Coherence and Cohesion Spoken and Written

Coherence and Cohesion Spoken and Written Discourse

Coherence and Cohesion in Spoken and Written Discourse

Edited by

Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova and Renata Povolná

CAMBRIDGE

SCHOLARS

P U B L I S H I N G

Coherence and Cohesion in Spoken and W ritten Discourse, Edited by Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova and Renata Povolná This book first published 2009 Cam bridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, N ewcastle upon Tyne, N E6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2009 by Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova and Renata Povolná and contributors All rights for this book reserved. N o part o f this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, m echanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission o f the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-1308-7, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1308-2

T a ble of Con ten ts

List o f T ables......................................................................................................... vii List o f A bbreviations...........................................................................................viii Introduction.............................................................................................................ix P a r t O n e - S p o k en D is c o u r s e

Chapter O n e - Impromptu Discourse The Pragmatic Marker Well: A Text Study Karin A ijm er............................................................................................................ 4 Dialogic Fluency: On the Development o f (Co)-Fluency in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) Interactions Julia H iittner........................................................................................................ 30 Chapter Two - Academic Spoken Discourse Participial Adverbials in Academic Lectures: “ What Do You End Up Getting?” M arkéta M alá....................................................................................................... 46 Exploring Interactive Discourse M arkers in Academic Spoken Discourse Renata Povolná....................................................................................................60 Chapter Three - Political Discourse On Axiological Proximization Piotr C ap................................................................................................................. 82 Building Up Discourse Coherence: Creating Identities in Political Speeches Olga D ontcheva-Navratilova.............................................................................. 97

vi

Table of Contents

P a r t T w o - W r it t e n D is c o u r s e

Chapter Four - Media Discourse “Call Doc Singh!” : Textual Structure and Coherence in Live Text Sports Commentaries Jan Chovanec....................................................................................................... 124 Between Writing and Orality: On Coherence and Cohesion in Women Lifestyle Magazines Renáta T om ášková............................................................................................. 138 Chapter Five - Academic Written Discourse Cohesion and Coherence in Written Texts for Professional and Academic Purposes M ilena Krhutová..................................................................................................154 Discourse Approaches to Specialised and Popular Academic English: Analysing Adverbial Clause Connections Josef Schm ied...................................................................................................... 167 Chapter Six - Fictional Discourse Pragmatic Dimensions in Literary Text: A Comparative Perspective Gabriela M iššíková............................................................................................. 184 Contributors......................................................................................................... 200 Index

202

L is t o f T a b l e s

1-1 The distribution o f well in different text ty p e s..........................................20 1-2 Well in different functions in face-to-face conversation, telephone conversation and broadcast discussion.............................................................. 26 2-1 The composition o f the subcorpus..............................................................48 2-2 The forms o f participial clauses in the subcorpus.................................... 49 2-3 The forms of the participial predicates in the 400-participle subcorpus................................................................................................................ 50 2-4 The representation o f the syntactic-functional types o f participial constructions in the subcorpus............................................................................51 2-5 The lexico-grammatical bundle “spend [temporal NP] x” in all lectures in MICASE and BASE........................................................................ 56 2.6 The lexico-grammatical bundle “end up x” in all lectures in MICASE and BASE .......................................................................................57 2-7 Interactive discourse markers in LLC ....................................................... 67 2-8 Interactive discourse markers in MICASE .............................................68 3-1 Phase differences in the number o f lemmas and syntactic forms defining axiological framework o f the Iraq war rhetoric............................... 92 3-2 Referential domains o f the pronoun w e ...................................................106 3-3 Frequency o f use o f the forms o f the first person plural pronoun.....107 3-4 Exclusive/inclusive we ratio in the speeches o f the three D G s ............108 3-5 Categories o f inclusive we in the speeches o f the three D G s ...............109 5-1 Domain set-up and size o f the SPACE07 c o rp u s................................... 171 5-2 New Scientist publication data o f SPACE07 articles from 2000 to 2 005................................................................................................................. 172 5-3 Modal adjuncts from Huddleston and Pullum (2002: 768) and their occurrence in the SPACE corpus...................................................................... 175 5-4 Types o f sentence adverbs in the SPACE07 corpus...............................178

