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On The Substantivation Of Adjectives In Chaucer, Arthur Garfield Kennedy

Papers from the University Studies series (University of Nebraska)

The substantivation of adjectives in English has, like most other processes of our language, been so gradual that it is difficult to fix the beginning of it in the case of any particular word or group of words, or at anyone time to measure accurately its progress. Perhaps the most satisfactory results are obtained by . comparing the data made up from the writings of authors of different periods. This investigation is offered as a study of the process of .substantivation of adjectives in the fourteenth century, as shown in the writings of Chaucer. Kellner names three ways in which …