'Not that Tight a Family' - BIG MESS Constructions in Present Day American English
Sommerer L, Bohmann A (2025)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2025
Journal
Book Volume: 73
Pages Range: 287-314
Journal Issue: 3
Abstract
This paper presents a usage-based, constructional analysis of the so-called BIG MESS construction in Present Day English (e.g. how big a mess, that big a deal, too strong a word). Data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is presented in order to analyze the frequency, genre distribution and lexical biases of seven subtypes (how, however, so, as, too, this, that). The paper also zooms in on the feature of 'discontinuous modification' by a clause (e.g. too ADJqualitative a Nsg to-Clause, as ADJqualitative a Nsg as-Clause). The main aim is to sketch the constructional network of the BIG MESS subtypes, discussing the respective form-meaning pairings with their differences in usage and their parent and peer relations. By using collostructional and configural frequency analyses, it is shown that some of the constructional types are formally and functionally very different from each other, which is why their relatedness is called into question. It is argued that not all subtypes form a tight constructional family but that some of them are distant relatives at best. Additionally, the existence of an abstract 'mothernode', i.e. [ADVintensification ADJqualitative a Nsg]Cx will be discussed.
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APA:
Sommerer, L., & Bohmann, A. (2025). 'Not that Tight a Family' - BIG MESS Constructions in Present Day American English. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 73(3), 287-314. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2025-2023
MLA:
Sommerer, Lotte, and Axel Bohmann. "'Not that Tight a Family' - BIG MESS Constructions in Present Day American English." Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 73.3 (2025): 287-314.
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