L is t o f A b b r e v ia t io n s

BASE ICE-GB CDA CP DG DMs EEE ELF F IDC IDMs LI L2 LLC MICASE NP ODC Q Qt S SPACE ST STA TT VP WMD

British Academic Corpus o f Spoken English British Component o f the International Corpus o f English critical discourse analysis Cooperative Principle Director-General discourse markers English for electrical engineering English as lingua franca frame inside-the-deictic-centre (entities) interactive discourse markers First language Second language London-Lund Corpus Michigan Corpus o f Academic Spoken English noun phrase outside-the-deictic-centre (entities) (maxim of) Quality (maxim of) Quantity script Specialised and Popular ACademic English source text Spatial-Temporal-Axiological (model) target text verb phrase weapons o f mass destruction

I n t r o d u c t io n C o h e r e n c e R e v is it e d

How do people make sense o f interaction? Why do our understandings o f what a poem means, what politicians say or even what arrangements we have made for a dinner party sometimes differ? W hat can we do to make others interpret what we have said or written exactly as we want it to be understood? While dealing with different aspects o f discourse interpretation, the answers to these questions have to deal with how different people see verbal interaction as a meaningful whole, i.e. how they derive coherence from discourse. The research presented in this volume is inspired by our work on the project Coherence and Cohesion in English Discourse, which is supported by the Czech Science Foundation, the aim o f which is to conceptualize cohesion and coherence as constitutive components of human communication, and to analyse how coherence is manifested in different genres o f spoken and written English discourse. Coherence is currently a topic o f intense debate in the international linguistic community. Since English has become the “lingua franca” of the modem world, research into coherence and cohesion strategies in English discourse is considered relevant to all spheres o f human communication. Although both cohesion and coherence are important linguistic notions, the one is more firmly established than the other. While cohesion has become accepted as a well-established and useful category for text and discourse analysis, coherence is a concept which in its complexity is still not fully understood in the same way by all linguists. In recent years it has been possible to witness a considerable shift in the ways coherence is understood, namely a shift from a static text-based descriptive approach, according to which coherence is the product of textual connectivity and cohesion, to a more dynamic understanding, according to which coherence is conceptualized as a potentially variable cooperative achievem ent o f the speaker/w riter and the hearer/reader and can be seen as context-dependent, hearer/reader-oriented and comprehension-based, interpretative notion (Bublitz 1999).

P a r t ic ip ia l A d v e r b ia l s in A c a d e m ic L e c t u r e s : “ W h a t D o Y o u E n d U p G e t t in g ?” M arkéta M a lá , C h a r l e s U n iv e r s it y , P r a g u e

Abstract Participial adverbial clauses are usually described as means of complex condensation occurring frequently in academic prose and rare in conversation. The distribution may be attributed to the increase in cognitive complexity due to the use of participial adjuncts. In this paper we consider the factors which influence the use of participial adverbials in the spoken register closest to academic written texts-the academic lecture. While in academic prose the choice of a participial clause (as opposed to a finite one) results from interplay of a number of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors, in lectures participles tend to occur as parts of fixed lexico-grammatical bundles, which perform the functions of discourse organization, the expression of stance, as well as the referential function.

1 Introduction Participial adverbial clauses have received considerable attention in the description o f academic language as means o f complex condensation (Vachek 1955), whereby a finite clause is replaced by a nonfinite one. The condensation is governed by interplay o f a number of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors. Participial clauses may therefore be expected to occur frequently in academic prose1, and were found to be “extremely rare” in conversation (Biber et al. 1999: 826, cf. also Povolná 2003, Biber

1 The frequency of participial adverbial clauses in British academic prose was shown to be about 2.1 participial constructions per 1,000 words (Malá 2006).

