Manfred Sailer and
Nicolas Lamoure (Frankfurt a.M.) presented a paper on “Superlative 'ever' in
Dutch, French, German, and Spanish" at the 30th International Conference on
Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar 2023. Manfred and Nicolas look at the use of English
ever in emphatic superlatives as in (1) in two Germanic and two Romance
languages:
(1) a. nl: de beste
opmerking ever 'the best comment ever'
b. de: bestes Bild ever 'best picture
ever'
c. fr: la meilleure idée ever 'the
best idea ever'
d. es: la mejor foto ever 'the best
picture ever'
They propose a three
stage borrowing process:
- First, a constructional borrowing, which may
include English adjectives and nouns.
- Second, a blend between the matrix language
construction and the English construction, which still conserves ever as
an English word.
- Third, the word ever turns into a lexical
borrowing and is, then, freely compatible with all constructions that
allow matrix language emphatic superlative expressions such as German aller
Zeiten 'of all times.'
The analysis is
expressed within the modelling of social meaning proposed in Asadpour et al. 2022. It is a further develpment of Manfred and Nicolas'
presentation at a DGfS workshop
structural borrowing earlier this year.
Links
References
Asadpour, Hiwa &
Hassan, Shene & Sailer, Manfred. 2022. Non-wh relatives in English
and Kurdish: Constraints on grammar and use. Proceedings of the 29th
International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar 6–26. (doi:10.21248/hpsg.2022.1)
(https://proceedings.hpsg.xyz/article/view/898)
