Summary Details
| Query: |
Grammatical Category of Worth
|
|
| Author: | Karen Stanley | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Syntax
|
|
| Summary: |
In alphabetical order, thanks to: Bas Aarts, Katalin Balogne Berces, Costas
Gabrielatos, Dinha Gorgis, Anthea Fraser Gupta, Richard Hudson, Kate Kearns, Mike Maxwell, Paul Purdom, Elizabeth Pyatt, Dale Russell, Michael Swan, and Magdalena Zoeppritz for their contributions (and please excuse me if I somehow missed a name) I have, of necessity, taken only excerpts from explanations, and apologize in advance if I misrepresented or did not fully represent any ideas Support for Adjective Status -- the adjective status fits well systematically, both with the adjectives taking measure-type complements (5 ft tall) and others (not many, but: guilty OF a crime, eager to inf-please) -- preposition analysis fails with all non-noun complements -- although 'preserving' is a verbal noun, 'worth preserving' is an NP (not a PP) because 'worth' is an adjectival functioning as a premodifier. A simple test would be placing 'well, too, often' or any suitable adverb before 'worth' (...are well worth preserving) -- its syntactic distribution supports adjective status; also, semantic content and phonological behavior (always stressed) are against analysing it as a function word; it can also be graded (exclusive to adjectives - eg, more worth) -- there's no reason an adjective couldn't subcategorize for a non-finite clause -- it's a transitive adjective, an adjective that obligatorily takes a nominal object; 'fond' could be considered a transitive adjective but instead of taking a nominal object, it takes a prepositional phrase as its object Support for Preposition Status -- the BNC tags it as a preposition in the (BE + worth + V-ing) structure -- one of the entries in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English labels 'worth' ''1. preposition (esp. after be)'' and under that entry includes a meaning of 'deserving of.' -- it takes NPs ('worth a fortune') and the only quasi-verbal complements must be gerunds, it can't take any distinctively adjectival or verbal morphology (*this is unworth the price, *it worthed more), and an adjectival form exists ('worthy'). Possibly the noun is the original form. Other Suggestions -- the OED says it is ''Almost always (now only) in predicative use, or following the n. as part of a qualifying phrase,'' usefully thought of as part of an idiom ''BE WORTH [N].'' This analysis covers the etymology of ''BE worth (the) while,'' though 'worthwhile' has become an adjective. Classification as a 'preposition' is presumably analogous with structures like 'He is in the garden' and 'They are near finishing.' If forced to choose one category, it would be preposition, but the idiom route is preferable. -- rather than fit into any one category, 'worth' exists along an adjectival-prepositional syntactic gradient along with a number of other elements including like, unlike, due, near far, and close.(This brief sentence does not even come close to doing justice to the chapter from Bas Aarts' recent book, Syntactic Gradience.) -- while (a) it takes -ly adverbs (eg highly), and (b) other adjectives can take a VP construction (She is happy living here.), there is something different about the latter where the matrix subject is understood as the subject of the VP-ing, as against the original sentence where the matrix subject is the *object* of the -ing verb. However, it is reminiscent of the ''tough'' construction (Bill is tough to talk to - subject is object) versus eager (Bill is eager to go). The worth-ing construction also supports parasitic gaps, indicating it's a form of WH- construction (My reports are worth reading before tossing.) However, no other adjectives behave like worth, although there are some X+P constructions that are similar (This room is _intended for_ partying in.) And unlike adjectives it fairly readily post-modifies nouns in this construction (Fido is a dog worth avoiding.) -- another possibility is that it's both adjective and preposition. Precedents for double assignment: gerunds (noun and verb), much/many (noun and adjective). The adjective explains why it's okay after BECOME (normally only okay for adjectives and nouns: It became worth nothing/*in great demand). The preposition would explain why it takes a bare noun as complement, but even then has the special property of raising the object from a gerund complement (''It's worth buying'' - 'buy' requires an object, and 'it' is its object.) -- the term preposition is closest to what is available in traditional grammar, but it may be what is called a ''predicator'' (Pr) similar to 'as' and 'like' in syntactic theory (see John Bowers). Fronting, which is possible with prepositional phrases, is questionable for all three. So, depending on your analysis, it could be a predicate usage, some sort of adverb, or some sort of preposition. -- it probably doesn't belong properly to any of the categories under consideration, although Huddleston and Pullum (Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, p 607) demonstrate that it functions more like adjectives than anything else. Also to consider: 'Worth' seems to have something in common with 'any/no use', 'any/no good' and similar expressions with 'use' and 'good'. Perhaps these are historically all genitive expressions used adjectivally ('of no worth/use/good') that have dropped their 'of,' leaving them as syntactic isolates. See also David Crystal's Encyclopaedia of Language and ''Fuzzy Grammar, a Reader' by Bas Aarts and others (OUP). -- Webster's New World Dictionary labels it as an ''adjective [with prepositional force]'' |
|
| LL Issue: | 19.3858 | |
| Date Posted: | 16-Dec-2008 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
|
Back |
||
|
|
||
|
Sums main page
|
||
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
