Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1177/0075424220987590
Ksenia Gnevsheva
empirical, usage-based sociolinguistic anchoring without other baggage. This is why in my own work (e.g., Fabricius 2018) I have resorted to using the term “modern RP.” This term is at least a nod to a sociolinguistic generational continuity, which means that while the accent-in-use has evolved and broadened over time, it has not fundamentally disappeared, in the sense that previous forms of the accent are still mutually intelligible with present-day forms. These sociolinguistic issues will not be pertinent for all readers of Lindsey’s book (as it has a strong second-language teaching interest, and a pedagogical approach is necessarily different), but they may well be relevant to readers of this journal with an interest in sociolinguistic approaches to accents such as modern RP/SSBE.
{"title":"Book Review: Folklinguistics and Social Meaning in Australian English","authors":"Ksenia Gnevsheva","doi":"10.1177/0075424220987590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424220987590","url":null,"abstract":"empirical, usage-based sociolinguistic anchoring without other baggage. This is why in my own work (e.g., Fabricius 2018) I have resorted to using the term “modern RP.” This term is at least a nod to a sociolinguistic generational continuity, which means that while the accent-in-use has evolved and broadened over time, it has not fundamentally disappeared, in the sense that previous forms of the accent are still mutually intelligible with present-day forms. These sociolinguistic issues will not be pertinent for all readers of Lindsey’s book (as it has a strong second-language teaching interest, and a pedagogical approach is necessarily different), but they may well be relevant to readers of this journal with an interest in sociolinguistic approaches to accents such as modern RP/SSBE.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0075424220987590","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47117993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242211025586
Zeyu Li, Ulrike Gut, Ole Schützler
While nearly all dialects on the British Isles have undergone the nurse merger, a process which merged the Middle English vowels /ɪ ɛ ʊ/ into the vowel /ə/ (which was later lengthened to /ɜ:/) in pre-rhotic positions, Scottish Standard English (SSE) is traditionally described as having retained a three-way distinction in these contexts. However, the gradual loss of this contrast has been observed in some varieties of Scottish English. This study investigates phonetic realizations within the nurse lexical set in SSE speech. 1227 tokens of the nurse vowel produced by ninety-two speakers were drawn from broadcast news, broadcast talks, legal presentations, non-broadcast talks, and unscripted speeches from the Scottish component of the International Corpus of English (ICE Scotland). The first two formants (F1 and F2) were measured, transformed into Bark and normalized. A Bayesian linear mixed-effects regression model showed that in purely acoustic terms, the vowels in fir, fern, and fur are not merged and have a distinct F1 and F2. However, the pre-rhotic items are distinct from the reference categories kit, dress, and strut in being more centralized, and in some genres fir and fern are more strongly drawn towards the center of the vowel space (and each other) than fur is. While the social variables age and gender do not influence realizations of the nurse vowels in formal Scottish English at this general level, orthography and the realization of the following /r/ have a clear effect. Inspection of individual speakers further shows that several types of partial merger of these vowels exist; it is argued that this perspective is needed to understand variation within the SSE nurse lexical set.
