One Hell of a Competition: Register Distribution, Lexical Productivity, and Semantic Preferences of [a HELL of a(n) N] and [a HELL-N]

Abstract

This article focuses on the competition between the evaluative binominal construction [a HELL of a/an N₂] and the evaluative compound construction [HELL(-)N₂]. Drawing on data from the English Web 2021 corpus and the English component of OpenSubtitles2018, the study investigates their distribution and productivity across registers, their lexical and semantic preferences, and the factors conditioning constructional choice. The results show that the phrasal construction predominates across registers, whereas the compound construction demonstrates greater realized and potential productivity. The two constructions also differ systematically in the head nouns they attract and in the semantic domains represented by those nouns. Mixed-effects logistic regression further reveals significant effects of register and semantic group, alongside substantial variation across individual N₂ lemmas, with lemma-level variation making the strongest contribution to constructional choice. These findings demonstrate that the two competing evaluative constructions are functionally related but not fully interchangeable and that their competition reflects the interplay of lexical, semantic, and contextual factors.