The English Binominal NP: A Construciton-Based Perspective
Jong-Bok Kim (Kyung Hee University)
As attested in naturally occurring data like Deep lines grooved [his prune of a face], English
Binominal NPs (BNPs) with the structure ‘Det1 N1 of Det2 N2’ display complex syntax andsemantics. In this talk, we show that the regular and idiosyncratic properties of the BNP construction
lead us to an account in the spirit of construction grammar; we specifically argue that the English BNP
is a nominal juxtaposition construction linked to a special semantic relation.
In dealing with the BNP, the first puzzle is what is the head of the overall structure. The headedness
issue is central in three different approaches to the preposition of: as a preposition selecting thefollowing NP headed by N2 (Abney 1987, Napoli 1989), as a pragmatic marker forming a unit withthe preceding N1 and following a/an (Aarts 1998, Keizer 2007), and as a prepositional
complementizer F selecting a small clause (Kayne 1994, Den Dikken 2006). Each of these three
approaches has its own merits, but is not fully satisfactory to capture the BNP’s regular as well as
idiosyncratic properties. The obligatoriness of the PP may support N1 being the head, but the semantic
locus of the overall structure seems to be the second noun N2. For example, N1 can be paraphrased as
an adjectival modifier as a hellish day, and further Det1 and a pre-N1 modifier can scope over theremote N2 as in [that] fool of a [doctor] or that [little] bastard of a [chaplain]. However, the N2-ashead approach is also forced to assume the string “N1-of-a” as a constituent, sacrificing the traditionalconstituency. The third main analysis, reflecting the subject-predicate relation between N1 and N2 as
seen from the copular paraphrase of the BNP a martinet of a mother as the mother is a martinet,assumes that N1 undergoes predicate inversion within a small clause. The weakness of the analysis
concerns what motivates the movement operations involved here. None of these approaches properly
addresses the restriction on Det2. In addition, there are syntactic freezing effects: the of-tagged PP
cannot be extraposed or wh-questioned as shown in *A monster was delivered of a machine. Further,neither the PP nor the NP2 can be coordinated as given in *I had a hell [of a day] and [of a time].
These properties and others indicate that the BNP is really a fixed construction subject to high-level
morpho-syntactic constraints. We propose that the BNP is a type of nominal juxtaposition construction
whose syntactic form is associated with a specific semantic relation. This proposal departs fromtraditional analyses but captures numerous constructional properties that otherwise remain as puzzles.
In particular, the present analysis views the BNP as directly having two nominals parallel in many
respects including number, gender, and selectional restrictions. Once we accept the view that theEnglish BNP construction is a type of nominal juxtaposition construction (cf. Jackendoff 2008), many
distinctive properties of the construction follow in a simple and straightforward manner.

About the speaker:
Prof. Jong-Bok Kim, School of English, Kyung Hee University, jongbok@khu.ac.kr

Short bio:Prof. Jong-Bok Kim is Professor at School of English and Director at Center for the Study ofLanguage and Information of Kyung Hee University in Seoul. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics
from Stanford University in 1996 and has been working on syntax, semantics, and computational
linguistics for Korean and English. His current research topics include noun phrases in English,comparative constructions in English and Korean, inversion phenomena in English, complex
predicates in Korean, cleft constructions, focus projections in English and Korean, just to name afew. In addition to publishing numerous papers in prestigious domestic and international journals,
he is the co-author of the textbook ``English syntax: an introduction" (2008, CSLI Publications),
which is now worldwide used as an undergraduate and graduate textbook. Since 2003, he has
also turned his attention to computational implementation too and developed a computationallyfeasible grammar for Korean, Korean Resource Grammar.