April Yu
A
Corpus-based Study on the Use of “nice and” and “good and”
in
British Spoken English
I.
Introduction
The
goal of the present paper is to study the use of such hendiadics as “nice and”
and “good and” in British Spoken English in light of grammaticalization. This will be examined from the perspective
of collocation of certain adjectives, and a major difference in use between the
hendiadic “nice and” or “good and”.
This paper will follow Hopper’s definition of hendiadic; “two
grammatical or lexical forms signaling a single meaning, or paraphraseable by a
single equivalent form” (Hopper, 2000: 10) in examining such phrase as “nice
and clean”, which could be replaced with a single word “clean” without
distorting the original meaning. A
slight change in the nuance may be caused by this replacement, though.
The
present study consulted Cobuild corpus for “ukspok”, which provides transcripts
of spoken language in the United Kingdom.
The data are the results obtained with the inquiries “nice+and+JJ” and
“good+and+JJ”. There are 85 results for
“nice+and+JJ”, 82 of which are relevant data.
Out of the 40 results for “good+and+JJ”, 17 are relevant.
The
present study holds four positions on the collocations of “nice and” and “good
and”. First, “nice and” and “good and”
are frequently collocated to adjectives that have positive meanings. Second, not all the adjectives with
favorable meaning are found collocated to “nice and”. Rather, there are some adjectives that appear in relatively high
frequency in collocation with “nice and” and “good and”. Additionally, some adjectives with neutral
meaning or even a potentially negative meaning are also collocated with “nice
and” and “good and”, and therefore indicate a positive flavor. Finally, there are cases that two adjectives
following “nice and”. I will discuss
these arguments in details.
First,
the phrase “nice and” is frequently collocated to adjectives with positive
meanings. For instance,
“are always glistening
they're all nice and clean.
<M01> Yeah. <M02> Erm but”,
care of yourself wrap
yourself up nice and warm and be
like Kieran always
Other
adjectives with positive meaning collocated with “nice and” are: friendly,
easy, bright, early, colourful, fresh, shiny, neat, cool, successful, tidy,
slim, simplistic, pleasant, kind, pretty, safe, and smooth.
This
observation also holds with the phrase “good and”, which is exemplified in the
following sentences.
“not mean the death of
that which is good and wholesome in
your history we do”
I mentioned earlier I think some very good and interesting points are made
Other
positive adjectives going with “good and” are: proper, faithful, comfortable,
important, robust, true, exciting, cool, and fresh.
Second,
some adjectives having positive connotations collocate with “nice and” or “good
and” more frequently than others.
Consider Figure 1.
|
Collocation with “nice
and” |
Occurrence |
|
nice
and clean |
8 |
|
nice
and warm |
6 |
|
nice
and friendly |
4 |
|
nice
and easy |
3 |
|
nice
and early |
3 |
|
nice
and bright |
3 |
|
nice
and moist |
2 |
|
nice
and fresh |
2 |
|
nice
and neat |
2 |
|
nice
and cool |
1 |
|
nice
and successful |
1 |
|
nice
and tidy |
1 |
|
nice
and slim |
1 |
|
nice
and slim |
1 |
|
nice
and simplistic |
1 |
|
nice
pleasant |
1 |
|
nice
and kind |
1 |
|
nice
and pretty |
1 |
|
nice
and safe |
1 |
|
nice
and smooth |
1 |
Figure 1. Occurrence
of adjectives collocated with “nice and”.
The
words “clean”, “warm” and “friendly”, “easy”, “early”, “bright”, “moist”,
“fresh”, and “neat” seem to used more frequently than the other.
Figure
2. illustrates how some adjectives are more frequently collocated with “good
and” than others.
|
Collocation with “good
and” |
Occurrence |
|
good
and interesting |
4 |
|
good
and proper |
2 |
|
good
and comfortable |
2 |
|
good
and faithful |
2 |
|
good
and proper |
1 |
|
good
and faithful |
1 |
|
good
and comfortable |
1 |
|
good
and important |
1 |
|
good
and robust |
1 |
|
good
and true |
1 |
|
good
and exciting |
1 |
|
good
and cool |
1 |
|
good
and fresh |
1 |
Figure 2. Occurrence
of adjectives collocated with “good and”.
Third,
some adjectives with neutral meaning, or even potentially negative meaning, are
also collocated with “nice and” and “good and”, and therefore indicate a
favorable flavor. Such words like
“sticky”, “hard”, “fat”, “quiet”, “cold”, “hot”, “sleepy” and “chunky” may have
negative connotation in certain contexts and positive connotation in
others. For instance, the word “fat”
would be offensive when used to describe an over-weighted woman. However, in the following example, it is
most likely interpreted in a positive sense.
don't you. <F0X>
Cats like to be nice and fat. <M01> The thing is you know
Another
example is the word “quiet”. It would
not be desirable if a speaker becomes quiet when it is supposed to be loud, or
a student remains quiet when she/he is expected to be active in classroom
discussion. Nevertheless, it is obvious
that being quiet is desirable in
But I would like to go
up there it's nice and quiet
and I like it up there
One
may suggest that in the cases discussed above, the consequences of being in the
state described by the adjectives are desirable; therefore, people choose to
use the “nice and” structure.
Interestingly, the present study has not found examples of such
collocation with “good and”.
In
addition, it is possible for more than one adjectives to follow “nice
and”. There are 4 examples out of 82:
I wouldn't er
<M01> very good. It's nice and
solid and chunky. Then
on top and it will
come out looking nice and brown and
crispy as if it had
so <F01> Yeah
<F02> And because it's nice and
deep and warm and there's
And some of them are
quite modern and nice and new and
exciting and interactive
Although
the structures “nice and” and “good and” are comparable in the sense that are
both frequently collocated with positive adjectives, one cannot always be
replaced by another in use. One may
suggest that one of the major differences between “nice and” is employed to
describe states, while “good and” is for events. Consider the following example.
