. This monograph frames the history of BQs in Spanish in terms of constructional levels of change and highlights the complex interplay between analogical thinking and conceptual persistence. The second part motivates both the ample variation in the paradigm of quantifying nouns and their combinatorial pattern by the very same mechanism of conceptually-driven analogy. The study thus yields an innovative functional model of BQs in Spanish, in synchrony and in diachrony, with major implications for reference grammars and theory building.

This volume advances our understanding of two highly debated aspects of grammaticalization: its relation to (inter)subjectification and its directionality. These aspects are studied with respect to such phenomena as auxiliaries, discourse markers, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns. Bringing together a wide range of languages, the collection provides insight into the crucial dimensions of grammaticalization research.