{"title":"nurse Vowels in Scottish Standard English: Still Distinct or Merged?","authors":"Zeyu Li, Ulrike Gut, Ole Schützler","doi":"10.1177/00754242211025586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211025586","url":null,"abstract":"While nearly all dialects on the British Isles have undergone the nurse merger, a process which merged the Middle English vowels /ɪ ɛ ʊ/ into the vowel /ə/ (which was later lengthened to /ɜ:/) in pre-rhotic positions, Scottish Standard English (SSE) is traditionally described as having retained a three-way distinction in these contexts. However, the gradual loss of this contrast has been observed in some varieties of Scottish English. This study investigates phonetic realizations within the nurse lexical set in SSE speech. 1227 tokens of the nurse vowel produced by ninety-two speakers were drawn from broadcast news, broadcast talks, legal presentations, non-broadcast talks, and unscripted speeches from the Scottish component of the International Corpus of English (ICE Scotland). The first two formants (F1 and F2) were measured, transformed into Bark and normalized. A Bayesian linear mixed-effects regression model showed that in purely acoustic terms, the vowels in fir, fern, and fur are not merged and have a distinct F1 and F2. However, the pre-rhotic items are distinct from the reference categories kit, dress, and strut in being more centralized, and in some genres fir and fern are more strongly drawn towards the center of the vowel space (and each other) than fur is. While the social variables age and gender do not influence realizations of the nurse vowels in formal Scottish English at this general level, orthography and the realization of the following /r/ have a clear effect. Inspection of individual speakers further shows that several types of partial merger of these vowels exist; it is argued that this perspective is needed to understand variation within the SSE nurse lexical set.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/00754242211025586","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41533499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1177/00754242211024722
N. Holliday
This study examines how men with one Black parent and one white parent variably construct their racial identities through both linguistic practice and explicit testimonials, with a specific focus on how this construction is realized in narratives about law enforcement. The data consist of interviews with five young men, aged 18-32, in Washington, D.C., and the analysis compares use of intonational phenomena associated with African American Language (AAL) in response to questions about aspects of their racial identities. Declarative intonational phrases from responses to questions were MAE-ToBi annotated and analyzed for use of intonational features subject to racialized stylistic variation, including use of L+H* versus H*, focus marking, and peak delay interval length. Results of multiple regression models indicate speakers avoid intonational features associated with AAL in police narratives, especially L+H* pitch accents with broad focus marking and longer peak delay intervals. These findings illuminate an important aspect of the relationship between linguistic performance and identity: both racial and linguistic identities are subject to topic and audience/referee-conditioned variation and individuals can use specific intonational variables to align themselves within specific audience and topic-influenced constraints. In the context of police narratives, avoidance of salient features of AAL intonation can serve as linguistic respectability politics; these speakers have motivation to employ linguistic behavior that distances them from the most societally and physically precarious implications of their identities.
{"title":"Intonation and Referee Design Phenomena in the Narrative Speech of Black/Biracial Men","authors":"N. Holliday","doi":"10.1177/00754242211024722","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211024722","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines how men with one Black parent and one white parent variably construct their racial identities through both linguistic practice and explicit testimonials, with a specific focus on how this construction is realized in narratives about law enforcement. The data consist of interviews with five young men, aged 18-32, in Washington, D.C., and the analysis compares use of intonational phenomena associated with African American Language (AAL) in response to questions about aspects of their racial identities. Declarative intonational phrases from responses to questions were MAE-ToBi annotated and analyzed for use of intonational features subject to racialized stylistic variation, including use of L+H* versus H*, focus marking, and peak delay interval length. Results of multiple regression models indicate speakers avoid intonational features associated with AAL in police narratives, especially L+H* pitch accents with broad focus marking and longer peak delay intervals. These findings illuminate an important aspect of the relationship between linguistic performance and identity: both racial and linguistic identities are subject to topic and audience/referee-conditioned variation and individuals can use specific intonational variables to align themselves within specific audience and topic-influenced constraints. In the context of police narratives, avoidance of salient features of AAL intonation can serve as linguistic respectability politics; these speakers have motivation to employ linguistic behavior that distances them from the most societally and physically precarious implications of their identities.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/00754242211024722","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47188354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-09DOI: 10.1177/00754242211019080
Ken Hyland, F. Jiang
In this paper we explore the ways academics name processes as things and how these practices have changed over the past fifty years. Focusing on nominalization, noun-noun sequences, and acronyms, we document an increase in these features across a corpus of 2.2 million words within a consistent set of journals from four disciplines. Our results show that nominalizations and acronyms have increased in all four fields, particularly in applied linguistics and sociology, and that while noun-noun sequences have fallen in electrical engineering, they have risen in the other disciplines, especially sociology. We also suggest that noun-noun phrases have increasingly come to name methodological approaches, rather than concepts or objects, and we seek to account for these changes. We observe that these increases in naming are related to the need for succinctness in modern research writing and the advantages of endowing named objects with a real existence which can then be credited with explanatory authority. We question, however, the appropriacy of these practices for interpretation in the social sciences.
