Document Type
Book
Abstract
In one subtype of English shell noun construction, the noun serves as the subject in a pre-clausal unit, e.g., “The thing is.” Shell noun NPs have mainly been investigated synchronically, often as case studies of particular noun types, with the bare forms only ever briefly noted. Data from COCA and COHA was examined to collect the range of sentence-initial bare form shell nouns, to track any changes in their use occurring between 1810 and 2012. The findings suggest that, referentially, these abstract bare forms function differently than bare concrete count nouns, and distributionally, that bare shell forms are used increasingly in subject position, confirming their state as grammaticalizing discourse marker constructions.
Disciplines
Linguistics | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Publication Date
1-1-2014
Language
English
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Stvan, Laurel Smith. 2014. “Truth Is, Sentence-Initial Shell Nouns Are Showing Up Bare.” In Complex Visibles Out There: Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium 2014: Language Use and Linguistic Structure, 4:591–606. Olomouc Modern Language Series. Olomouc, Czech Republic: Palacký University.