Of Birds of Prey and Men of Honour: Head-Classifier Constructions in English

A considerable amount of research has been devoted to binominal constructions, including pseudo-partitives, evaluative binominal constructions, and sort/kind constructions. This chapter discusses another, as yet largely ignored binominal construction, the head-classifier construction. Unlike regular N+PP constructions, head-classifiers are characterized by the fact that the second noun does not head a referential NP but indicates a (taxonomic) subcategory (bird of prey), an intrinsic property (a wall of clay), or a qualification (a man of honour). In this chapter, data from the British National Corpus are used (1) to define the head-classifier construction in terms of function and form, and (2) to clearly delineate head-classifier constructions (HCCs) from conventional N+PP constructions (e.g. the wall of my house), pseudo-partitive constructions (e.g. a piece of clay) and N-N compounds (e.g. a clay wall). Finally, the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar is used to propose analyses reflecting the differences and similarities between the head classifier and related constructions.