The Semantics of MOOD and the Syntax of the Let’s-construction in English: A Corpus-based Cardiff Grammar Approach

This thesis is a study of the syntax of multi-verb constructions, in which a single clause contains more than one verbal element. Multi-verb constructions are of special interest in light of the hypothesis that clausal structure is headed by a verb. Implemented in terms of extended projections, this hypothesis states that clausal functional structure is the extended projection of a verb. A full understanding of multi-verbal constructions, in which there is no one-to-one verb–clause mapping, relies on refinements of the intimate relation between clause structure and the verbal category. Analyzing various types of multi-verb constructions in Ndebele, a Bantu language of Zimbabwe, I propose a theory multi-verbal syntax which makes explicit the ways in which a single extended projection may contain more than one verb. I propose a basic distinction within the verbal category into projecting verbs and non-projecting verbs. Projecting verbs have the ability to head a full clause and are what we typically think of as lexical verbs. Non-projecting verbs, on the other hand, are inherently unable to project full clausal structure. There are two types of non-projecting verbs in Ndebele. Aspectual auxiliaries are lexical items whose category feature has mixed properties: it has properties of both a lexical verb and some functional head in the clausal spine. The mixed properties are detected by different aspects of their syntax. The second type of non-projecting verb is the default auxiliary (be, in Ndebele), used in compound tenses. The default auxiliary is a verbal expletive, which becomes part of the derivation via last-resort selection. Any multi-verbal construction with more than one lexical (projecting) verb necessarily contains more than one extended projection. Additionally, the thesis is concerned with the role of two syntactic dependencies in the inflectional domain: agreement and selection. Both relations are involved in determining the morphological shape of multi-verb constructions by posing restrictions on the form, category and size of the main lexical verb. Depending on the light/auxiliary verb, it can be a participle (imperfective, past or future), have a subjunctive form (present or past), or be infinitival/clausal. It is argued that such cooccurrence patterns are largely predictable from clause structure and agreement. Selection is involved only in a small set of idiosyncratic cases of complement selection.

The present study investigates L2 speakers’ use of multi-word verbs (MWVs) in spoken, interactive communication. It focuses on two specific types of MWVs: phrasal verbs (e.g. carry out, get up) and phrasal prepositional verbs (e.g. look up to, get along with). Its main aim is to use corpus methods in order to examine i) how L2 speakers use MWVs in terms of frequency, lexical verb and particle productivity, number and type of non-canonical MWV forms as well as polysemy, and ii) whether learner variables (i.e. L2 proficiency and L1 background) and situational variables (i.e. task type) mediate L2 speakers’ use of MWVs. The study draws on data from the Trinity Lancaster Corpus (Gablasova, Brezina & McEnery, forthcoming), a large-scale POS-tagged corpus of L2 spoken production consisting of 4.2 million running words. More specifically, the speech of 1,348 L2 speakers was analysed. The speakers were at three different levels of L2 proficiency (i.e. B1, B2 and C1-C2) according to the Common European Framework of Reference and came from three different L1 backgrounds: Chinese, Italian and Spanish. MWVs were automatically extracted via the Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al., 2014) using tags based on Corpus Query Language (CQL). The automatic extraction was followed by a manual scrutiny of the results to discard false positives. For the analysis of data, both descriptive and inferential statistics were used. With respect to overall MWV frequency patterns, the results indicated that there was a relatively low MWV representation in L2 production, with a few high-frequency MWVs accounting for the majority of MWV occurrences in the corpus. A variety of non-canonical MWVs were also found; most of these forms were one-off occurrences produced mainly by the most advanced L2 speakers. Four patterns of non-canonical MWV use were identified including, for example, the combination of a lexical verb with a redundant particle and the creation of novel MWVs. The study also provided evidence of a frequency-polysemy phenomenon in which the most polysemous MWVs that the L2 speakers produced featured among the most frequent MWVs in the corpus. In terms of the relationship between learner variables and L2 MWV production, the results showed that the main effect for L2 proficiency on MWV use was not statistically significant, which indicated that gains in proficiency did not seem to translate into a high MWV frequency. In contrast, L1 background was found to be a significant factor mediating MWV use. From the three L1 backgrounds studied, Chinese L1 speakers appeared to use more MWVs per thousand words than Italian and Spanish L1 speakers. Moreover, the results revealed a large inter-speaker variation across proficiency levels and L1 backgrounds, and they also provided evidence of topic effects on MWV use given that particular MWVs recurred in the context of specific topics. Regarding task-related variables, the effect of speaking task type on MWV production was found to be statistically significant. The only monologic, pre-planned task contained not only a higher number but also a wider range of MWVs than the dialogic, unplanned tasks that were analysed. The MWVs in the monologic task tended to function as part of transitions in the context of delivering oral presentations (e.g. now let’s move on to the next point). The same MWVs found in the monologic task also occurred in the dialogic tasks. However, rather than serving as part of transitions in those tasks, these MWVs expressed a variety of meaning senses. The findings of this study both complement and add to previous research on MWVs in L2 contexts, particularly by showing important trends of MWV use in a spoken, interactive context and across a variety of L2 proficiency levels, L1 backgrounds and speaking tasks. The study also contributes to broaden our understanding of the MWV knowledge that L2 users possess, which has been found to enhance L2 speakers’ communicative competence and facilitate both language production and comprehension.