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2006) due to the increase in cognitive complexity resulting from the use of a participial adjunct. In written academic language participial clauses also perform textual functions, contributing to the cohesion and organization o f the text. The text-organizing function comes into focus where the participial adverbial is not integrated in the sentence structure, its scope stretching over the sentence boundary. As far as cohesion is concerned, subjectless adjuncts in sentence-initial position were found to establish strong cohesive ties through their unexpressed subjects. These adjuncts perform a dual role in the construction of the text. They are anaphoric in relying on the preceding context for the identification o f the unexpressed subject. At the same time, they are tied to their superordinate clause since there is a strong tendency for the implied subject o f the participial clause and that o f the superordinate clause to be identical (following the attachment rule). Participial adjuncts in initial position thus “carry” the theme from one sentence to another. Considering that “from the point o f view o f text organization, it is the theme that plays an important constructional role” (Danes 1974: 113), the thematic links achieved by the anaphoric reference o f the implied subject o f the participial clause and its cataphoric ties to the subject o f the matrix clause contribute to the cohesion o f the text. On the other hand, being the most dynamic element o f the thematic section of the sentence, participial adjuncts may serve to introduce a new topic in the discourse (cf. Malá 2006). The question the present paper will address is what happens with participial adverbials when the medium is changed from a written to a spoken academic text. To explore this, we shall focus on the spoken academic monologue, restricting the shift in other parameters o f the register to the minimum.2

2 The sources and method Our approach combines quantitative and qualitative analysis o f corpus data from two corpora o f spoken academic English-the British Academic Corpus o f Spoken English (BASE), and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). From both corpora only lectures, being to a large extent monological, were selected.3 First, a comparable number of 2 “Academic lectures are spoken but show literate situational characteristics for school acquisition, social value, shared personal knowledge among participants, and information load. In many respects, therefore, lectures can be classified as a literate situation” (Biber 1991: 45). 3 Both “large” and “small” lectures were included in the MICASE data.

Participial Adverbials in Academic Lectures

48

lectures were chosen from all four disciplinary groups from BASE and MICASE and searched manually for all occurrences o f participial clauses in adverbial function, adding texts until the number o f participial adverbials obtained from each corpus reached 200 (Table 2-1). Second, the findings from this subcorpus were compared, where relevant, with all the lectures in the two corpora. Table 2-1: The composition o f the subcorpus source

academic division

MICASE

Social Sciences and Education Physical Sciences and Engineering Humanities and Arts Biological and Health Sciences TOTAL Social Studies and Sciences Physical Sciences Humanities and Arts Life and Medical Sciences TOTAL

BASE

participial adverbials per total 1,000 No words 57 1.6 35 066 1.0 35 35 323

No of No texts of tokens

4 4 3 4 5 5 5 6

43 253 39 727 153 369 51 282 32 358 41 029 44 089 168 758

50 58 200 34 54 60 52 200

1.2 1.5 1.3 0.7 1.7 1.5 1.2 1.2

3 The formal description The realizations o f participial adverbials in academic lectures are quite uniform both in terms o f the structure o f the clause itself and that o f the participial predicate. The dominant type appears to be an asyndetic subjectless adjunct with an active present-participial predicate, placed in end-position4 with respect to the superordinate clause (la). However, other types o f clause structure, predicate form as well as degree o f integration into the sentence can be found.

4 The scarcity of adjuncts in initial position with respect to the superodinate clause suggests that in the spoken academic monologue participial clauses do not display the sentence-bridging cohesive behaviour typical of initial adjuncts in written academic texts.

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Markéta Malá

3.1 The structure of the participial clause Subjectless participial clauses proved to be more frequent in the lectures than absolutes (cf. Table 2-2), with the asyndetic subjectless clause representing the prevalent type o f construction (la). Both subjectless participial clauses and absolute constructions may be introduced by a subordinator, which restricts the interpretation o f the semantic relation between the superordinate clause and the adverbial clause in subjectless clauses (lb ), and serves as an explicit link between the two clauses in the case o f absolutes5 (1 d). (la) (lb) (lc) (Id)

psychologists spend a lot of time arguing and discussing this (BASE, ahlct009) you find that the D-one-twenty-two cells when injected, elicit only a weak immune response (MICASE, LEL175SU106) all being well the immune response will be terminated er by elimination of the pathogen (BASE, lslct036) i would like you to rank them, from one to twenty-two, with one being, the thing that you think is the largest risk, why don’t you pass those back behind you, and twenty-two being the most, benign thing, on the list... (MICASE, LEL115SU005)

