Same time, across time: simultaneity clauses from late modern to present-day english

In this paper we offer a diachronic analysis of simultaneity subordinator as against the background of simultaneity subordinators while, whilst, when from 1650 to the end of the 20th century. The present survey makes use of data extracted from the British English component of ARCHER (version 3.1), focusing in particular on fiction, the register par excellence for the use of simultaneity subordinators. We analyse our data according to a selection of parameters (ordering, verb type, duration, tense and aspect, subject identity, simultaneity type) and show that, against a background of relatively stability, the major change is a dramatic increase in the frequency of simultaneity as-clauses from the first half of the 19th century onwards. Adapting the historical work on stylistic change by Biber and Finegan (1989, 1997), as well as theoretical and experimental accounts of the semantics of English simultaneity markers, we highlight an interesting parallelism between the spread of as-clauses in oral narrative from childhood to adulthood and the spread of as-clauses in modern fiction. In either case, the spread of as may be symptomatic of an evolution in narrative techniques, particularly in respect of the means by which complex events are typically represented

Adverbs on the move:Investigating publisher application of corpus research on recent language change to ELT coursebook development

While the role of corpus linguistics (CL) in language teaching and learning continues to evolve, its use in the language teaching industry remains somewhat unclear. The specific ways in which ELT publishers use CL research to inform materials development are under-studied, meaning that it is not known whether CL is being used by publishers to its full potential. This study investigates the use of CL research by a major international ELT publisher by conducting research into recent change in adverbs in casual spoken British English and sharing the findings with editors from the publisher. Through our analysis, we find evidence of major recent changes in the use of frequent adverbs. Following the corpus analysis, we conducted in-depth interviews with the editors and a review of the materials they subsequently produced using the corpus findings. In so doing, we find some evidence of effective use of corpora in materials development but reveal limitations in current corpus research which prevent editors from employing CL research more effectively

A functional-pragmatic approach to if/si-constructions in English, French and Spanish: A corpus-based study

This thesis explores if/si-constructions in English, French and Spanish, from a functional-pragmatic and corpus-based perspective. The analysis comprises both conditional constructions and cases of insubordination introduced by the same conjunctions, with the belief that the examination of both types of constructions in parallel will offer new light on their characterization. The theoretical framework proposed is based on the three metafunctions distinguished in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) and the data analysed are retrieved from parliamentary discourse and conversations corpora in the three languages

Language and Linguistics in a Complex World Data, Interdisciplinarity, Transfer, and the Next Generation. ICAME41 Extended Book of Abstracts

This is a collection of papers, work-in-progress reports, and other contributions that were part of the ICAME41 digital conference

Language and Linguistics in a Complex World Data, Interdisciplinarity, Transfer, and the Next Generation. ICAME41 Extended Book of Abstracts

This is a collection of papers, work-in-progress reports, and other contributions that were part of the ICAME41 digital conference

A corpus-based study of Malaysia ESL students' use of discourse connectors in upper and post-secondry argumentative writing

Discourse connectors (DCs) are one of the elements of cohesive devices that bring about cohesion to a piece of writing or speech. They are potentially useful means for writers,particularly in ESL and EFL writing pedagogic settings. DCs usefulness is two-pronged. First, they help and guide readers through the text, and then they are tools for writers to engage with their readers. It has been well-documented that appropriate and efficient use of DCs will create a coherent flow of the text. However, second/foreign language learners have some difficulties to use them efficiently and systematically in their writing. Literature review shows that the Malaysian ESL students are also suffering from improper and efficient use of DCs which leads them in failing to produce a cohesive text. Surprisingly, no single study was found in the context of Malaysia to investigate Malaysian ESL students’ understanding and use of DCs. Hence, this study attempted to investigate and understand the nature and the use of the DCs in the Malaysian student writing compared with Native speakers writing. The study also was set to examine the correlation between the frequency use of the DCs and the quality of writing. The final goal of this research study was to find out to what extent Malaysian ESL students are committing errors while using DCs. A corpus-based approach was adopted to meet the objectives of the study. To this end,an argumentative topic was assigned to the Form 4, Form 5 (upper-secondary) and the first year college students (post-secondary) and they were asked to write about the given topic in the classroom and submit their works to the instructors. They were required to write 250 words within 45 minutes. Upon compilation of the essays, the Malaysian Corpus of Students' Argumentative Writing (MCSAW) was built with ≃ 600,000 tokens. To compare and find out a vivid picture of Malaysian ESL students use of DCs with Native English Speakers, the Louvain Corpus of Native Essay Writing [LOCNESS] corpus was used. Oxford Wordsmith Tools (5) was employed to extract data from corpus for analysis, by using frequency count and concordance functions. Aiming to identify what type of DCs is used by Malaysian ESL students, Discourse Connector List developed by Rezvani Kalajahi and Neufeld (2014) was used. To be able to examine the relationship between the quality of writing and the frequency of the use of the DCs, ESL composition profile offered by Jacobs et al. (1981) was utilized. Finally, a framework of identification of DCs error type was developed by the researcher to explore the errors that students commit while using DCs. Findings of this study entail three phases. First, it was observed that Malaysian students tend to use DCs more frequently than native students. The overall frequency of the use of the DCs between Malaysian and native students was statistically significant at p < .05. However, the native students used more variety of DCs types than Malaysian students (398vs.328). It was also found that Malaysian students use DCs in some categories frequently and infrequently. Based on the findings in the native students writing (LOCNESS Corpus), the most frequent DCs in written English were offered. Second,there was a very weak negative but insignificant correlation between writing quality and the frequency of the use of the DCs in the writing of Malaysian ESL students. Finally,the qualitative analysis revealed that the erroneous use of DCs made by Malaysian ESL student writers mainly manifested in eight different categories. They had problems with the use of these devices which involved semantic, syntactic, stylistic, positional and mechanical errors. They also appeared to have tendency for unnecessary addition, omission, and redundant repetition of the DCs. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that Malaysian ESL students’ use of DCs was still at an evolving level. It is vitally important that the accurate use of DCs in writing among Malaysian students be further highlighted in the classrooms through using concordance lines and adopting explicit instruction technique. Besides, material developers may take the outcome of the research into consideration and could find out possible ways to distribute and introduce DCs systematically across the educational levels

A Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Conclusions in Research Articles of Linguistics

The research article section, especially the introduction, has been a focus of scholarly discourse research for many years while linguistic strategies in the conclusion of research articles remain understudied. Moreover, most of the previous studies discussed linguistic features from the perspective of single-language strategies. Given this, this paper adopted an MDA (multi-dimensional analysis) method (Biber, 1988) to analyze the distribution of 67 linguistics features in the conclusions of 200 RAs (Research Articles) with the aid of the corpus tool MAT (Multi-dimensional Analysis Tagger) devised by Nini. The result showed that the dimension scores directed to the negative polarity for Dimension 1 (Mean=-15.80, SD=5.40), Dimension 2 (Mean=-2.61, SD=2.08) and Dimension 4 (Mean=-1.62, SD=2.74), and positive polarity for Dimension 3 (Mean=7.33, SD=2.85), Dimension 5 (Mean=5.47, SD=3.05), which indicated that conclusions of linguistic RAs are presented as informational-dense, relatively context-independent, less explicitly persuasive, highly technical, and abstract. Besides, the main linguistic features that contributed to the language variation of the RAs conclusion writing in Linguistics are Nouns, Attributive adjectives, Present tenses, Past participial WHIZ deletions, Phrasal coordination, Nominalization, Pied piping constructions, Infinitive TO, Possibility modals (e.g. may, might), Suasive verbs and Agentless passives. The study revealed the specific distribution of linguistic features of conclusion writing in RAs, highlighting the nature of informativeness and the abstractness of academic writing. This study may have some implications for writing academic papers, especially for graduates studying linguistics.&nbsp

Ship English: Sailors’ speech in the early colonial Caribbean

This&nbsp;book presents evidence in support of the hypothesis that Ship English of the early Atlantic colonial period was a distinct variety with characteristic features. It is motivated by the recognition that late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century sailors’ speech was potentially an influential variety in nascent creoles and English varieties of the Caribbean, yet few academic studies have attempted to define the characteristics of this speech. Therefore, the two principal aims of this study were, firstly, to outline the socio-demographics of the maritime communities and examine how variant linguistic features may have developed and spread among these communities, and, secondly, to generate baseline data on the characteristic features of Ship English. The methodology’s data collection strategy targeted written representations of sailors’ speech prepared or published between the dates 1620 and 1750, and prioritized documents that were composed by working mariners. These written representations were then analyzed following a mixed methods triangulation design that converged the qualitative and quantitative data to determine plausible interpretations of the most likely spoken forms. Findings substantiate claims that there was a distinct dialect of English that was spoken by sailors during the period of early English colonial expansion. They also suggest that Ship English was a sociolect formed through the mixing, leveling and simplification processes of koinization. Indicators suggest that this occupation-specific variety stabilized and spread in maritime communities through predominantly oral speech practices and strong affiliations among groups of sailors. It was also transferred to port communities and sailors’ home regions through regular contact between sailors speaking this sociolect and the land-based service-providers and communities that maintained and supplied the fleets. Linguistic data show that morphological characteristics of Ship English are evident at the word-level, and syntactic characteristics are evident not only in phrase construction but also at the larger clause and sentence levels, whilst discourse is marked by characteristic patterns of subordination and culture-specific interjection patterns. The newly-identified characteristics of Ship English detailed&nbsp;here provide baseline data that may now serve as an entry point for scholars to integrate this language variety into the discourse on dialect variation in Early Modern English period and the theories on pidgin and creole genesis as a result of language contact in the early colonial period. In this thoroughly researched and brilliantly written volume, Sally Delgado opens up vitally important new avenues for the study of the role of marginalized peoples such as sailors and convicts in the emergence of creole languages and other contact varieties of the colonial era. Since the ground-breaking work of Ian Hancock some decades ago, we have been waiting for a coherent and comprehensive work such as this to establish a framework and data base for making the systematic investigation of Ship English a reality. (Nicholas Faraclas, University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus) The historiography of creole languages has long included frequent references to maritime English with only sketchy indication of just what this kind of speech was like. Sally Delgado has at last provided a comprehensive survey of a dialect that emerged on shipboard among sailors, which became one element in the new Englishes that emerged worldwide amidst the transatlantic slave trade and beyond. Anyone interested in creole languages, as well as those who would like their acquaintance with sailors' speech in the past to get beyond the likes of "Aye, matey", should consult this new volume. (John H McWhorter, Columbia University) While classes on “World English” are increasingly being included in university curricula, they provide little on how that language left the shores of Britain in the first place, and what it was like; until now, research in dialect studies on what was spoken on board ship during the early colonial period has been minimal. Dr. Delgado’s book is the first full-length study to address this; in addition to examining the distinctive characteristics of Ship English as an occupational register, it proposes that as the earliest contact variety, it provided the input in the formation of the Atlantic English-lexifier creoles. A groundbreaking study, essential reading for dialectologist and creolist alike. (Ian Hancock, The University of Texas