TRANSLATION AND MEANING: A CULTURAL- COGNITIVE ...

2.3.1 Independent Clauses
Of all the cases when compressed clauses are used with adjectival
force, the largest number of instances is reserved for the independent
clauses with propositional effect. Those are sentences with an overt
subjective element, predicator and its complements. The initial capital letter
is obligatory only if the subject is a proper name or in the form of the first
person singular pronoun.
Certain authors, as Déchaine and Wiltschko (2002:425), put forward
the idea that the only compounds in English, and probably in other
languages as well, which contain first and second person pronouns are PCs.
This observation has been verified by the research results. What can be
added is that the third person pronoun cannot be a part of these lexical
items, in all likelihood due to its requirement in terms of verb inflection and
which would have to be dropped: I-can-read books, you-know-who words,
you-know-what manner, etc. The next group of these words, and not so
prominent one, would be made of cases in which there occurs a proper
subject-verb relationship of the declarative type, but the subject is not any of
the personal pronouns. This is best explained by mentioning the idiomatic
dog-eat-dog world case, so often used in language.
Another very frequent manifestation of this model is moulding
imperative sentences into lexemes by compacting the elements with or
without an overt pronominal subject element, but with occasional adverbial
modification included: a you-be-damned fellow, don’t-ask-me expression,
etc. Also, the next words are occasionally made use of in the English
language: catch-as-catch-can situation, just-see-who-I-am manner, knockme-down
way, get-rich-quick policy, take-it-or-leave-it offer, walk-in-andask
method, get-in-first preview.
A separate, fourth group can be composed of all those lexicalizations
where the clause which lies in the foundation of the string has the form of an
exclamatory sentence, such as the one provided as an example in the OED
and the research corpus:
(8) G. Summer, No. 12/3, 1888 His hail-good-fellow-well-met shake of the hand.
(9) ...would go off on another of his O-Jason-my-Jason-how-great-thou-art jags...
(SKPS,525)
In our research, the contribution of clause-based PCs of less than 1%
of all APCs in the corpus was far less than expected in the stages prior to the
analysis itself. Four samples of the corpus have the force of imperativeexclamatory
sentences.
(10) ...a glimpse of the old, go-to-hell Lilly Cavanaugh... (SKPS,4)