Table 2-2: The forms o f participial clauses in the subcorpus

subjectless absolute total

asyndetic (la) with subordinator (lb) asyndetic (lc) with subordinator (Id)

BASE total MICASE 171 351 180 7 20 13 24 11 13 2 5 3 200 400 200

3.2 The form of the participial predicate Compared with the most frequent type o f the participial predicate, the active present participle ( la above), all other forms appear to be quite marginal (cf. Table 2-3). The only exception is constituted by past participial constructions. Nevertheless, as we shall demonstrate below, 5 The repertoire of subordinators available for absolutes is limited to with and without. The absolute clause being syntactically less dependent on the superordinate clause, the role of the subordinator may be seen as indicating the tie explicitly, especially where the semantic relations between the clauses are rather weak (cf. Kortmann 1991).

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these are apt to recategorize into prepositions and conjunctions. There were only seven -ed participial clauses (lb ) functioning as adjuncts. The other forms o f the participial predicate, the active perfect participle, and the passive participles-present and perfect-m ay be illustrated by examples 2a-c, respectively. (2a) (2b)

(2c)

having eliminated the pathogen there’s no further stimulus for the immune response (BASE, lslct036) the fact that we’re not constantly going off in the wrong direction being fooled by the sounds into hearing something that isn’t there (BASE, pslct024) we are, especially uh indebted to him for coming back to the University of Michigan so qu- so quickly, after having been awarded the Nobel Prize. (MICASE, COL485MX069)

Table 2-3: The forms o f the participial predicates in the 400-participle subcorpus

present active (-ing) participle passive (being -ed) perfect active (having -ed) participle passive (ihaving been -ed) past participle (-ed) total

MICASE BASE total 167 343 176 2 4 2 1 9 10 1 0 1 42 29 13 200 200 400

% 85.6 1 2.5 0.3 10.5 100

3.3 The degree of integration into the sentence When determining the function o f participial adverbial constructions, their degree o f integration into the sentence has to be considered. Following Quirk et al. (1985: 566 ff) we shall distinguish between adjuncts, i.e. obligatory or optional adverbials syntactically integrated in the superordinate clause, and disjuncts, subjuncts6 and conjuncts syntactically non-integrated in the sentence structure, expressing the attitude o f the speaker.7 Disjuncts (3a) express the speakers’ comments on the content or style o f what they are saying while wide-orientation subjuncts (3b) specify the point o f view applied. We shall use the term 6 Quirk et al. (1985: 566ff) distinguish between narrow and wide orientation subjuncts depending on the scope of the adverbial. Participial clauses were found to be used as wide-orientation viewpoint subjuncts only. 7 This non-propositional use is referred to as the metadiscourse function by Hyland (2007).

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Markéta Malá

conjuncts (3c) to refer to participial adverbials which have a textual function: they are used by the speaker to indicate the organization o f the text. (3a) (3b) (3c)

he uses photographs generally speaking as backdrops in a sense, (MICASE, LEL320JU147) you either have an X and a Y chromosome or two Xs and that’s what makes you a man or a woman biologically speaking (BASE, ahlct009) so, um starting starting with epidemiologists they construct risk in a in a way that seems very solid, to them, they take the data and they analyze it in a particular way. (MICASE, LEL115SU005)

Table 2-4: The representation o f the syntactic-functional types of participial constructions in the subcorpus degree of integration: integrated in the sentence non-integrated in the sentence recategorized total

function: adjuncts disjuncts and subjuncts conjuncts (near-)prepositions and conjunctions

%

BASE

total

118

121

239

59.8

10 15 57

6 15 58

16 30 115

4 7.5 28.8

200

200

400

100

MICASE

4 Disjuncts, subjuncts and conjuncts Disjuncts, subjuncts and conjuncts are not integrated into the sentence either in terms o f their function (they are metatextual devices) or in terms o f the syntactic structure. Syntactically, they often fall within the category called, rather disparagingly, “dangling” or “unattached” participles, disobeying the “attachment rule”. However, the use and understanding of these adverbials is not hindered by their unexpressed subject not being coreferential with the subject o f the superordinate clause since the subject (or agent in past participial clauses) is uniquely recoverable as the speaker, without reference to the co-text (cf. Malá 2004). The recognition o f disjuncts and subjuncts as peripheral stance-marking structures is further facilitated by the fact that they tend to form relatively fixed lexicogrammatical units. They typically take the form o f an -ly adverb followed by the present participle speaking8 (3a-b above). The repertory of 8 The verb was different from speaking only in one disjunct (put) and one subjunct (looking) out of the 16 found in the subcorpus. The deviation from the usual word

