Wayward categorial shift: so odd an article

Trends and Recent Change in the Syntactic Distribution of Degree Modifiers: Implications for a Usage-based Theory of Word Classes

“…It must be admitted, however, that the data for the prenominal uses of this and that are not perfectly comparable to the data obtained from the Spoken BNC2014. As discussed, the construction in which the intensifying this and that are used prenominally is not in fact the Attributive Adjective construction but what is commonly referred to as the “Big Mess” construction, where the modifier AP precedes the indefinite article (see Van de Velde 2019:146 for a detailed survey of earlier research on this construction). Furthermore, it seems that the modifiers used in the Big Mess construction typically contain an implicit point of comparison or contrast that we do not generally find in the degree modifiers that are used in the Attributive Adjective construction.…”

“…I study this diachronic dimension by investigating degree modifiers that have recently become more frequent in English ( this and that ) as well as modifiers whose prenominal use has decreased substantially in the past two centuries. These modifiers include words like too and so , which are prenominally used in the so-called “Big Mess” construction, where the modified AP precedes the indefinite article, as in too convenient an explanation , so great a victory (see e.g., Huddleston & Pullum 2002:435; Van de Velde 2019). Finally, I study a group of words that has become more adjective-like in terms of its degree modification patterns since the mid-nineteenth century: adjectival - ed participles of mental verbs, such as interested and embarrassed (Denison 1998; Vartiainen 2016b).…”