A Study on the Cognition and Contextual Construction of the “DEGREE ADVERB + NOUN” Structure

Abstract

Research on degree expression in English has primarily examined how degree adverbs modify adjectives, verbs, and clauses. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the cognitive constraints and contextual mechanisms underlying the cross-categorial “degree adverb + noun” construction, particularly in Malaysian English. To address this gap, the study develops an integrated analytical framework consisting of cognitive-semantic identification, contextual parameter annotation, and construction–function mapping.A self-compiled Malaysian English corpus was constructed from 4,862 publicly available texts produced between 2021 and 2025, comprising approximately 1.18 million words. Automatic extraction identified 2,436 candidate instances, of which 1,972 were retained after manual screening, yielding a retention rate of 80.95%.The 20 most frequent constructions accounted for 1,062 instances, or 53.86% of the valid data. Inferential tests confirmed an association between construction type and discourse domain at both the broad category level, χ²(18, N = 1,972) = 42.03, p = .001, Cramér’s V = .103, and the high-frequency lexical level, χ²(38, N = 1,062) = 143.30, p < .001, Cramér’s V = .260. The stronger lexical-level association indicates that register differentiation is concentrated in recurring combinations rather than distributed uniformly across general semantic categories.