What modifies what?

May 29, 2008 4:38 AM

I think that a thesaurus that was organized in terms of which adjectives typically go with which nouns would be really useful. Like, the adjectives that modify the verb "urge" (as in deep or unfulfilled, say). Same thing could be done for adverbs, e.g., ones that modify "talk" (relentlessly, incessantly, insightfully). I am aware of WordNet and many other on-line lexical databases like the BNC. I'm looking for something like a compiled list, based on actual usage, of what modifies what. thanks.
posted by cogneuro to writing & language (7 comments total)

Well, paging LanguageHat, obviously. However this is a trivial search in the BNC. The tag for all adjectives is AJ? and for all nouns is NN? (see the list of all tags). Using the 'explore' search for 2-grams and sorting by descending frequency you get:

p
right hon. 2963
roman catholic 645
latin american 515
only other 463
other european 455
social democratic 446
other major 429
supreme soviet 379
best possible 371
annual general 365
poor old 361
gross domestic 354
good old 340
international monetary 334
single european 325
special educational 317
grand national 311
whole new 294
various other 293
major international 280
other important 252
new national 249
other social 249
dark brown 239
nice little 222
gross national 220
certain other 219
new political 218
western european 212
british medical 209
great big 209
liberal democratic 206
dark blue 201
only real 198
european monetary 196
largest single 195
african national 193
other local 193
european economic 190
major political 190
other main 188
common agricultural 187
other political 187
other similar 187
eastern european 183
new social 183
great western 182
poor little 177
far eastern 175
different social 173
only possible 171
pale blue 171
british national 170
local social 165
other relevant 165
social economic 163
available free 162
grievous bodily 161
other public 161
christian democratic 159
major new 159
scottish national 157
british nuclear 156
other new 156
bright red 154
soviet foreign 154
central american 153
middle eastern 153
other financial 152
other principal 152
oesophageal sphincter 151
long black 149
#-year old 147
new prime 146
other possible 146
personal social 144
wider social 142
lower oesophageal 140
general medical 139
other small 139
soviet military 138
international financial 137
other leading 137
low level 136
high level 135
other great 135
special scientific 135
eastern economic 133
long long 133
central nervous 132
dark green 131
senior civil 131
fastest growing 130
new international 130
economic social 129
gastric emptying 129
international inc 129
political economic 128
local political 126
french foreign 125

... and so on.

Obviously you can restrict the second term to one you're interested in. for example 'urge' seems to only give you:

overwhelming urge 14
strong urge 10

I think this is the kind of thing that's most easily done yourself. It's also very corpus-dependent.

It's essentially a compilation of cliches.

posted by unSane at 5:13 AM on May 29, 2008 [3 favorites]

A collocations dictionary! Designed for English-language learners, it helps them find things like this:

strong/weak coffee
strong/light winds

Especially useful for writing practice. However, the one I have linked here has only 9,000 headwords. Consign, for example, wasn't in there, so I couldn't show my students why one would say "consign to the dustbin of history", which, while cliched, is worth knowing because it's in things they might read, like a textbook.

Paperback!
posted by mdonley at 5:48 AM on May 29, 2008

What you're looking for is an old copy of The Word Finder. Not only will it give you adjectives and adverbs, but verbs too (when I stumbled across it on a shelf and flipped it open, the entry for "knife" included things like "glisten" and "slash" in the verb section). The copy I found is from 1947, but I think they published new editions until 1984.

Check your local library, it's worth it, even if you can only find the 1947 edition.
posted by Partial Law at 6:54 AM on May 29, 2008

You could always search through the English language corpora available on the internet.

This is one of the easier ones to work with...just type a word and it'll give you collocations sorted by frequency of use and by part of speech.
posted by FunGus at 7:21 AM on May 29, 2008 [1 favorite]

Yeah, a collocations dictionary is what you're looking for. You might post a comment at Language Log or write one of the linguists who post there; those guys are into this kind of thing and will know about whatever online resources are available besides those already mentioned.
posted by languagehat at 7:45 AM on May 29, 2008

The Myles Na gCopaleen Catechism of Cliche is, alas, out of print.
posted by holgate at 1:06 PM on May 29, 2008

Try this. I haven't used it (yet) but it may be what you are looking for.
posted by bluesky43 at 7:35 AM on May 30, 2008