New Trends and Methodologies in Applied English Language Research III: Synchronic and Diachronic Studies on Discourse, Lexis and Grammar Processing

300 Pages·2017·3.32 MB·English

by  Tamara Bouso

li209 li209
li
Linguistic Insights
209
Studies in Language and Communication
This volume includes eleven papers pertaining
to different areas of linguistics and organised
into three sections. Part I contains diachronic
studies which cover data from Middle English to
Present-Day English and which explore phenom-
ena such as the status of extender tags, the dis- II
I
tribution of free adjuncts, post-auxiliary ellipsis, h
and the use of ‘ephemeral’ concessive adverbial c
r
subordinators. Part II comprises studies on gram- a
e
mar and language processing dealing with topics s s
such as the interaction between syntactic and ee
structural complexity and verbal agreement ogie r
with collective subjects, the influence of distribu- lg
oa
tivity and concreteness on verbal agreement, the du
interaction of complexity and efficiency in pro- og
hn
noun omission in Indian English and Singapore eta
English, and the methods and approaches used mh l Sofía Bemposta-Rivas,
for grammar teaching in modern EFL/ESL text- d s
books. Finally, Part III revolves around lexis, dis- ngli Carla Bouzada-Jabois,
course and pragmatics, with papers that discuss an Yolanda Fernández-Pena,
the development of the discoursal representa- s E
dd Tamara Bouso,
tion of social actors in Argentinian newspapers n
e
after the military dictatorship, the construction ei Yolanda J. Calvo-Benzies,
of women’s gender identity through positive and w trppl Iván Tamaredo (eds)
negative emotions in women’s magazines, and a
e
spelling-to-sound correspondence on Twitter. Nn
i New trends and

•

)
s methodologies in applied
d
e
(

.
Sofía Bemposta-Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois and al English language research III

Yolanda Fernández-Pena are research assistants et
and doctoral students in English Linguistics at the s
a
University of Vigo. v Synchronic and diachronic
i
R
studies on discourse, lexis
Tamara Bouso and Iván Tamaredo are research a-
assistants and doctoral students in English Linguis- t and grammar processing
s
tics at the University of Santiago de Compostela. o
p
m
Yolanda J. Calvo Benzies has recently obtained a e
position as assistant lecturer at the University of B
the Balearic Islands.
ISBN 978-3-0343-2039-9 g
n
a
L