<ZGY> where it
<ZG0> heats the food and at the top of the lid you always get
some steam and water
which keeps the food nice and hot.
Now slow cookers can't
brown food either so
if you were making anything for a slow cooker you do have
to perhaps brown it in
a frying pan first of all. Now the dish I've done in the
The
key word here is “keeps”. The food has
already been cooked and it is hot. All
one has to do now is to keep it in the state of being hot. An additional example is
<ZZ1> side B.
starts 008 <ZZ0> <F0X> McDonald's do a C F C-friendly box now
don't they.
<M05> <ZGY> to keep it
looking nice and bright.
<M01> Right. <F0X>
McDonald's?
<M01> But what about this question of Okay <ZF1> so <ZF0> so
er
some scepticism about
<M0X> You know if somebody like <M01> whether these
claims are
In
this example, McDonald is trying to make something already bright continue to
be bright. Again, the focus is on the
state of being bright.
“Good
and” is different from “good and” in light of the focus. The focus of “good and” is on the process of
becoming the state described by the adjective to follow. Consider the following instance.
The
present paper suggests that the structure “nice and’ and “good and” may be
undergoing the process of grammaticalization.
In Hopper’s (1993) review of the
history of grammaticalization, this term means “the attribution of grammatical
character to an erstwhile autonomous word” (Meiller, 1912:131). Givon (1971) places great emphasis on the
dynamic process by suggesting, “today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax.”
(Givon, 1971, 413) Hopper claims that ‘when
a content word assumes the grammatical characteristics of a function word, the
form is said to be ‘grammaticalized.’” (Hopper, 1993: 4) The hendiadics “nice and” and “good and” may
be considered at semantic level; however, the previous discussion in this paper
suggests that they can be deemed as grammatical structure since the neither the
word “nice” or “good” seems to have content word meaning in the structure in
question. They have inflexible forms,
relatively stable meaning and prevailing use.
It may take a long period of time for them to stabilize with form,
meaning and use. And if so, it will be
exactly how grammaticalization works.
The
present paper studied the use of such hendiadics as “nice and” and “good and”
in British Spoken English. They are
often collocated with adjectives of positive meaning. Besides, there are certain adjectives that are more frequently
collocated with “nice and” or “good and” than others. When they are collocated with adjectives of neutral meaning, they
make the interpretation of the adjectives towards the positive side. The hendiadics “nice and” and “good and” are
different in structure in two ways. One
is that “nice and’ is used together with adjectives with neutral meanings and
it can add a favorable flavor to the adjectives, whereas “good and” is not used
the same way. The other is that “nice
and” is found collocated with more than one adjectives while “good and” is
not. A major difference in use between
the structure “nice and” and “good and” is that the former highlights the state
described by the adjective while the latter focuses on the process to achieve
the feature depicted by the adjective.
The use of ‘nice and” and “good and” is more than a matter of
collocation; rather, it may be considered grammaticalization, which in study is
defined as a dynamic process for the prevailing use of two semantic phrases to
come into grammatical structures.
Although grammaticalization is dynamic in nature, capturing the fluid
process of grammaticalization falls beyond the scope of the present paper.
it was a nice
hat too. It was <ZGY> nice and
clean and good condition
are always glistening they're all nice and clean. <M01> Yeah. <M02>
Erm but
or the shower and make sure you're nice and clean and well scrubbed and
shoes
in the spaceship
it's cold <F09> It's nice and warm
in here <M01> Yeah <F09> Mm
time <F02> In the summer when it's nice and warm and that and if y
sometimes
But it's like
it'll keep you nice and warm.
<F0X> It will yeah. <F0X>
care of yourself
wrap yourself up nice and warm and
be like Kieran always
the window
because they just like it nice and easy and they don't want to rock
Heavy beat on
the drums that was nice and easy.
Breaking away from the
they. <M05> <ZGY> to keep it
looking nice and bright. <M01>
Right. <F0X>
a nice morning isn't it <F01> It's nice and bright isn't it. Least you
start
exercise. <ZGY> He wants to <ZG0> be nice and fat he can ward off
disease and
track <M01> Yeah. <M02> and
it's nice and quiet
<M01> Yeah. <M02> <ZGY>
<M0X> Get
that radio cranked up nice and loud.
This is Neil Fox ready to
and that will make the cake really nice and moist. <M01> Well
isn't that
<tc text=pause> <ZZ1> off
phone <ZZ0> Nice and colourful.
<F0X> Yeah. s something
they built earlier and nice and shiny it is too. This year for
know <tc
text=pause> and they'd be nice and
fresh. It'd be a day for the
I wouldn't er <M01> very good. It's nice and solid and chunky. Then
on top and it
will come out looking nice and brown and
crispy as if it had
so <F01>
Yeah <F02> And because it's nice
and deep and warm and there's And some of them are quite modern and nice and new and exciting and interactive
I mentioned
earlier I think some very good and
interesting points are made
there about the decisions we make for good and proper correct reasons
<ZGY> the
to do is hear you say Well done thou good and faithful servant. And yet there'
time in their life when they've felt good and comfortable. So they do that.
not mean the death of that which is good and wholesome in your history we
do
groups Provision of service is good and important and to provide that
quite good for
commuting on <ZGY> Good and
robust. <M01> Mhm. And erm have
Offstage
<ZGY> <M01> All of these are good
and true. I was thinking of the
the scene <ZGY> which was very good and exciting. Erm I think some
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