Textual and interpersonal differences between a news report and an editorial

While news reports and editorials may center on very similar experiential content, obviously, their purposes are very different: to inform in the case of the report, and to argue for a particular line of thought on a given situation in the editorial. This paper demonstrates how systemic functional linguistics (SFL) can highlight just how these different ends are achieved linguistically, focusing on the textual meta-function through Theme choice and through the use of textual adjuncts, and on the interpersonal meta-function, through choices in the system of APPRAISAL, especially through the sub-systems of ATTITUDE and ENGAGEMENT. Results from analysis of a news report and an editorial show that the editorial indeed does make recourse to more overtly present interpersonal devices; this is not to say that the news report disguises the authorial presence entirely, as textual devices, such as conjuncts like however, indicate what a writer’s expectations of his/her readers are

A (FORENSIC) STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ADVERBIALS OF ATTITUDE AND EMPHASIS IN SUPREME COURT DECISIONS IN PHILIPPINE ENGLISH

Contemporarily, stylistics today has developed into its multiplicity – one of which is forensic stylistics. Being a powerfully legal written discourse, Supreme Court decisions are a rich corpus in which linguistic vis-a-vis stylistic choices of Court justices could be examined. This study is a humble attempt at stylistically analyzing Supreme Court decisions in Philippine English (PhE) drafted by two Filipino justices. Specifically, it sought to investigate on the classes, placements, and environments of adverbials of attitude and emphasis employed by the two justices, and drew their implications to teaching and learning English for Legal Purposes (ELP). Using McMenamin (2012), Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985), and Dita’s (2011) frameworks, 54 randomly selected Supreme Court decisions as primary sources of legal language were analyzed. Results are the following. Firstly, the classes of adverbials of attitude in Supreme Court decisions in PhE used by the two judges were the evaluation to the subject of the clause, judgment to the whole clause, and evaluation to an action performed by the subject of the clause, while those adverbials of emphasis were adverbials of conviction and doubt. Secondly, both adverbials they used have placements that were frequently medial and less initial in sentences where they belonged. Thirdly, the two justices put their adverbials within two principal environments, i.e. within functor, and before/after the verb among others. In these regards, legal and stylistic explanations with respect to these recurrent linguistic features in the two justices’ Court decisions were revealed. Implications of the study to ELP are explained. Lastly, trajectories for future (forensic) stylistic analyses have been recommended.

Native and non-native variation in adverbial and adjectival intensification: A corpus-based study of UK and Ghanaian parliamentary debates

Studies on the use of adverbs and adjectives by nonnative speakers of English have largely focused on learner corpus. Using Hansards of British and Ghanaian parliamentary debates as data, this paper attempts to partly fill this gap by comparatively examining the use of adverbs and adjectives as intensifiers by British parliamentarians as first/native speakers of English and Ghanaian parliamentarians as second language/non-native speakers of English. Parliamentarians’ use of adverbial and adjectival intensification is consequent on parliamentary debates being truth and validity judgement, which includes speaker involvement and commitment. While both groups of MPs employ intensifiers to strengthen their convictions and arguments, it leads to exaggeration. However, the British parliamentarians use more complex adverbs and adjectives than their Ghanaian counterparts, who use simpler forms. The paper has implications for second language teaching and learning, the theory of nativisation and the characterisation of Ghanaian English

Secondary grammaticalization and the English adverbial –ly suffix

Author's version of an article in the journal: Language sciences. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2014.10.003This paper discusses the secondary grammaticalization of the English adverbial -ly suffix and makes claims about the concept of secondary grammaticalization. Secondary grammaticalization is defined as the development of a new grammatical function in an already grammatical element. It is shown that the development of the -ly suffix involves a number of the processes which are associated with grammaticalization, e.g. paradigmatization, specialization, obligatorification, subjectification, layering and persistence. However, none of these processes seem to be exclusive to secondary grammaticalization, as the process is defined here. It is argued that the concept of grammaticalization should be redefined, and some possible definitions are suggested. It is also suggested that future studies should divide grammaticalization processes into types according to the nature of the target element, as suggested by Kranich (this issue). Such an approach may perhaps uncover categorical differences between different types of grammaticalization processes. Another important claim is that the concept of obligatoriness should include both language internal obligatoriness and communicative obligatoriness, where the latter also includes socially determined obligatoriness. Further, the concept of paradigmaticity should include the opposition of social variants

