The term premodification consists of the prefix pre-, denoting something that comes before in space or in time, and modification. The Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (19) defines modification, modifier as follows: "a word or group of words (modifiers) which gives further information about (modifies) another word or group of words (head). Modifiers before the head are called premodifiers, modifiers after the head are called post-modifiers". The two processes are called premodification and postmodification respectively. The fact that this definition is generic — speaking, as it does, of "word or group of words" — points to the presence of premodification in English at various levels. It can be found at the level of adjective phrase (e.g. "very tired", where very premodifies tired), and at the level of verb phrase (e.g. "was getting" where the head is the verb form getting). Another, and last, level is the noun phrase (as in door knob) where the head is a noun.

Premodification can consist of: (20)

a) One or more adjectives — a very frequent case in English:

where delightful premodifies the noun cottage (the adjective delightful gives further information about the cottage).

Example (1) is very simple and anyone could provide many more like it, with other adjectives. There are more complex cases where the premodifying adjectives are more than one. No limitations exist about the number. (21) The problem here is what order the adjectives should follow. Some grammar books give examples like

to facilitate the memorisation of the order (both, all - the - ordinal number - cardinal number - general judgement - mental judgement - measurement - age or temperature - shape - colour - verb participle form - material - origin, nationality). (22)

Some studies suggest that in most cases the sequence goes from "less factual" to "more factual":

Pleasant and handsome are largely subjective, tall is more factual and Swedish is totally factual — in the sense that people can be "more or less tall" but not "more or less Swedish": they are either Swedish or some other nationality. Technically, we say that tall is a gradable adjective and Swedish is a non-gradable adjective: there are various degrees of tallness, but not of "Swedishness". (23)

In their classification of noun premodifiers Leech and Svartvik (24) consider present and past participles as distinct from adjectives. Their example is:

Most grammars do not keep them apart but include them among adjectives in general.

b) An adverb premodifying the noun. This case is not so frequent as with adjectives, but a few examples can be found:

c) The so-called classifying genitive. A few examples:

If we compare these with:

we can see that in (7, 8, 9) we are talking about a type of cottage, manual or dictionary; in (7a. 8a, 9a) we are talking about specific objects and their owners. In (7) his premodifies the whole noun phrase fisherman's cottage, in (7a) his premodifies uncle only.

The following example contains both a possessive genitive and a classifying genitive and can help to make the difference clear:

Doctor premodifies degree and John is the owner of the doctor's degree.

d) One or more nouns.

This very important type of premodification is called aggettivazione nominale and consists in "The use of one or more nouns that specify another and function as adjectives of it" (25).

There are several types:

This is the simplest case:

When the premodifier consists of one noun we can find:

• two separate words (tax evasion)
• two hyphenated words (grave-digger)
• one word (raincoat).

If two words merge into one, we very frequently find that the sequence has acquired a new meaning, that does not reflect the original values of the components (for instance, a paperback is not a back but a book). In this case we should speak of compounding (a lexical process) rather than of premodification (a syntactic process).

The use of hyphens is often irregular and some words can be spelt in three different ways:

A plural noun used as a premodifier is normally in the singular form: (26)

This applies not only when the noun is usually plural (like trousers) but also when the reference is to a number of objects; for example:

However, there are cases where the plural form remains, as in: (27)

The noun phrase can be further expanded by multiple premodification; a frequent case is the presence of an adjective before the modifier. There are two possibilities; in cases like:

the adjectives premodify only the noun they precede: in (19) the Lieutenant is French, not the Woman (compare: The lieutenant's French woman); in (20) the housekeeping is qualified as good, not the journal. Whereas in:

the adjective premodifies the head and its modifier; in (21) the journey is long, not the car; in (22) the industry is French (and so are the films, as a consequence, but we are talking about the French industry of films, not about the industry of French films). The wrong interpretations are excluded on the basis of our knowledge of the world. This applies to the following pair of examples:

In (23a) electric premodifies the whole noun phrase can opener (we know that electric cans do not exist). In (23b) electric premodifies shock only.

A phrase like

is ambiguous (out of its appropriate context) because it may mean either Reviews of recent books or Recent reviews of books — the latter implying that the books might not be recent.

Examples are:

The last two examples contain metaphorical expressions.

Heads and modifiers are connected in various ways as regards meaning. These relationships are relevant in order to understand the phrases containing premodifications. The following cases have been identified: (28)

a) the premodifier classifies the type or nature of the head

This classification may refer to people as well:

b) The two referents are linked by a part-to-whole relationship (the head is a part of the modifier):

If the premodifier is a person, the possessive case is used instead:

c) the premodifier can be a place-name indicating:

- origin

- location

- the place to which a road leads

d) The premodifier shows what the referent of the head is made of:

The noun gold refers to the substance the thing is made of, while the adjective golden is usually metaphorical:

e) The premodifier refers to the time when something happens or is used:

f) Reference can be made to size:

In terms of meaning, we can find:

- a delimitation of the field. Car key limits the semantic field of key by saying what type of key we are talking about. (30)

- the development of a new concept. In the case of road sign there is no separate reference to a road and a sign, but we think of a specific referent directly — a metal board with icons, words and/or numbers giving directions or information to drivers.

A problem — that is common to premodification, compounding, derivation and several other linguistic phenomena — concerns the freedom to have recourse to them. We just cannot use premodification in any case, i.e. with any word as premodifier and another as head (obviously assuming that a semantic relationship exists between the two).

This possibility is available only for noun phrases describing well-known referents and is barred for cases that are too specific or unusual.

For example,

is correct, but

is not, because inflation is a topic and not a general subject. A similar case is offered by

Similarly,

is a common expression, while

is not.