1,720,969 research outputs found
A Corpus-based Investigation of Modals in Spoken British English: Gender Variation and Change in the Years 1994 and 2014
No full textExisting studies have described the diachronic development of
modals in early periods, or their uses in more recent times. Works
with a synchronic orientation have examined modals in
contemporary English, and sociolinguistic variation linked to age.
There are no studies that investigate gender variation and
change of modals in contemporary spoken British English. The
present research is a corpus-based investigation that aims to fill
this gap and to describe the use of the central modals can, could,
may, might, must, shall, should, will, would in the years 1994 and
2014, and gender-based differences/similarities. The analysis has
been undertaken on the spoken section of the BNC1994 and the
Spoken BNC2014. The analysis reveals that there are limited
differences between men and women and ongoing innovation in
the years 1994 and 2014
The representations of freedom in The Sun newspaper between 2019 and 2021: a corpus-based study.
No full textExisting studies have highlighted the close link between language and society (Fairclough, 1992) and demonstrated the impact of Covid-19 on language (Mahlberg and Brookes, 2021). There are no studies to date that have examined the changing representations and conceptual shifts of freedom in the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic years, which are expected to be affected by government policies on Covid-19.
The present study aims to fill this gap. Specifically, the objective is to examine the conceptual evolution of freedom in the years 2019 and 2021 and to interpret it in the light of socio-historical issues derived from the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study is a corpus-based investigation undertaken on The Sun Corpus (TS), i.e. a self-compiled corpus including newspaper articles published in the UK during the years 2019 and 2021. Media including newspapers are, indeed, influential discourses that shape the public view of particular events, current issues, and play “an important role in framing how people understand and respond to” contextual happenings (Brookes and Baker, 2021, p. 1; see Baker et al. 2013).
The analysis reveals that there is a shift in the use of the word freedom, which is depicted as an enjoyable experience in 2019 and seen in a negative shade in 2021. These results support the social conceptualization of language and reveal aspects that are of particular concern in Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1992), aiming to examine how socio-historical aspects frame the linguistic representations of social issues like the Covid-19 disease
Multi-word verbs in the Late Modern English period (1750-1850): a corpus-based study.
No full textThis book offers a description of the development of multi-word verbs over the years 1750-1850; and specifically, it focuses on phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs and phrasal-prepositional verbs in Late Modern English (LModE).
The topics included in the book respond to the growing interest in research on the LModE period, which until recently had received only limited attention. Descriptive analyses of frequency and the use of multi-word verbs are complemented with a discussion of the factors and mechanisms driving language change, such as grammaticalization, lexicalization, idiomatization, direct formation, reanalysis and analogy. Adopting a corpus-based method, the book describes the transformation of multi-word verbs, the way stability intertwines with change, further corroborating the status of the LMod period as a time featuring both innovation and stable features.
The interplay of internal mechanisms of change favoured the loss of instances and the coinage of new members of the class of multi- word verbs, and often stimulated phenomena of interference between all multi-word verbs and cases of membership shift between classes
Aspectual and idiomatic properties of the particle on in Late Modern Spoken English
No full textThe present study focuses on the description of the semantic features of phrasal verbs (PVs) containing the particle on and specifically aims at analysing the historical development of aspectual and idiomatic combinations in Late Modern Spoken English. From a historical perspective, the “figurative usage” (Kennedy, 1920) of PVs is a very interesting feature because it is the product of historical processes resulting in the PVs as they are known in Present Day English (PDE). This study is a corpus-based investigation conducted on the Late Modern English-Old Bailey Corpus (LModE-OBC), a corpus that has been compiled by using texts from the Proceedings of the Old Bailey and annotated with the Visual Interactive Syntax Learning interface (VISL). The findings reveal that there was a general shift from spatial to aspectual meaning and a relative stability in the frequency of PVs in the time span 1750-1850. It can be assumed that PVs “have undergone a lexical development from compositional to noncompositional” (Thim, 2012, p. 12), a process that led PVs from being literal to figurative in meaning (Denison, 1981, p. 108; Claridge, 2000, p. 47) due to the semantic shift of particles from a directional to an aspectual connotation (Brinton and Akimoto, 1999, p. 8)
Phrasal verb vs. Simplex pairs in legal-lay discourse: the Late Modern English period in focus
No full textThe present paper attempts to describe the divergences between nearly
synonymous phrasal verb/simplex pairs from court trials dating back to the Late
Modern English period (LModE). The intention was to evaluate the effects that
each verb form might exert in discourse, interpreting the lexical choice as functionally
linked to the contents of the legal-lay discourse, that is the discourse
between lay people and professionals in the courtroom (Heffer 2005: xv).
