As was noted in section 4.1.2, however, our data also suggest a slight modification of Hypotheses 1 and 3, because a preference for narrow scope existed mainly when the Adjective and the second Noun co-occurred very rarely.
we shall use a modified version of Strong Modification Force (SMF): SMF will mean that Adj and Noun2 have zero (rather than below 30%) cooccurrence in the bnc.