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Pub Date : 2021-06-09DOI: 10.1177/00754242211019072
Seth Mehl
Where there is any perception of digital humanities (DH) within the field of English linguistics, it may be seen as a technical practice preoccupied with digitizing texts and producing digital editions. The one occurrence of digital humanities in JEngL’s archival content is a passing reference to digital editions and the role of editors—in an interview rather than a research article (Grant 2014). Within DH, there is a more vigorous conversation about what DH fundamentally is, alongside creative methodological questions about what it can be. That is because DH—from within—is largely viewed as a methodological challenge, driven by meaningful, even urgent research questions originating not only in the humanities but also in the social sciences which can be most effectively addressed via the development of new digital methods and tools. If DH is a methodological practice, it is in the sense of methods and epistemology: asking and debating how it is that we can know what we need to know, and testing the efficacy of selected digital methods in the service of specific research questions. As a corpus linguist based in a DH center, I present here a view of DH and English linguistics from within both disciplines. My discussion begins with a focus on corpus linguistics, but also includes English linguistics more generally, and linguistics as a whole. I argue that we as linguists should care about DH, not only because much of what we do is DH (even if we do not always recognize it as such), but also because collaborations between English linguistics and DH will be fruitful for all of us. Research questions in DH are wide-ranging; recent major DH projects that encompass humanities and social sciences include:
{"title":"Why Linguists Should Care about Digital Humanities (and Epidemiology)","authors":"Seth Mehl","doi":"10.1177/00754242211019072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211019072","url":null,"abstract":"Where there is any perception of digital humanities (DH) within the field of English linguistics, it may be seen as a technical practice preoccupied with digitizing texts and producing digital editions. The one occurrence of digital humanities in JEngL’s archival content is a passing reference to digital editions and the role of editors—in an interview rather than a research article (Grant 2014). Within DH, there is a more vigorous conversation about what DH fundamentally is, alongside creative methodological questions about what it can be. That is because DH—from within—is largely viewed as a methodological challenge, driven by meaningful, even urgent research questions originating not only in the humanities but also in the social sciences which can be most effectively addressed via the development of new digital methods and tools. If DH is a methodological practice, it is in the sense of methods and epistemology: asking and debating how it is that we can know what we need to know, and testing the efficacy of selected digital methods in the service of specific research questions. As a corpus linguist based in a DH center, I present here a view of DH and English linguistics from within both disciplines. My discussion begins with a focus on corpus linguistics, but also includes English linguistics more generally, and linguistics as a whole. I argue that we as linguists should care about DH, not only because much of what we do is DH (even if we do not always recognize it as such), but also because collaborations between English linguistics and DH will be fruitful for all of us. Research questions in DH are wide-ranging; recent major DH projects that encompass humanities and social sciences include:","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/00754242211019072","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48546652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-19DOI: 10.1177/00754242211005831
Jonathan Culpeper
Politeness in the history of English is certainly not the first book to be written in that topic area. 2018 saw the publication of Keith Thomas’s much lauded In pursuit of civility: anners and civilization in early modern England. But that is a book written by a historian for people interested in history. The inescapable fact is that politeness, and related notions such as “civility” and “manners,” is mainly constituted in language. This is the first monograph written by a linguist focusing on the language of politeness in the history of English. To be sure, linguists have written papers on the language of English politeness in particular texts, genres, and periods, but this is the first work to encompass the broad sweep from its beginnings in the Middle Ages through to the present day. That in itself is a huge challenge, which partly explains why nobody has done it before. Seven of the ten chapters, diachronically organized, survey the development of politeness in Britain. Jucker uses a journey metaphor, specifically an “extended road trip,” to explain how he handles breadth and depth: he journeys through time, stopping to take pictures, “both close-ups of interesting details and longshot panoramas of