Getting to ‘know’ connectors? Evaluating data-driven learning in a writing skills course

This paper sets out to evaluate the effect on learners’ knowledge and use of language of one prominent technique in corpus pedagogy, the data-driven use of corpus concordances with learners as researchers, or Data-Driven Learning (DDL) (Johns 1988, 1991). More specifically, the paper attempts measurement of the effect of DDL on the achievement of the goal of appropriate production by learners of logical connectors, an important subskill in the context of the wider objective of the acquisition of basic academic writing skills in English. The evaluation uses learner corpora from experimental and control groups, supported by other methods. The conclusion is that DDL, applied in the context of the communicative teaching of writing skills, is moderately effective, and that there is potential both for the further development of learner corpora in an evaluative role, and for use of a wider range of instrumentation

Morphological and syntactic identification of clauses of universal concession in British National Corpus

У статті розглянуто морфолого-синтаксичну організацію англійських речень універсальної поступки у сучасних англійських художніх драматичних, прозових та віршованих текстах Британського національного корпусу. У розрізі ідентифікації досліджуваних речень із семантичною поступальною дією провідну увагу зосереджено на узагальненні морфологічних та синтаксичних характеристик універсальних речень поступки із верифікацією статистичних даних їхньої реалізації у сучасному англійському корпусі. З’ясовано, що в художніх текстах Британського національного корпусу англійські речення універсальної поступки актуалізуються в чотирьох синтаксичних типах речень: у простих, складносурядних, складнопідрядних та когезивних типах, де клауза поступальної дії уводиться різними типами сполучників на кшталт though, even though, although; in any case, in spite of; yet … (al)though тощо із / без пунктуаційного маркування для когезивного типу. Морфологічні риси засобів синтаксичного зв’язку визначено в трьох типах клауз поступки із гіпотактичним, паратактичним, когезивним сполучниковим зв’язком у морфологічній конфігурації як: «прості засоби зв’язку – сполучники або прислівники», «складні або композитні засоби зв’язку – прийменникові фрази», «корелятивні засоби зв’язку – корелятивні сполучники або диз’юнкти». Виявлено сім базових морфолого-синтаксичних підтипів англійських речень універсальної поступки із синтаксичним окресленням моделей концесивних клауз як: фінітна / нефінітна -ed (-ing) партиципна / нефінітна to інфінітивна / номінативна / препозиційна / ад’єктивна / адвербна клауза поступки. Для ідентифікації структурної семантичної сітки досліджуваних речень з урахуванням корпусного аналізу в термінах семантичної розмітки тегування із коллокацією [+1 Right] праворуч від сполучника універсальної поступки встановлено та обчислено кількісні показники дев’яти структурно-семантичних типів концесивних клауз в узгодженні сполучника поступки із дієслівною, іменниковою, прикметниковою, прислівниковою, сполучниковою, прийменниковою, займенниковою категоріальною фразою, а також узгодження з артиклем та пунктуацією.The article investigates morphological and syntactic organization of English sentences of universal concession in modern English fiction dramatic, prose and verse texts of the British National Corpus. In the context of the studied sentences identification with the semantics of concessive action, the main attention is focused on generalization of morphological and syntactic characteristics of universal sentences of concession with the verification of their statistical data implementation in the modern English corpus. It has been found out that in the fiction texts of the British National Corpus English sentences of universal concession are actualized in four syntactic types of sentences: in simple, compound, complex, and cohesive types, where the concessive action clause is introduced by various types of conjunctions such as though, even though, although; in any case, in spite of; yet … (al)though etc. with / without punctuation for the cohesive type. Morphological features of means of syntactic connection are defined in three types of clauses of concession with hypotactic, paratactic, cohesive conjunction coherence in the morphological configuration as: “simple means of connection – conjunctions or adverbs”, “complex or composite means of connection – prepositional phrases”, “correlative means of connection – correlative conjunctions or disjuncts”. Seven basic morphological and syntactic subtypes of English sentences of universal concession have been identified with the syntactic description of models of concessive clauses as: finite / non-finite -ed (-ing) participial / non-finite to infinitive / nominative / prepositional / adjective / adverb clause of concession. In order to identify the structural semantic grid of the studied sentences, taking into account the corpus analysis in terms of the semantic marking tagging with the collocation [+1 Right] to the right of the conjunction of the universal concession, the quantitative indicators of nine structural and semantic types of concessive clauses are determined and calculated in the adjustment of the concessive conjunction with any verb, noun, adjectival, adverbial, conjunctive, prepositional, pronominal categorical phrase, as well as the agreement with any article and punctuation