A functional approach to two ‘focussing’ constructions in English and Chinese

Amy Neale’s contribution is located within the approach to TRANSITIVITY developed within the Cardiff Grammar (CG) version of systemic theory. Building on the Systemic Functional notions of “Process”, “system network” and “delicacy” and extending the semantic classification of verb senses, she provides an alternative approach to Levin’s (1993) for modelling paradigmatic relations between verb senses. After outlining how verbal alternations such as the “dative alternation” can be handled by the CG through the lexicogrammar, the article deals in more detail with alternating constructions which involve different Participant Role configurations, positing that they demonstrate a change in the verb sense conveyed and should be thus treated as examples of “near equivalences”.

In legal context, lawsuits are considered as important reports and documents because they involve verdicts or the same decision of the judicial authority. All or some of the verdicts of the dispute are resolved. So, they are binding and decisive. By examining the texts, it was clearly seen that they are ellipsis and ambiguities which are included some verbs and nominal groups that according to equivalent-deletion rule are omitted. Actually, these ambiguities and ellipsis arose over the coordination of one verb with another one by using and as relative clause in order to avoid the repetition. The nominal groups as subjects which are omitted because of the topicalization to make passive sentence is another ambiguous factor. Therefore, the first question of the present article is what each clause of the written lawsuits represent according to Halliday’s transitivity model and the second question of the research seeks which process, participants, and circumstances have the most frequency. Whatever were mentioned above leads to select and analyze 48 criminal and legal lawsuits randomly from the 50s to the 90s by utilization of the transitivity model from Halliday’s ideational metafunction as an efficient tool. Frist of all, the ellipsis elements are found into the text. Then, by diagnosis of the sort of the process in terms of semantically; the variety of the participants would recognize. Afterwards the sort of circumstances of each clause demonstrate the manner and reason of the occurrence of process. All the elements of transitivity model are represented in a table. The descriptive statistics have been used to measure the frequency of data and some tables are drawn to show them. At the end, all the frequencies would compare and interpret. According to the first question of this research, the material process in legal discourse involves the performance of action. Same clauses which in terms of discourse are related with this kind of process show the strength of the verbal of the judge or prosecutor. Such clauses are more active and dynamic. The sort of the participants which are more used in this process are goal and actor. So, the goal participant indicates that in this genre, the action is more important than the actor, for this reason the clauses are seen as topicalization with a passive structure. In some clauses, the relational process expresses and explains the situation and the scene of crime. however, it describes the reason of the issued verdicts in another clauses. Therefore, the gender of its participants is identified, identifier, carrier, and attributing. the attributing is the only participants which has the highest frequency. In fact, the description of the situation is more significant. The clauses which are included a speech by a person as a judicial representative that they announce the final verdict is verbal process. In this process, participants are sayer, receiver, and target. The only participant which is more used in these texts is target because it is more important to know the results of the discussion and the decision. Some clauses which are representing the desire and aspiration are a mental process with the participants of the sensor and the phenomenon or stimulus. Such clauses are made by the person as defendant or claimant, so they don’t have verbal power in terms of discourse. The existence of evidence implies an existential process, and the only participant in this process is the existing element, so the first hypothesis is acceptable. The second question showed that the material process has the highest frequency. in this way the second hypothesis is rejected. The conclusions demonstrated that the legal genre emphasizes on the validity of the verdicts and the characteristics of each clauses were included: order to take action and commutation, explain and comment the situation, express the facts and evidence in the crime scene, announce and request the verdicts because all processes are observed except the behavioral process. No such statement was found in such texts to indicate the external manifestations of the acts. The writing style of these texts shows, the documents and evidences are stated at first, then the verdict and judgment are written. In general, the frequency of the material process demonstrated that the legal genre emphasizes the necessity of enforcing judgments and instructions rather than external behaviors. It seems that there is a correlation between the type of processes and the circumstances’ elements; Because the circumstances’ elements which are more commutation and act, they show the necessity of carrying out the sentences. In the legal genre of litigation, this circumstances’ element emphases on the enforceability of judgments. Key words: lawsuit, legal text, transitivity model, and ideational metafunction.

