| 研究実績の概要 |
This study aims to propose an analysis of a construction such as those in (a-c), based on COCA and COHA, adopting the CxG framework, supplemented by a framework of constructional extension.
a. It’s too big of a deal to be true.
b. This is so small of a problem that we can ignore it.
c. How hard of a job is it?
Its mysterious inclusion of ‘of’ is accounted for by a communicative force of Spellout of a frequent implicit meaning, the meaning equivalent to that of [Deg much of a N]. This is a constructional extension triggered by pairs of already existing virtually synonymous forms, in this case, [Deg much of a N] and [Deg Adj a N]. The analysis accounts for another condition in which the adjective in this construction is overwhelmingly ‘big’ and only a few more such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, and ‘hard’ are attested while those such as ‘strange’, ‘famous’ and ‘interesting’ are not just unfound but make the construction ill-formed. The reason for this may be that the construction is limited to expressing what [Deg much of a N] can mean. This is theoretically significant because these conditions can be properly characterized only through a link to another construction [Deg much of a N].
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