r
e
t
9 783034 320399 e
www.peterlang.com P
New trends and
methodologies in applied
English language research III
Linguistic Insights
Studies in Language and Communication
Edited by Maurizio Gotti,
University of Bergamo
Volume 209
AdVISORY BOARd
Vijay Bhatia (Hong Kong)
david Crystal (Bangor)
Konrad Ehlich (Berlin / München)
Jan Engberg (Aarhus)
Norman Fairclough (Lancaster)
John Flowerdew (Hong Kong)
Ken Hyland (Hong Kong)
Roger Lass (Cape Town)
Matti Rissanen (Helsinki)
Françoise Salager-Meyer (Mérida, Venezuela)
Srikant Sarangi (Cardiff)
Susan Šarcˇevi´c (Rijeka)
Lawrence Solan (New York)
PETER LANG
Bern • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Warszawa • Wien
Sofía Bemposta-Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois,
Yolanda Fernández-Pena, Tamara Bouso,
Yolanda J. Calvo-Benzies, Iván Tamaredo (eds)
New trends and
methodologies in applied
English language research III
Synchronic and diachronic
studies on discourse, lexis
and grammar processing
PETER LANG
Bern • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Oxford • Warszawa • Wien
Bibliographic information published by die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
die deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the deutsche National-
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data: A catalogue record for this book
is available from The British Library, Great Britain.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Bemposta-Rivas, Sofia, editor. | Bouzada-Jabois, Carla, editor. | Fernández-Pena, Yolanda. |
Bouso, Tamara. | Calvo-Benzies, Yolanda J. | Tamaredo, Iván
Title: New trends and methodologies in applied English language research III :
synchronic and diachronic studies on discourse, lexis and grammar processing / Sofia Bemposta-
Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois, Yolanda Fernández-Pena, Tamara Bouso, Yolanda J. Calvo-Benzies,
Iván Tamaredo (eds).
description: Bern ; New York : Peter Lang, [2017] | Series: Linguistic insights: studies in language and
communication; 209 | „This volume comprises a selection of the papers presented at the Fourth
ELC International Postgraduate Conference on Language and Cognition (ELC4) hosted by LVTC Re-
search Group at the University of Vigo, 04-06 February 2015.“ | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016058458| ISBN 9783034320399 (print) | ISBN 9783034327091 (epub) |
ISBN 9783034327114 (mobi) | ISBN 9783034327107 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: English language--Variation. | English language--dialects. |English lanuage--Spoken
English. | English language--Grammar, Historical. | English language--Grammar, Comparative. |
English language--Study and teaching--Foreign speakers.
Classification: LCC PE1074.7 .N494 2017 | ddC 420--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.
gov/2016058458
We gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support of the Autonomous Government of Ga-
licia (grants no. R2014/016, GPC2014/060), the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
(grant no. FFI2014-51873-REdT), the research group LVTC, the ELC network and the department of
English, French and German Studies at the University of Vigo.
ISSN 1424-8689 pb. ISSN 2235-6371 eBook
ISBN 978-3-0343-2039-9 pb. ISBN 978-3-0343-2710-7 eBook
ISBN 978-3-0343-2711-4 MOBI ISBN 978-3-0343-2709-1 EPUB
This publication has been peer reviewed.
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2017
Wabernstrasse 40, CH-3007 Bern, Switzerland
[email protected], www.peterlang.com
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming,
and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
Contents
Sofía Bemposta-Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois and
Yolanda Fernández-Pena
Introduction ...........................................................................................7
Part I: Diachronic studies
Alba Pérez-González
Looking into extender tags in Late Modern English:
The case of or something or other ......................................................19
Carla Bouzada-Jabois
Referential links in -ing and -ed free adjuncts
in Late Modern English ......................................................................39
Cristina Blanco-García
Ephemerality in concessive subordinators. Evidence from
the history of English ..........................................................................59
Evelyn Gandón-Chapela
‘We cou’d not fail of learning the Latin language, as well
as we do the Modern Languages’: An empirical study of
the licensors and genre distribution of Post-Auxiliary
Ellipsis in Late Modern English .........................................................83
6 Contents
Part II: Grammar and language processing
Yolanda Fernández-Pena
Verbal agreement with collectives taking of-dependents:
Syntactic and structural complexity as determinant factors .............109
Paula Márquez-Caamaño
Interactivity and opportunism in agreement operations:
An experimental study on the production of subject-verb
agreement in English and Spanish ....................................................131
Iván Tamaredo
The conventionalization of performance preferences:
Pronoun omission in Indian English and Singapore English ............161
Tamilla Mammadova
How is grammar presented in modern English textbooks?
What can we learn from this? ...........................................................185
Part III: Lexis, discourse and pragmatics
Mariana Pascual
Coming to terms with a traumatic past:
Social actors in the Argentine media.................................................207
Marta Muñoz-Ramal
Evaluative language, women and advertising:
The construction of women’s gender identity ...................................233
Úrsula Kirsten-Torrado
Spelling-to-sound adaptations on Twitter: The relationship
between spelling and pronunciation in a corpus of tweets ................253
Sofía Bemposta-Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois and
Yolanda Fernández-Pena
Introduction
This volume comprises a selection of the papers presented at the Fourth
ELC International Postgraduate Conference on Language and Cognition
(ELC4) hosted by the LVTC Research Group at the University of Vigo,
04-06 February 2015. The ELC International Postgraduate Conference
dates back to 2008 when the English Linguistics Circle Research Net-
work organised the ELC1 at the University of Santiago de Compostela,
followed by a second edition in 2009 at the University of Vigo (ELC2)