Researchers of the ba construction in the acquisition of children’s language have often suggested that children start using the ba construction very early and may not be fully proficient in the construction until 5 years old. However, little research conducted on the status of ba in the early stage in language acquisition. In Hsieh’s (2009) research, using the longitudinal data collected from her own child, she proposed that there are five stages marking the development of the ba construction. Nevertheless, it seems extremely premature to posit the assumption with the data from only one child. Therefore, the aim of this thesis attempts to use a corpus-based study to test the hypothesis that ba is firstly acquired as a lexical verb in the acquisition of child’s language not as a grammaticalized category as in adults’ language. In this research, four children’s spontaneous speech data are collected and analyzed. Since it is believed that children’s grammatical errors can represent their deficiency in the knowledge of adults’ language, we try to analyze those non-adult-like ba constructions found in the children’s spontaneous speech. Results of this study showed that the children in our study began using ba construction quite early and their non-adult-like ba construction, the error ratio, dropped as the children getting matured. Furthermore, three sets of condition found in the spontaneous production data can be the effective evidence to argue that our hypothesis that ba is firstly acquired as a lexical verb may be valid. The three evidences are presented as following respectively: (i) omission of VP in the ba construction; (ii) only canonical ba sentence appears; (iii) the bare verb form ceases to appear at a certain age. To conclude, this research may be of importance in exploring the acquisition of ba construction in children’s language through a corpus-based study, as well as in establishing the hypothesis that ba is a lexical verb in the early stage in children’s language.

The study deals with emphatic constructions in English and Arabic scientific texts. To the researcher’s best knowledge, this topic received little attention from linguistic researchers, exceptionally in functional grammar analysis. The importance of this study arises from the fact that some syntactic forms are effective linguistic choices for conveying the meaning of emphasis to the readers. The study aims to identify and analyze different types of linguistic constructions in English and Arabic scientific texts and show the similarities and differences between the two types of scientific texts under investigation. The study intends to analyze the structure of complex clauses by adopting Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2004) modal of ‘Systemic Functional Grammar’ of syntax and Prince’s (1978) modal of ‘Given-New’ information of discourse analysis. These models analyze-samples of English ‘Spaceport’ magazine and pieces of Arabic ‘Sadeem Bulletin’ magazine. Moreover, the study depends on a qualitative approach to answer the research questions and confirm its hypothesis. The results show that both languages use some syntactic forms, but Arabic is rich in its constructions. This difference is due to the nature and flexibility of both languages. The findings will be helpful for researchers concerned with syntax and scientific issues because it provides a rigorous analysis of complex clauses into simple parts and shows the focus of information in its suitable.

This study offers a Construction Grammar approach to the historical development and modern usage of future constructions in English, German, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish. On the basis of corpus data, constructions such as English be going to or German werden are analyzed as symbolic units that convey a range of temporal and modal meanings. A special focus lies on the main verbs that occur with these constructions. Statistical co-occurrence patterns between constructions and lexical items guide the semantic analyses in this study: It is argued that a construction that conventionally occurs with main verbs such as write or speak differs functionally from a construction that typically occurs with verbs such as rain or increase. The same approach is also applied historically: If a construction co-occurs with different main verbs at subsequent stages in time, this is seen as a sign of semantic change.

It is generally assumed within the tradition of Construction Grammar that the oblique grammatical function for the English caused-motion construction directly corresponds to a prepositional phrase (PP), such as in the jar in put the spoons in the jar. Opposed to the assumption, this paper argues that the oblique function actually narrowly corresponds to the noun phrase (NP) complement of the head preposition. On the other hand, the transitive preposition is an integral part of the predicate that it forms with a lexical verb, what we shall term a complex predicate. It is thus in phrasal syntax that the preposition, together with the oblique NP, forms or corresponds to the PP. This argument is supported by the class of phrasal verb constructions with so-called unpredicated particles, such as off in wipe off the table and wipe the table off (≠*The table is off). The paper also advances an alternative analysis of the construction with theoretical advantages.

When linguistic accounts describe the English similative construction, they tend to concentrate on its most prototypical formal variant, exemplified with the sentence Susy is like her sister. Nevertheless, linguistic data from the selected linguistic literature and The Corpus of Contemporary American English indicates many other expressions that code this construction. This paper attempts to compile and describe these expressions, grouping them into formal categories, whose semantic and formal structure is represented using the Construction Grammar formalism. Based on this formal examination, I will propose a formal taxonomy of the English similative construction, describing the taxonomic relations between higher level and lower level formal categories.