entire sceneries” (xi). Parts of that road have been travelled by other scholars, who also have taken pictures. These pictures/studies are judiciously used, often with updatings and new framings, to fill in any gaps in Jucker’s own many studies. It would be a mistake to think that this is simply a descriptive work. Popular theories and frameworks of linguistic politeness, developed in pragmatics and interactional linguistics, are not able to provide an adequate account of how politeness works in all periods. The first chapter provides a succinct theoretical overview and sharp critique of extant work. The general approach taken by the book is a mixed one, combining both a first-order approach (i.e., one that focuses on what non-academic users do and their understandings) in the examination of politeness vocabulary and discourses on politeness, and a second-order approach (i.e., one that focuses on what academic observers do and their concepts) in theorizing about, for example, conceptualizations of politeness (e.g., the notions of “negative politeness” and “positive politeness”). Regarding the latter, the book contains some important innovations, as I will note below. 1005831 ENGXXX10.1177/00754242211005831Journal of English LinguisticsBook Review book-review2021
{"title":"Book Review: Politeness in the History of English: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day","authors":"Jonathan Culpeper","doi":"10.1177/00754242211005831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242211005831","url":null,"abstract":"Politeness in the history of English is certainly not the first book to be written in that topic area. 2018 saw the publication of Keith Thomas’s much lauded In pursuit of civility: anners and civilization in early modern England. But that is a book written by a historian for people interested in history. The inescapable fact is that politeness, and related notions such as “civility” and “manners,” is mainly constituted in language. This is the first monograph written by a linguist focusing on the language of politeness in the history of English. To be sure, linguists have written papers on the language of English politeness in particular texts, genres, and periods, but this is the first work to encompass the broad sweep from its beginnings in the Middle Ages through to the present day. That in itself is a huge challenge, which partly explains why nobody has done it before. Seven of the ten chapters, diachronically organized, survey the development of politeness in Britain. Jucker uses a journey metaphor, specifically an “extended road trip,” to explain how he handles breadth and depth: he journeys through time, stopping to take pictures, “both close-ups of interesting details and longshot panoramas of entire sceneries” (xi). Parts of that road have been travelled by other scholars, who also have taken pictures. These pictures/studies are judiciously used, often with updatings and new framings, to fill in any gaps in Jucker’s own many studies. It would be a mistake to think that this is simply a descriptive work. Popular theories and frameworks of linguistic politeness, developed in pragmatics and interactional linguistics, are not able to provide an adequate account of how politeness works in all periods. The first chapter provides a succinct theoretical overview and sharp critique of extant work. The general approach taken by the book is a mixed one, combining both a first-order approach (i.e., one that focuses on what non-academic users do and their understandings) in the examination of politeness vocabulary and discourses on politeness, and a second-order approach (i.e., one that focuses on what academic observers do and their concepts) in theorizing about, for example, conceptualizations of politeness (e.g., the notions of “negative politeness” and “positive politeness”). Regarding the latter, the book contains some important innovations, as I will note below. 1005831 ENGXXX10.1177/00754242211005831Journal of English LinguisticsBook Review book-review2021","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/00754242211005831","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48041400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1177/0075424221999095
Victorina González-Díaz
This paper explores the development and establishment of intensificatory tautology (specifically, size-adjective clusters, e.g., “great big plans,” “little tiny room”) in the history of English. The analysis suggests that size-adjective clusters appear in the Late Middle English period as a result of the functional-structural reorganization of the English noun phrase. It is only towards the end of the Early Modern English period that they start to become (relatively) productive in the language, and in Present-Day English that they acquire a wide(r) intensifying functional range (i.e., adjective modifier, emphasizer, degree intensifier) and become associated with informal, spoken-based registers. More broadly, the paper suggests that more research is needed as regards the role of collocation in processes of intensifier creation in the noun phrase and, more generally, as regards how collocation interacts with word-formation processes in this context.