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adverbials in disjuncts and subjuncts is also quite narrow: while American lecturers most often speak generally (4)9, strictly (2), relatively (1) or morally (1), the BASE corpus provided examples o f speaking generally (27), broadly (11), roughly (8), strictly (7), relatively (3), genetically (2), historically (2), and single instances o f immunologically, biologically, literally, mathematically, metaphorically, statistically, systemically, and technically speaking. Participial disjuncts and viewpoint subjuncts can therefore be described as relatively fixed patterns with a variable component. Nevertheless, the number o f these participial stance adverbials was, quite surprisingly, so low that no further conclusions can be drawn here. In conjuncts the verbs can be described semantically as verbs of speaking (having said that, having talked about, before talking, speaking of), perception and cognition (looking (back!at), regarding, thinking), or verbs o f motion used metaphorically (coming back, going back/to, moving on to!towards, starting (with), skipping, continuing, leaving aside, working down). As mentioned above, conjuncts serve text-organizing purposes. They typically refer to segments o f the lecture, concluding a topic, summing up, indicating the forthcoming topic (4a) or an aside. They occurred also as means o f intertextual reference, linking the lecture to the text o f a book being discussed and quoted from (4b). (4a)

(4b)

er so ah going back to ah yellow fever monkeys er are a reservoir of yellow fever virus er so the virus is transmitted from the monkey reservoir er to the human er and back er by by the mosquito (BASE, lslct035) let’s take a look at the end. what should we be making, of the world if we have the opportunity? if we have the recipes? starting down about a quarter o f the way from the bottom ofpage two-forty-two. for the first time in their lives, Tita and Pedro could make love freely. (MICASE, LEL300SU076)

order, with an adverbial following the verb, may also suggest a special function of the participial construction. The distribution of the disjuncts and subjuncts, however, is quite uneven: four lectures provided two instances of disjuncts and subjuncts each, in one lecture in MICASE the speaker used generally speaking four times. 9 The numbers in brackets indicate the number of occurrences of the adverb in “speaking” disjuncts/subjuncts in all the lectures in MICASE and BASE.

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5 Prepositions and conjunctionsa gradient of grammaticalization While certainly contributing to the cohesion o f the text, conjuncts are not primarily connective devices. This function is performed by another group o f participial constructions, whose form is fixed to a considerably higher degree and whose function consists in linking segments o f the tex tviz. participial constructions which recategorize into conjunctions and prepositions. The change o f word-class may be viewed as a gradient here, with some de-participial conjunctions and prepositions fully lexicalized (e.g. concerning, including, given), and others undergoing the change. (Near-) prepositional and conjunctional uses o f participles account for 28.8 per cent o f the participial constructions examined. The gradient may be illustrated by example 5. The criteria that determine the position o f the participial clause on the adjunctpreposition/conjunction scale comprise the recoverability o f the unexpressed subject o f the participial construction, the possibility to replace the participial construction with a primary preposition/conjunction (albeit with a more general meaning), as well as the recurrence o f the construction in the new function. While in example 5a the attachment rule applies, the unexpressed subject o f the participial clause being co-referential with the subject o f the superordinate clause, in examples 5b-d the recoverability of the participial clause subject is complicated by the superordinate clause being nonfmite and subjectless itself (infinitival in example 5b and gerundial in example 5c or passive with an unexpressed agent (5d). In example 5e it is not only impossible to identify the unexpressed subject of using with the subject o f the superordinate clause there but the participle can be replaced by the preposition with. (5a) (5b) (5c)

(5d)

