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How do gerunds conceptualize events? A diachronic study KU Leuven
© 2015 by De Gruyter Mouton 2015. This article offers a cognitive perspective on the evolution of the semantics of English nominal gerunds (NG) (I regret the signing of the contract) and verbal gerunds (VG) (I regret signing the contract). While the formal differences between NGs and VGs are well documented, their semantics remains largely unexplored territory. The perspective that is taken here is centered on the linguistic notion of reference ...
What It Means to Verbalize: The Changing Discourse Functions of the English Gerund KU Leuven
© 2015 SAGE Publications The English gerund system consists of two types of gerunds: a nominal gerund (the learning of a language), and a verbal gerund that developed out of the nominal gerund (learning a language). While the formal aspects of this diachronic verbalization of the gerund are well documented, much remains to be said about the discourse-functional side of the change. In this paper, it is argued that the formal verbalization of the ...
Root modal uses of should, ought to and be supposed to in Present-day English: From patterns and profiles to proficiency guidelines KU Leuven Universiteit Antwerpen
Many non-native speakers of English find it hard to use modal auxiliaries correctly. As far as the so-called ‘weak’ root modals of necessity are concerned, (learner) grammars fail to provide clear guidelines about the use of these modals in specific usage contexts. While differences between should and ought to are minimized, be supposed to tends to be marginalized and its semantic profile remains vague. A study of 1200 corpus examples reveals ...
Conjunctive structures in learner English: A qualitative analysis of hortatory expositions KU Leuven
In this paper we address the issue of conjunction use in learner writing from a text-structuring angle, focusing on hortatory expositions by NNS learners and NS professionals. The learners are advanced Dutch-speaking students of English, while the professionals are journalists writing for British quality newspapers. We investigate how external conjunctive items (CIs), which express real-world relations between states of affairs, interact with ...
Cognitive perspectives on word formation KU Leuven
Source and strength of modality: an empirical study of root should, ought to and be supposed to in Present-day British English KU Leuven Universiteit Antwerpen
The parameters of source and strength are often presented as crucial for the semantic profile of modal verbs expressing root necessity such as ‘should’, ‘ought to’ and ‘be supposed to’. Their role, however, is hard to assess because of the lack of clear definitions. This article offers a new perspective on the nature of subjectivity and strength that is grounded in detailed, qualitative corpus analysis of sentences with ‘should’, ‘ought to’ and ...
Attenders or attendees? Deverbal -ee and -er variants in English KU Leuven
This paper presents a qualitative corpus analysis of deverbal -ee and -er pairs with agentive, human reference (e.g. escaper-escapee; attender-attendee) as they occur in natural discourse. It is argued that pairs like these are not synonymous or idiosyncratic formations, but represent systematic instantiations of their respective systems of nominalization whose distinct meanings can be traced back to that of the overall system which they belong ...
The meaning of the English present participle KU Leuven
While earlier descriptions of the English present participle have tended to be too general or too exclusively focused on its progressive meaning, this article aims to present an account of the meanings of the English present participle that captures their full richness. It starts from the observation that many (though not all) present participle clauses/phrases are paradigmatically related to adjectival phrases, as manifested in their ...