and a third one (ELC3) in 2012 at the University of Santiago de Com-
postela again. Following the directions of the previous conferences,
ELC4 was intended as an informal and intellectually stimulating setting
where postgraduate students were given the opportunity to present and
discuss their research. The ELC4 conference was organised by postgrad-
uate students from the five research groups comprising the ELC net-
work and based at the Universities of Vigo and Santiago de Compostela:
Language Variation and Textual Categorisation (LVTC, University of
Vigo), Variation, Linguistic Change and Grammaticali zation (VLCG,
University of Santiago de Compostela), Spoken English Research Team
at the University of Santiago de Compostela (SPERTUS, University of
Santiago de Compostela), Cognitive Processes and Behaviour (PCC,
University of Santiago de Compostela), and Methods and Materials for
the Teaching and Acquisition of Foreign Languages (MMTAFL, Univer-
sity of Vigo). The ELC4 conference would not have been possible but
for the invaluable help of senior members of these groups, especially for
Dr. Javier Pérez-Guerra’s guidance and support.
We would also like to express our gratitude to the following
institutions and organisations. In the first place, we gratefully acknow-
ledge the generous financial support of the Autonomous Government of
Galicia (grants no. R2014/016, GPC2014/060), the Spanish Ministry
of Economy and Competitiveness (grant no. FFI2014-51873-REDT),
8 Sofía Bemposta-Rivas, Carla Bouzada-Jabois and Yolanda Fernández-Pena
the research group LVTC, the ELC network and, finally, the Depart-
ment of English, French and German Studies at the University of Vigo.
Our gratitude must be extended to the other three organisers of the
ELC4 from the University of Santiago de Compostela for their will-
ingness and cooperation: Tamara Bouso, Yolanda J. Calvo-Benzies and
Iván Tamaredo. We also appreciate the inestimable help of the Scien-
tific Committee and the reviewers of the papers collected here for their
insightful recommendations and remarks.
Last but not least, we would like to thank the following plenary
speakers for having accepted our invitation: Prof. J. Carlos Acuña-Fariña
(University of Santiago de Compostela), Dr. Pedro Álvarez-Mosquera
(University of Salamanca) and Prof. Marjolijn Verspoor (University of
Groningen). Finally, our warmest appreciation goes to the contributors
to this volume.
The eleven papers collected in this volume pertain to different
areas of linguistics as varied as diachronic linguistics, syntax, pragmat-
ics or psycholinguistics. The eleven individual case studies have been
organised into three different sections. Part I comprises diachronic stud-
ies which cover from Middle English to Present-Day English and which
explore phenomena such as (i) the status of extender tags such as or
something or other (Alba Pérez-González), (ii) the distribution of free
adjuncts and absolutes (Carla Bouzada-Jabois), (iii) the use of ‘ephem-
eral’ concessive adverbial subordinators such as albeit or howbeit vs.
(al)though (Cristina Blanco-García) and (iv) Post-Auxiliary Ellipsis
(Evelyn Gandón-Chapela). Part II contains studies on grammar and lan-
guage processing which cover topics such as (i) the interaction between
syntactic and structural complexity and verbal agreement with collec-
tive subjects (Yolanda Fernández-Pena), (ii) the influence of distributiv-
ity and concreteness on verbal agreement (Paula Márquez-Caamaño),
(iii) the interaction of complexity and efficiency in relation to pronoun
omission (Iván Tamaredo) and (iv) the methods and approaches used
for grammar presentation and teaching in modern EFL/ESL textbooks
(Tamilla Mammadova). Finally, Part III revolves around lexis, discourse
and pragmatics, with papers that discuss issues such as (i) the temporal
development of the discoursal representation of actors (Ma ria na
Pascual); (ii) the construction of women’s gender identity through
Introduction 9
positive and negative emotions conveyed in women’s magazines (Marta
Muñoz-Ramal) and (iii) spelling-to-sound correspondence on Twitter
(Úrsula Kirsten-Torrado).
Alba Pérez-González’s work ‘Looking into extender tags in
Late Modern English: The case of or something or other’ focuses on the
use of the extender tag or something or other in Late Modern English.
Extender tags are expressions usually added at the end of phrases, some-
times in clause final position to utterances that are otherwise complete.
These constructions have been widely studied in Present-Day English,
however there is a need for further study in earlier periods of the lan-
guage. Pérez-González points out that only Carroll (2007, 2008) ana-
lysed extender tags in Middle English and Early Modern English, while
Late Modern English extender tags remain unexplored. The main aim
of this contribution is to provide a detailed analysis of the status of the
extender tag or something or other in Late Modern English with data
retrieved from the Eighteenth Century and Nineteenth Century Fiction
collections of literature. For this purpose, three different hypotheses will
be tested: (i) or other is an extension of the extender tag or something,
(ii) or other can be considered as an independent extender tag forming
a cluster of extender tags with or something, (iii) or something or other
is a fixed expression considered as a variant of or something. The first
hypothesis has been rejected since or other seems to be at the same syn-
tactic level than or something in the construction or something or other,
which is coordinated by the conjunction or, and so there is no modifi-
cation as it occurs in other extensions of the extender tag or something.
Hypothesis two has also been rejected on the basis of the absence of
similar scope of or something and or other, as would be the case with
other prototypical extender tags, as and so on and so forth. Or other is
then a hedge to the head extender tag or something rather than being an
extender tag on its own. Supporting the third hypothesis, the evidence
from Pérez-González’s study concludes that or something or other can
be considered as a fixed expression and a variant of or something.
In the paper ‘Referential links in -ing and -ed free adjuncts in
Late Modern English’, Carla Bouzada-Jabois discusses the referential
links holding between free adjuncts (FAs) and their main clauses in
Late Modern English, focusing on how such referential links correlate