(5e)

so first i wanna diagnose using expectancy theory, what people are likely, to be motivated to do right now. (MICASE, LEL185SU066) It may be possible to hold you through using antivirals that I’ll talk about in a minute (BASE, lslct037) the hard thing, about doing these transformations either using bacteria, or using a particle gun is you’ve got this piece of D-N-A, (MICASE, LES 405JG078) I’m sending this around to you to show you how, one online search can pretty much be done entirely using the online thesaurus. (MICASE, LES335JG065) ... this is actually a re- real important point, why should it not matter in this case-searching Dialog? cuz.... right, there is no ranking, using Dialog. (MICASE, LES335JG065)

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As far as the frequency is concerned, using was attested 30 times in the corpus in its (near-) prepositional function. While “frequent repetition leads to increased automatization and habituation, further affecting both its [i.e. the construction’s] semantic and phonological characteristics...a purely frequency-driven approach is too simple and...additional factors require attention” (Hoffmann 2004: 188, 194). As noted by Hoffmann in connection with the grammaticalization o f complex prepositions, “ [there] is thus, at least on a certain level, a strong congruence between form and function” (Hoffmann 2004: 195). His observation concerning the important role o f analogy in grammaticalization o f low-frequency constructions seems to apply also to de-participial prepositions and conjunctions: “In such an approach, grammaticalization would result in the establishment o f constructional schemas whose slots can be filled with suitable lexical items” (Hoffmann 2004: 195). It appears that the establishment o f such a schema may be tied to a particular text-type. In academic lectures the existence o f a constructional schema whereby (simple present or past) participial adverbials recategorize, based on analogy, into secondary prepositions or conjunctions is supported by the prepositional uses o f depending (up)on (6a), beginning (6b), starting (6c), based on10 (6d), compared to/with (6e), and conjunctions assuming (that) (7a), supposing (that)11 (7b). (6a) (6b) (6c) (6d) (6e)

in Marx’s time it had been around for about a hundred years depending on how you count, (MICASE, LEL565SU064) we have, beginning in the sixties uh the, increase of a really radical political landscape, (MICASE, LEL320JU147) um, also s- a few of you uh wanted the lectures to be available online, uh, and I’ll do that starting next week. (MICASE, LEL565SU064) and I’m also, uh covering it based on the feedback i get from you. (MICASE, LEL200JU105) and so therefore the ocean basins had to be young compared to the continents. (MICASE, LEL305JU092)

10 Tottie and Hoffmann (2001: 11) argue that “[it] is time to promote based on from the nether regions of the Hell of unattached/dangling participles to the ‘perfect innocence’ of the first circle containing those ‘participles that have passed into prepositions’”. However limited our data, they support their finding that the prepositional based on is more frequent in American English. A similar shift in the function offollowing towards prepositional use was reported by Olofsson (1990). 11 It was demonstrated by Mair that the subordinator supposing represents the “static type” of grammaticalization, which does not “result in drastic shifts in discourse frequencies” (Mair 2004: 123). The other de-participial conjunctions and prepositions may be expected to behave in a similar way.

Markéta Malá

(7a) (7b)

55

but as far as I’m concerned the content of the lectures is complete assuming i get through what i want to get through today (BASE, pslct024) supposing that you lived in this this village well prior to independence and you worked perhaps on a small plot a small plot of land you were basically a farmer (BASE, ahlct007)

6 Adjuncts Both in the adverbials peripheral to the sentence structure and in those submerged deeply into it by becoming prepositions and conjunctions we could observe a certain degree o f fixedness, with the participles becoming parts o f lexico-grammatical bundles or constructional schemata with restricted lexical variability. We shall therefore examine the largest group o f participial adverbial clauses-the adjuncts-focussing in particular on the recurrence o f such schemata (cf. Nesi and Basturkmen 2006, Biber and Barbieri 2007). We can, indeed, observe the recurrence o f several predicate verbs in participial subjectless adjuncts:12 the verbs with at least five occurrences in the subcorpus comprise trying (12), looking (9), saying (9), going (8), getting (7), thinking (6), and carrying (5). Most o f these verbs, however, are verbs o f cognition, perception and speaking,13 which can be expected to occur repeatedly as they are closely tied to the subject matter. What is, perhaps, more revealing is a look at the predicate o f the superordinate clause: the participial adjunct often14 appears to constitute a component o f a recurrent multi-word expression, a lexico-grammatical bundle comprising a slot which can be filled with a participle (8). (8a) (8b)

