Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
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This thesis investigates the structure keep V-ing in English and the grammaticalization process of keep in this construction from a diachronic perspective. In Present-Day-English, this structure...Show moreThis thesis investigates the structure keep V-ing in English and the grammaticalization process of keep in this construction from a diachronic perspective. In Present-Day-English, this structure conveys a continuative aspectual meaning when the V-ing is characterized by an atelic Aktionsart (activities and states) and an iterative aspectual meaning when the V-ing is telic (accomplishments and achievements). This thesis was written from a Functional Discourse Grammar perspective (Hengeveld & Mackenzie 2008). Within this framework, grammaticalization is seen as the combination of contentive and formal change. Using corpus data from two historical English corpora, COLMOBAENG and COHA, comprising the Late Modern English and Present Day English periods, two stages of the grammaticalization process were observed: i. Location → Continuation, ii. Continuation → Iteration. On the contentive side, the second phase shows an increase in scope from an operator expressing phasal aspect at the layer of the Configurational property to an operator of event quantification at the layer of the States-of-Affairs. On the formal side, it has been observed that it has a very high degree of grammaticaliy based on Keizer’s criteria (Keizer 2007). Diachronically, the most relevant formal change is the combination with -ing verbs.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
The aim of this thesis is to provide a novel account for the linguistic phenomenon that is commonly referred to as ‘fragments’. I will provide a novel account, utilising the syntax-prosody...Show moreThe aim of this thesis is to provide a novel account for the linguistic phenomenon that is commonly referred to as ‘fragments’. I will provide a novel account, utilising the syntax-prosody interface, to account for the fact that fragments appear to be derived from a larger structure. I aim to deal with some of the inadequacies of previous syntactic analyses, and to provide an account that may be better reflected in the data. The analysis that I will detail in this thesis will treat the deletion we find in fragments as prosodic deletion: such an approach has not been attempted so far. Importantly, whilst the main focus of this thesis is investigating the deletion in fragments, we will see that we may also be able to account for further cases of ellipsis, such as sluicing, right node raising and gapping.Show less
