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Corpus Linguistics Research Vol. 3 (September 2017), 23-42
ISSN 2465-812X http://dx.doi.org/10.18659/CLR.2017.1.0.02
Exploring the Text-Lexicogrammar Interface: A Corpus-Driven Analysis of the Plural Noun “days” Raksangob Wijitsopon Chulalongkorn University Received 3 August 2017; received in revised form 8 September 2017; accepted 11 September 2017; available online 30 September 2017
ABSTRACT While recent corpus linguistic research often focuses on the text–lexis interface, the present study aims to investigate the ways in which grammatical forms can be related to textual functions of lexical items. This question is explored through a functional analysis of the plural noun “days” in comparison with that of its singular counterpart studied in Mahlberg (2005). Results from the qualitative analysis and quantitative comparison of distribution patterns of the two nouns reveal that the functional profile of the plural form is different from that of the singular form in some aspects, as far as textual functions of time nouns are concerned. This is argued to illustrate the inseparability among text, lexis and grammar. Keywords: Grammatical forms, Textual functions, Time nouns, General nouns, Days
1. Introduction One of the major contributions of corpus linguistic research over the past decades to linguistic descriptions of English is an emphasis on the interface between lexis and grammar. While grammar and lexis have often been treated as separate aspects of language studies, especially in pedagogical contexts, a great deal of work in corpus linguistics has shown that lexical items are intertwined with grammatical patterns in the creation of meaning. Sinclair (2004), for example, includes grammatical patterns a lexical item has, i.e. termed colligation, in his account of unit of meaning. Hunston and Francis’s (2000) concept of pattern grammar has shown that different lexical items that have a similar grammatical pattern tend to share certain aspects of meanings in common. For instance, the verbs “boast”, “complain”, “speak”, “talk” and “tell” share the pattern “V of n”, and are similar in that they basically involve an act of “talking”;
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on the other hand, meanings of a polysemous word can be disambiguated through the grammatical environment in which it occurs. To illustrate, the verb “come” means “result from something”, when it is used in the pattern “V of n”, as in “Some good may come of all this.”, but denotes an act of “moving” when it occurs in the pattern “V”, as in “Can I come too?” (Hunston and Francis 2000: 84). In fact, it has been argued that even different forms of a word lemma can be associated with different uses and meanings. In other words, each different form of a lexical item is not just a reflection of grammatical distinction, such as that concerning number, as in the case of singular – plural nouns. Sinclair (2003) demonstrates that the singular and plural forms of the noun lemma EYE are usually used to express different types of meanings, the former to convey figurative or idiomatic whereas the latter literal meanings. Wijitsopon (forthcoming) shows how the singular and plural forms of some keywords in Jane Austen’s Persuasion are related to thematic meanings of the novel in different ways. These studies, however, rely on analysis of co-occurrence patterns of words under study in concordance lines. While this allows for a close attention to lexicogrammatical patterns of lexical items, which leads to an insight into the interrelationship between form and meaning, it has been suggested that it can put us at a risk of disregarding functional contributions an individual word, with its grammatical form, to properties of texts in their actual existence before they are put together in the process of corpus compilation (Stubbs 2015). The present study, therefore, seeks to adopt a functional perspective to examine the ways in which a grammatical form of a word can be functional to texts. The word chosen to be a case study of the text-lexicogrammar interface is the plural noun “days”. This is because of all the five time nouns that have been chosen to be investigated functionally in Mahlberg’s (2005) study of English general nouns, i.e. “time”, “times”, “year”, “years” and “day”, the plural form “days” was not selected while both the singular and plural forms of TIME and YEAR, as we can see from the list, were looked at. Indeed, Mahlberg (2005: 53) acknowledges that the plural form “days” could have been included in her study had it not been for “purely pragmatic” reasons, including creating a variety of general nouns to be analyzed and frequencies of the nouns involved. Thus, results from my analysis of the plural form of “days” in the present study can more or less complement the existing corpus-driven functional account of time nouns. The comparison between my functional analysis of “days” and that of its singular counterpart in Mahlberg (2005) is hoped to show the ways in which a distinction between the singular and plural forms of this general noun can be related to their patterns of textual functions. The questions the present study addresses can be spelled out as follows:
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(1) What are textual functions of the plural noun “days”? (2) To what extent and in what ways are “day” and “days” similar and different in terms of their textual functions? This small-scale study is hoped not only to provide a functional description of “days” but also adds some evidence to the developing theoretical perspective on the textlexicogrammar interface in corpus linguistics. To these ends, I first describe theoretical and analytical frameworks to be applied for the analysis, focusing on Mahlberg’s (2005) study. Then, a qualitative functional analysis of “days” based on its concordance lines is provided before quantitative results are demonstrated. Finally, I discuss the findings with regards to functional profile of the word under study and its relationship with its singular counterpart.