A corpus-based comparative pragmatic analysis of Irish English and Canadian English

This PhD thesis is a comparative study of the spoken grammar of Irish and Canadian Englishes within the framework of Variational Pragmatics at the formal level, used to study the pragmatic variation (the intra-varietal differences) in terms of forms and pragmatic functions. It is a study of spoken grammar as a whole (in a comparative and representative way between and across two varieties of English). Corpus linguistics is used as a methodological tool in order to conduct this research, exploring the nature of spoken grammar usage in both varieties comparatively in relation to their pragmatic functions and forms. The study illustrates an iterative approach in which top-down and bottom-up processes are used to establish pragmatic markers and their pragmatic functions in spoken grammar in the two varieties. Top-down analysis employs a framework for spoken grammar based on existing literature while the bottom-up process is based on micro-analysis of the data. The corpora used in the study are the spoken components of two International Corpus of English (ICE) corpora, namely ICE-Ireland and ICE-Canada comprising 600,000 words each (approximately). Methodologically, this study is not purely corpus-based nor corpus-driven but employs both methods. This iterative approach aligns with the notions of corpus-based versus corpus-driven linguistics and perspectives. Corpus tools are used to generate wordlists of the top 100 most frequent word and cluster lists. These are then analysed through qualitative analysis in order to identify whether or not they are a part of the spoken grammar. This process results in a candidate list that can then be functionally categorised and compared across varieties in terms of forms and functions. Specifically, the study offers insights on pragmatic markers: discourse markers, response tokens, questions, hedges and stance markers in Irish and Canadian English. The results offer a baseline description of the commonalities and differences in terms of spoken grammar and pragmatics across the two varieties of English which may have application to the study of other varieties of English. Also, the prominent forms of spoken grammar across these two varieties can be further explored from a macro-social perspective (e.g. age, gender, or social class) and a micro-social perspective (e.g. social distance or social dominance) and how these interplay with pragmatic choices.N

Adverzativní diskurzní konektory "however" a "instead" v odborném textu

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá větnými modifikátory sloužícími jako prostředky textové návaznosti however a instead v anglických odborných textech. Jelikož pozice konektorů není pevně daná, tato práce si klade za cíl zkoumat propojení mezi možnými pozicemi konektorů a jejich dalšími vlastnostmi jako jsou interpunkce a výskyt s jinými větnými členy. Práce tedy zkoumá výskyt daných konektorů, zabývá se popisem jejich syntaktických vlastností, postavením ve větě a interpunkcí. Tato práce je založena na získání 100 příkladů z Britského národního korpusu, přičemž 50 vět obsahuje konektor however a zbylých 50 vět konektor instead. Hlavním cílem bylo zmapovat užívání however a instead v odborných textech a popsat tak užití těchto dvou prostředků textové návaznosti a další aspekty, které jsou s danou pozicí ve větě úzce spjaty (interpunkce, výskyt s jinými elementy). Jednotlivé části analýzy vycházejí z pozice konektorů. Proto významná část analýzy je věnována stanovení pozic konektorů ve větě podle pozičních vzorců. Následně byly zkoumány interpunkce a výskyt s jinými elementy. Klíčová slova: adverzativní konektory, however, instead, pozice, interpunkce, výskyt s jinými elementyThe present study aims at discussing two connectives however and instead in academic texts. As the conjuncts are known to be rather free in their position, this study analyzes the interconnection of the possible position and other characteristics of the conjuncts i.e. the punctuation and co-occurrences. This thesis is a corpus based study. The corpus chosen for the analysis is the British National Corpus. The analysis itself is carried out on 100 examples, i.e. 50 examples of sentences containing however and 50 examples of sentences containing instead. The objective of this thesis is to examine the use of however and instead in the academic texts. In other words, it describes the usage of the two connectives as well as the possible tendencies that can be observed i.e. punctuation, co-occurrences. Individual sections of the analysis are based on the position of the conjuncts. Therefore a significant part of the analysis is dedicated to determining the position of the conjuncts based on the previously established position formulas. Further, punctuation and co-occurrences of conjuncts are analyzed as a follow-up to the position results. Key words: adversative conjuncts, however, instead, position, punctuation, co-occurrencesDepartment of the English Language and ELT MethodologyÚstav anglického jazyka a didaktikyFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art