The professor has authored one of the very few papers to examine and compare English and Czech Non-numerical Vague Quantifiers (also known as Vague Non-numerical Quantifiers – VnQs).
Some examples from the paper :
• Piles of
• Oodles of
• Mountains of
• A Smidgen of
• A Dash of
• A Pinch of
“The prototypical structural sequence is [VnQ + of + N], as in a bag of nerves, bags of energy, mountains of books, etc. The VnQ is nominal, mostly expressed by a Noun, exceptionally by an Adjective (cf. umpteen, as in umpteen days, umpteen things).”
The professor’s corpora-based work suggests that the study of “… vague non-numerical quantification is a highly complex field of enquiry in which the activation of both the vertical axis of paradigmatic alternation and the horizontal axis of syntagmatic co-occurrence have to be taken into consideration.”
Bags of Talent, a Touch of Panic, and a Bit of Luck: The Case of Non-Numerical Vague Quantifiers is published in Linguistica Pragensia, Volume 20, Number 2 / 2010.
And it can be read in full here.
Here’s some others that didn’t make the paper.
• A shedload of
• A soupçon of
• A tsunami of
• A knob of
• A glug of
• A whit of
• A dollop of
• A scintilla of
• A gnat’s of
Comment to add yours.
Comments