(8c)

the cancer cells are gonna have a hard time getting through the plumbing (MICASE, LEL175SU106) we’re going to spend the next few minutes looking at some passages from these sources just to get a feel for what we’re actually talking about (BASE, ahlct003) what do you end up getting? you end up getting cells that frequent metastasize. (MICASE, LEL175SU106)

12 In absolute participial constructions the predicate verb is typically stative, the most frequent verb is the copula being. 13 The verbs of speaking include also two uses of going in BASE, e.g. children go around going wow great painting (BASE, ahlct009) 14 About one fifth of participial adjuncts enter the academic lecture as parts of such schemata.

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The above lexico-grammatical associations, which recurred in the 400participle subcorpus,15 were tested for multiple occurrence in all the lectures in the BASE and MICASE corpora. The bundle “have a hard time + -ing participle” (8a) is restricted to American English. It appears to be the most stable o f the patterns: out o f the seven occurrences in MICASE only one did not contain the -ing participial adjunct. Tables 2-5 and 2-6 show that the patterns “spend + [temporal NP] x” (8b) and uend up x” (8c) both contain a final slot (x) which can be filled with a participial clause. While there are other constructions which can occupy the slot, the -ing participle represents the preferred option for both bundles in MICASE and for the former bundle in BA SE.16 Table 2-5: The lexico-grammatical bundle “ 5pend [temporal NP] x” in all lectures in MICASE and BASE (ex. 8b)

'"'spend |temporal

NP] x” the x slot filled bv:

(-ing) manner participial adjunct clause "on fNPl’ I % I % 29 61.7 9 19.1

MICASE (643 692 tokens) 75 54.0 5 BASE 3.6 (1 252 256 tokens) *the prepositions comprise in, on, with

place adjunct

Prep*

+

other

(-ing)

total (100

%) 7,

% 7 17.0

%

40

28.8

4.3

8

6

-

7,

1

% 2.1

7,

13

9.4

139

15 The frequencies of the bundles in the 400-participle subcorpus were as follows: “have a hard time -ing” 3 times (MICASE only), “end up -ing" 20 times, “spend [temporal NP] -ing” 12 times. 16 In the BASE corpus we could perhaps include among the -ing adjuncts also the -ing gerunds following a preposition, e.g. if you spend enough time in interviewing and getting people to write essays (BASE, lslct022); you simply end up by getting excited states (BASE, pslct005).

47

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Markéta Malá

Table 2-6: The lexico-grammatical bundle “end up x” in all lectures in MICASE and BASE (ex. 8c) “ertrf up x” the x slot filled by:

(-ing) participial clause % \ 45 48.4

MICASE (643 692 tokens) BASE 28 22.4 (1 252 256 tokens) * the preposition is by

‘with [NPf

1

place adjunct

other

Prep* +

22

% 23.7

>; 15

% >; 16.1

44

35.2

31

24.8

%

9 7.2

v 11

% 11.8

13

10.4

total (100%)

I 93

125

The above constructions are not prototypical invariable bundles. They admit modification (9a, b) and restricted grammatical as well as lexical variation. They can, therefore, be described rather as lexico-grammatical associations similar to the schemata mentioned above in connection with disjuncts and subjuncts. The variability o f these schemata appears to constitute a gradient: “have a hard time -m g ' rarely admits complementation other than a participial clause, and the modification is restricted to intensifying adverbs. Although in “end up -m g ' the association with the participial clause is not so strong, the construction displays a potential for expansion typical o f bundles, which often “grow” from three-word up to five-word or longer structures. The most frequent participial adjunct to fill the slot in uend up x” is getting (8c and 9b, c). The schema “spend [NP] x” creates two slots, the first defined formally (a noun phrase) and semantically (time), the latter showing a marked preference for a participial -ing adjunct. (9a) (9b) (9c)

i have a really hard time referring to hominids as hominines. it bugs me. (MICASE, LEL115SU107) and he ends up o f course all the time getting more and more upset (BASE, ahlct009) we ended up getting F-E-two-O-three, on the surface (MICASE, LES365JG029)

