The event semantics of conjuncts in ‘The Sun Also Rises’

Abstract The present paper explores the semantics of Hemingway’s ‘plain style’ in The Sun Also Rises by combining corpus linguistic methodology with event semantics theory. The focus of the study is on how the narrator of the novel segments experienced situations in terms of semantic events. Corpus linguistic analysis shows that the ‘plain style’ of the narrative section of the novel is realized by means of coordinated clauses and that the narrator’s event segmentation is associated with a small set of preferred lexical items. These results are interpreted in terms of event semantics to show that preferred lexical items are indicative of event types typical of the narrative section. The semantic analysis of relations between coordinated clauses indicates that these relations are not simply about the juxtaposition of disjoined events. Finally, the study demonstrates that an approach combining corpus linguistic methodology with insights from event semantics can offer new understanding of the propositional meaning of literary texts, and the way narrators encode experienced situations.