Research to date has highlighted how the choice of one form or another
needs to be explained in terms of register and degree of expressiveness (Bolinger
1971: 172; McArthur 1989: 40; Hiltunen 1999: 161; Claridge 2000: 221). However, no
studies have yet evaluated the difference between phrasal verbs and simplexes
from a phraseological perspective, or reflected on how their use is functionally
linked to the communicative needs in courtroom settings.
The study was conducted on the Late Modern English-Old Bailey Corpus
(LModE-OBC), a self-compiled corpus that covers the century 1750–1850 and that
includes a selection of trials drawn from The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London’s
Central Criminal Court
Prepositional verb/simplex alternation in the Late Modern English period: evidence from the Proceedings of the Old Bailey
No full textThe present study aims to describe the prepositional verb/simplex
alternation in the Late Modern English period (LModE) and, specifically,
in the period 1750-1850. The intention is to examine the
semantic prosody exhibited by verbs that bear a synonymous
relationship interpreting the results by accounting for the contents
of courtroom discourse.
Many studies have examined the prepositional verb/simplex alternation
and their occurrence explained by considering various factors
such as the degree of formality of the texts and stylistic choice.
Diachronically, instead, during the Early Modern English period, the
relation between prepositional verbs and their simplex counterparts
has been linked to the need for emphasis on specific aspects of
narration or associated with the different degrees of expressiveness.
Yet in no case, has prepositional verb/simplex alternation been examined
by accounting for the semantic prosody and their occurrence
linked to the speaker’s evaluation of narrated events, nor have other
periods been taken into account.
The present study is a corpus-based investigation conducted on
the Late Modern English - Old Bailey Corpus (LModE-OBC), a corpus
covering the period 1750-1850, which has been compiled by selecting
texts from the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London’s Central
Criminal Court
Composite predicates in Late Modern English
No full textThis volume provides a concise overview of the diachronic development of composite predicates (CPs) in Late Modern English, offering clearer evidence of ongoing language change using data less readily available in other corpora.
While previous scholarship on CPs exists from a synchronic perspective, this book is the first to focus exclusively on Late Modern English with a diachronic approach to CPs, understood as phraseological verbs consisting of a verb and a deverbal noun or this combination with a preposition, such as to ask a question or to take hold of. The volume builds on real-life spoken data encompassing the proceedings of the Old Bailey at the Central Criminal Court in London, which predate the invention of audio-recording technology. Leone explores syntactic and semantic changes and the role performed by phenomena associated with grammaticalization, lexicalization and idiomatization in this period from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives.
The book sheds light on ongoing processes of change in spoken data, enriching knowledge on language change in this period and offering directions for future research. This book will appeal to scholars in English historical linguistics, syntax and semantics, and language change
Phrasal Verbs and semantic prosody in Late Modern English (1750-1850):a corpus-based study.
No full textThe present study aims to describe processes of context-induced reinterpretation affecting the semantic prosody of phrasal verbs (henceforth PVs) during the Late Modern English period
(1750–1850).
Diachronically, the semantic evolution of PVs has been associated with semantic reanalysis
and idiomatization (Akimoto 1999; Rodríguez-Puente 2019; Leone 2023). When approached by
adopting a phraseological perspective (Sinclair 1991; Stubbs 2002), the changes that occurred
in the period 1750–1850 have been explained “as the effect of a reinterpretation driven by context-
specific factors” (Leone 2019: 265). There are no studies examining the role of the lexical
environment in the changes affecting the semantic prosody of PVs.
The present study is a corpus-based investigation undertaken on the Late Modern English–
Old Bailey Corpus (1750–1850), which includes texts taken from the Proceedings of the Old
Bailey. The analysis reveals that the selected PVs (lock up, take away, throw away) during the
period 1750–1850 underwent changes affecting their semantic prosody, driven by context-induced
processes, but also conventionalized their extant uses
The particle forth during the Early Modern English period: linguistic interferences with the particles on and out.
No full textPhrasal verbs formed with forth spread within the linguistic system
up to the Early Modern English (EModE) period when they started
to decrease in use as a result of internal mechanisms of change and
linguistic competition with other particles such as on and out
(Brinton 1988; Hiltunen 1994; Akimoto 2006; Thim 2006; De Smet
2010). Despite widespread knowledge, no studies have examined
quantitatively the single steps forth followed over the years or
questioned the role performed by productivity and processes of
semantic specialisation of single instances in the processes of
replacement. The present study is a corpus-based investigation
that aims to fill this gap. The study has been undertaken on the
Corpus of English Dialogues (CED), which is a multi-genre corpus
covering the EModE period and, specifically, the years 1560–1760
(Kytö & Walker 2006). The analysis proves that the particle forth
shows limited productivity, which created the conditions for processes
of interference and replacement. The lexical context
favoured the semantic specialisation of the particles on and out
which stimulated the retraction of forth
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