7 Conclusion We hope to have shown that there are differences between the way participial adverbials are used in the academic written and spoken monologue which do not consist merely in the relative frequency o f these

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constructions. In academic prose participial adjuncts alternate with finite adverbial clauses, serving as a means o f complex condensation whose employment has to be weighed against the increase in cognitive complexity in each individual sentence. On the other hand, the factors that lead to the use o f participial clauses in academic lectures appear to be different: in all their functions participial adverbials tend to enter the spoken academic monologue as parts o f “ready-made building blocks” or schemata. The degree o f invariability also facilitates the recognition o f the function o f these rather complex constructions. This is particularly evident in the case o f recategorization o f participial constructions into secondary conjunctions and prepositions. Participial clauses are also used as metadiscourse devices, both textual (conjuncts) and interpersonal (disjuncts and subjuncts). The function is clearly signalled since the participial constructions operate as parts o f more extensive fixed schemata here. Even among the most frequent participial adverbials, adjuncts, there can be traced a tendency towards being used in the spoken academic monologue as components o f larger lexico-grammatical bundles. Adverbial participial clauses may thus be seen as indicators o f spacepressure in academic prose, leading to condensation, and o f time-pressure, leading to “bundling”, in the academic spoken monologue.

References Biber, Douglas 1991, Variation across Speech and Writing, Cambridge University Press — . 2006, University Language. A Corpus-Based Study o f Spoken and Written Registers, Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Biber, Douglas and Federica Barbieri 2007, “Lexical Bundles in University Spoken and Written Registers”, English fo r Specific Purposes 26 (3), 263-286 Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan 1999, The Longman Grammar o f Spoken and Written English, London: Longman Danes, František 1974, “Functional Sentence Perspective and the Organization o f the Text.” In Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective, edited by František Daneš, Praha: Academia Hoffrnann, Sebastian 2004, “Are Low-Frequency Complex Prepositions Grammaticalized? On Limits o f Corpus D ata-and the Importance o f Intuition.” In Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English, edited by Hans Lindquist and Christian Mair, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 171-210

Markéta Malá

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Hyland, Ken 2007, Disciplinary Discourses. Social Interactions in Academic Writing, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press Kortmann, Bemd 1991, Free Adjuncts and Absolutes in English, London: Routledge Mair, Christian 2004, “Corpus Linguistics and Grammaticalisation Theory: Statistics, Frequencies, and Beyond.” In Corpus Approaches to Grammaticalization in English, edited by Hans Lindquist and Christian Mair, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 121-150 Malá, M arkéta 2004, “The Subject in Participial Adverbial Clauses”, Lingüistica Pragensia 14 (2), 72-89 — . 2006, “Some Remarks on Adverbial Participial Clauses from the Point o f View o f Functional Sentence Perspective,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae-Philologica 2, Prague Studies in English 24 (1), 45-58 Nesi, Hilary and Helen Basturkmen 2006, “Lexical Bundles and Discourse Signalling in Academic Lectures”, International Journal o f Corpus Linguistics 11 (3), 283-304 Olofsson, Arne 1990, “A Participle Caught in the Act. On the Prepositional Use o f Following”, Studia Neophilologica 62, 23-35 Povolná, Renata 2003, Spatial and Temporal Adverbiais in English Authentic Face-to-Face Conversation, Spisy Pedagogické fakulty, Svazek 87, Brno: M asarykova univerzita v Brně Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik 1985, A Comprehensive Grammar o f the English Language, London: Longman Tottie, Gunnel and Sebastian Hoffman 2001, “Based on: From Dangling Participle to Complex Preposition.” In A Wealth o f English. Studies in Honour o f Goran Kjellmer, edited by Karin Aijmer, Goteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 1-12 Vachek, Josef 1955, “Some Thoughts on the So-Called Complex Condensation in Modem English,” Sborník p ra cí fdozofické fakulty brněnské univerzity A3, 63-71

Sources British Academic Spoken English, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/collect/base M ichigan Corpus o f Academic Spoken English, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/rn/micase/