{"title":"Intensificatory Tautology in the History of English: A Corpus-based Study","authors":"Victorina González-Díaz","doi":"10.1177/0075424221999095","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424221999095","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the development and establishment of intensificatory tautology (specifically, size-adjective clusters, e.g., “great big plans,” “little tiny room”) in the history of English. The analysis suggests that size-adjective clusters appear in the Late Middle English period as a result of the functional-structural reorganization of the English noun phrase. It is only towards the end of the Early Modern English period that they start to become (relatively) productive in the language, and in Present-Day English that they acquire a wide(r) intensifying functional range (i.e., adjective modifier, emphasizer, degree intensifier) and become associated with informal, spoken-based registers. More broadly, the paper suggests that more research is needed as regards the role of collocation in processes of intensifier creation in the noun phrase and, more generally, as regards how collocation interacts with word-formation processes in this context.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0075424221999095","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49478140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-25DOI: 10.1177/0075424221993850
Belén Méndez-Naya
Even though degree adverbs (e.g., swiþe) represent the most common intensification strategy in Old English, morphological devices are also very frequent, as expected in a predominantly synthetic language. This article studies synthetic intensification strategies in Old English with a focus on degree modification of adjectives and adverbs by means of spatial formatives (e.g., þurh- in þurhbitter ‘very bitter’ and for- in foreaþe ‘very easily’), paying attention both to the features of the intensifying formative and to the characteristics of the intensified base. Using the cognitive construct of the “Image Schema,” I show that the original spatial meaning of the formatives can help explain their combinatorial preferences in terms of boundedness. Of all the items studied, for- stands out as the most grammaticalized Old English spatial intensifying formative: it is semantically opaque, is very productive with both adjectives and adverbs, and has a very wide collocational profile.
{"title":"Synthetic Intensification Devices in Old English","authors":"Belén Méndez-Naya","doi":"10.1177/0075424221993850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424221993850","url":null,"abstract":"Even though degree adverbs (e.g., swiþe) represent the most common intensification strategy in Old English, morphological devices are also very frequent, as expected in a predominantly synthetic language. This article studies synthetic intensification strategies in Old English with a focus on degree modification of adjectives and adverbs by means of spatial formatives (e.g., þurh- in þurhbitter ‘very bitter’ and for- in foreaþe ‘very easily’), paying attention both to the features of the intensifying formative and to the characteristics of the intensified base. Using the cognitive construct of the “Image Schema,” I show that the original spatial meaning of the formatives can help explain their combinatorial preferences in terms of boundedness. Of all the items studied, for- stands out as the most grammaticalized Old English spatial intensifying formative: it is semantically opaque, is very productive with both adjectives and adverbs, and has a very wide collocational profile.","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0075424221993850","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49100726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-20DOI: 10.1177/0075424221999788
D. Denis
{"title":"Book Review: Creating Canadian English: The Professor, the Mountaineer, and a National Variety of English","authors":"D. Denis","doi":"10.1177/0075424221999788","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424221999788","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51803,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/0075424221999788","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41711485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-03-17DOI: 10.1177/0075424221991631
Turo Vartiainen
This paper examines the syntactic distribution of degree modifiers in both spoken and written English. The results of the empirical case studies show that degree modifiers, both amplifiers (e.g., very, extremely) and downtoners (e.g., quite, pretty), are generally more often used in predication than in attribution, a result that is in line with earlier observations of the distribution of individual modifiers. This synchronic trend is also evident in diachronic developments: corpus data show that the recent frequency increase of intensifying this and that has largely taken place in predication, and the adjectivization of a class of -ed participles (e.g., interested, scared) can also be connected to their frequent co-occurrence with degree modifiers after be. Finally, the connection between degree modifiers and predicative usage has recently become stronger for a subset of modifiers (e.g., so, this, that) due to the decline of the “Big Mess” construction (e.g., so good an idea). From a theoretical perspective, this paper promotes a dynamic, usage-based model of word classes where frequency of use plays a role in categorization. The data investigated in the article are mainly discussed from the perspective of usage-based Construction Grammar, and the theoretical implications of the findings are examined both in light of a more traditional Construction Grammar network model of language and some recent ideas of overlapping word classes.
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