earticle

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The purpose of this research is to examine what has been called Drama ‘SO’. This novel usage of SO has been continuously on the increase since 1980’s among young speakers of the English language. Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 807) note this construction as a relatively new usage, mostly spoken by young people in an informal speech. As has been examined by scholars like Potts (2005), Zwicky (2006, 2010), Bylinina (2011), and more importantly Irwin (2014) in conjunction with Yale Grammatical Diversity Project group, YGDP, this occurrence of SO is rather unusual in that the item appears to modify NP/DPs as well as VPs, although the usual usage of so, either as an intensifier or a degree adverb, normally modifies gradable adjectives (AP) or adverbs (AdvP). This paper, focusing on the distributions and the functions of Drama SO, attempts to simplify the derivational process of the existing analyses. In particular, it is argued that the interpretation and the distribution of SO demand a pragmatic situation for it to be properly construed. Irwin’s analysis is to be reinterpreted under the present analysis with a pragmatic feature [+Ɛ], a semantic-pragmatic feature that intensifies the signature property of the host constituent for a desired semantics. An apparent advantage of this analysis follows without employing null copies of adverbs like TOTALLY and MUCH/MANY in the DegP, as Irwin and others have done.