The Thought Occurs

Tuesday 5 February 2013

Classifier Vs Epithet: Reflections In The Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 320):
Classifiers do not accept degrees of comparison or intensity … and they tend to be organised in mutually exclusive and exhaustive sets …
For example, in the nominal group a stone wall, the noun stone can only function as Classifier, and not as Epithet, since if it functioned as Epithet, it would make sense to say: a very stone wall and a more stone wall than the previous one.