In serial verb constructions (SVCs), multiple independent lexical verbs are combined in a mono-clausal construction. SVCs express a range of grammatical meanings and are attested in numerous spoken languages all around the world. Yet, to date only few studies have investigated the existence and functions of SVCs in sign languages. For the most part, these studies—including a previous study on Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT)—relied on elicited data. In this article, we offer a cross-modal typological contribution to the study of SVCs by investigating the phenomenon based on naturalistic corpus data from NGT. A search of the Corpus NGT yielded 41 mono-clausal utterances in which one of a closed set of verbs—namely go, give, take, and call—combines with another lexical verb. While the combinations we found are in important respects reminiscent of SVCs described for spoken languages, our data also confirm the previous finding that the fixed verb in the SVC serves to express agreement (by means of spatial modulation) when the other verb cannot do so. In addition, we identified some novel uses of the verbs go and give: (i) go functioning as a future tense marker and (ii) give functioning as a light verb. We will also discuss aspects of the grammaticalization of SVCs in NGT: from lexical verb to light verb to auxiliary, again offering some comparison to grammaticalization paths described for spoken languages.

Halliday (1994: 106) states that the transitivity system allows us to ‘construe the world of experience into a manageable set of process types’. This type of ‘experiential’ meaning is manifested at the level of form in the Main Verb and its extensions. In the Cardiff Grammar (CG), these formal items realise the ‘Process’ in the clause and the associated ‘Participant Roles’ at the level of meaning.

Kearns (1988) has previously proposed two types of Light Verb Constructions in English: True Light Verb Constructions and Vague Action Verb Constructions. This paper claims that the Korean Light Verb Construction without an accusative marker corresponds to the True Light Verb Construction in English, while the Korean Light Verb Construction with an accusative marker corresponds to the Vague Action Verb Construction in English. Joh (2017) has claimed that, for the former, we can apply the Type Coercion mechanism, while, for the latter, a Co-compositional process takes place. Extending this analysis, this paper claims that the two types of Korean Light Verb Constructions can be explained by the two different generative mechanisms. One of the biggest advantages of this paper is that it finds that the two types of Light Verb Construction observed in Korean is not an isolated phenomenon but provides clear and concrete evidence to the claim that there are two different types of Light Verb Constructions in natural languages by showing that they can be morphologically evidenced.

Verb serialization and nominalization are two prominent phenomena in descriptive and theoretical syntax. This paper raises a number of issues that result from the interaction between these two widely attested phenomena in the literature: nominalization (e.g. Chomsky 1970, Roeper 1993, Alexiadou 2011, Lieber 2016) and verb serialization (e.g. Foley and Olson 1985, Baker 1989, Bodomo 1993, Lord 1993, Collins 1997, Stewart 2001, Foley 2010, Haspelmath 2016). Based on data from Dagaare and Kusaal, two Mabia languages of West Africa, this paper analyses a serial verb construction which is a type of complex predicate construction in which all the verbs in a series are nominalized, with only one of the verbs carrying the nominalization affix (Bodomo and Oostendorp 1993, Bodomo 2004, Hiraiwa, Bodomo 2008, and Abubakari 2011). Such a rare complex predicate construction is then the basis for renewed questions about the nature of complex predicatehood, diathetic syntactic alternations, and lexical categorial differences involving nouns and verbs across languages. The paper proposes a syntactic representation of these nominalized serial verbal predicates in which the verbal predicates are basically interpreted as VPs headed by a nomP functional projection. Semantically, we propose that nominalized serial verbs, like their purely verbal counterparts, express a complex event. It is thus concluded that while verbal and nominal predicates obtain from the same minimal constructs, the difference between pure serial verbs and nominalized serial verbs is due to the fact that a semantic feature, [+nom], parallel to the syntactic functional projection, nomP, imposes nominal features on the whole complex. This analysis is extended to complex verbal constructions in English.

Certain contact languages previously lacking a finiteness contrast have developed infinitival complementation. The late Old English and Sri Lankan Malay (SLM) constructions both involve to-infinitives seemingly based on prepositional phrases, specifically infinitival to + lexical verb in Old English and infinitival nang + lexical verb in SLM. There is no evidence, however, that these verbs were ever nominalized in SLM, and Los (2005) has argued that the apparently dativized forms we find in Old English belie the fact that their syntactic status was verbal and the constituents containing them clausal. The SLM infinitival prefix is etymologically irrealis, paralleling the subjunctives that the English to-infinitive progressively replaced. Identifying cross-linguistically parallel changes that are explainable based on textual attestations in one of the languages examined will aid in reconstructing the development of underattested languages that lack diachronic corpora.