Short and stout as she was : relations inter-propositionnelles avec la structure « adjectif + as + sujet + be »
This article deals with phrases introduced by an adjective (which may or may not be preceded by as or so), followed by as used as the subordinator of a finite clause constituted by a subject along with copular be (hereinafter referred to as “adj. + as”): short and stout as she was, that was the high...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses universitaires de Caen
2020-12-01
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| Series: | Discours |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/discours/11046 |
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| Summary: | This article deals with phrases introduced by an adjective (which may or may not be preceded by as or so), followed by as used as the subordinator of a finite clause constituted by a subject along with copular be (hereinafter referred to as “adj. + as”): short and stout as she was, that was the highest bit she could reach. The ambivalent link between “adj. + as” and the main clause deserves special attention, as it can be interpreted either in terms of a cause and effect relationship or of concession (paradoxical relationship); more importantly, the study of a corpus of about 240 examples (mostly sampled from the “Corpus of Contemporary American English” – COCA) confirms the intuition according to which the paradoxical interpretation of the relationship between the two clauses is overwhelmingly more frequent than the causal one (by a proportion of about ten to one in my corpus). The fronting of the adjective indicates that the adjective possesses a high degree of a certain quality, thus paving the way for a paradoxical interpretation, as this is often a subjective, non neutral, view of things. “Adj. + as” clauses may turn out to be ambiguous even in the presence of a main clause. It is doubtful, however, that “adj. + as” can merge both the logical and the paradoxical interpretations in its relation to the main clause, as they are too diametrically opposed from a semantic point of view to be able to combine coherently with each other within the same clause. |
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| ISSN: | 1963-1723 |