2. Textual functions of time nouns: A corpus-driven approach One of the major corpus linguistic studies that highlights the relationship between lexis and text is Mahlberg (2005), which investigates textual functions of English general nouns that denote time, people and world. General nouns have often been remarked on as a group of lexical items that are closely linked to texts because they create cohesion in a text (Halliday and Hasan 1976; Partington 1998). Mahlberg’s (2005) study of general nouns, however, is different from other studies on this subject in that it highlights the corpus-driven stance1), emphasizing the ways in which general nouns can be described and categorized in relations to their contributions to textual meanings and organization. This is conducted through an examination of frequency and contextual information of corpus data, rather than relying on already-existing categories, such as those provided by Halliday and Hasan (1976). Through a corpus-driven approach, Mahlberg (2005) comes up with a number of functional categories of different groups of general nouns. The functional groups are basically concerned with meanings contributed by general nouns in texts. This is based on a view that “[t]he focus on language in use naturally entails a functional perspective that is concerned with meaning. When people use language they are interested in meaning and not in structures. Corpus linguistics is prepared to accept that ‘the main 1) A distinction is made between the terms “corpus-based” and “corpus-driven” by neo-Firthian corpus linguists. Tognini-Bonelli (2001) explains that the former approach looks at corpus data in accordance with certain models or categories. Through this approach, corpus data usually provide quantitative evidence to support, challenge or lead to adjustment of the adopted framework. On the other hand, with a corpus-driven approach, new theoretical statements or descriptive categories that reflect corpus data under study are often formulated.
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function of language is to mean” (Teubert 1999 cited in Mahlberg 2005: 33). In order to make functional statements about lexical items, frequency and contextual information are the key factors that guide corpus-driven interpretations of data. Mahlberg (2005) looks at a total of 20 general nouns, divided into groups of time, people and world nouns. Functional groups of general nouns were mainly derived from concordance analyses. In many cases, concordance analyses were combined with examinations of expanded textual stretches. A total of 100 concordance lines of each general noun were analyzed. The preliminary results from all the analyses were compared across nouns in each group. Mahlberg (2005) notes that the comparison sometimes led to adjustments of categories for a single noun. The sole criterion adopted through the analysis was a similarity of functions, i.e. similar meanings in text, shared among groups of examples. The derived functional categories used to describe the examples were thus developed through comparison of the examples. In other words, each category was not identified beforehand and was thus dynamic, i.e. adjustments were made as the analysis developed. Mahlberg (2005) acknowledges that the number of 100 concordance lines for each noun under study was chosen for reasons of feasibility. Hence, the results cannot be taken as representative quantitative interpretations. The numbers can only indicate tendencies, which may serve as the basis for further investigation. As a consequence, results from the concordance analysis, which focuses on qualitative aspects of patterns, Mahlberg (2005) emphasises, have to be suggestive rather than definitive. Moreover, each functional group of data samples was characterized through an ad hoc label, which, though involving a certain subjectivity, is closely related to each group of examples. With regards to time nouns, Mahlberg (2005: 63) argues that associating time nouns only with the function concerning time orientation in texts is a simplification of their actual uses. This is because, in fact, time nouns occur in a variety of patterns that illustrate different aspects of meanings related to time. Based on an analysis of 100 concordance lines of each of these words: “time”, “times”, “year”, “years” and “day”, Mahlberg (2005) proposes nine functional groups of time nouns (henceforth presented in italics): (1) Time orientation (2) Measurement (3) Investing time (4) Time passes (5) History, life (6) School, university (7) Evaluation, text organization (8) Combination and (9) Other. Each of these categories is explained and illustrated in my qualitative analysis of the noun “days” below. As noted above, these functional groups of time nouns were derived from corpus-driven concordance analyses and from comparisons of these five different nouns. However, Mahlberg (2005) emphasizes that since meaning is fuzzy, the identified functional groups cannot be taken to represent clear boundaries between them. The time passes function, for example, of the noun “time”, as in such expression as “a waste of time”, can also reflect the evaluation, text organization function of the noun, since it implies the speaker’s attitude that time is precious to him/ her.
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However, to categorize a time noun into one group rather than into some possible others, repeated textual patterns have been examined and compared among time nouns in her study. The nine functional groups of time nouns listed above reflect similarities of functions and meanings shared by different time nouns, which become obvious by comparison of the examples. At the same time, each of the groups illustrates different facets of a ‘time’ meaning that characterizes a variety of functions of the nouns in text. Since the above nine functional groups are suggested as major functions of time nouns, they are adopted in this study as an analytical framework for my analysis of “days”. This will also be of particular use for a comparative purpose of the study, i.e. to examine to what extent a distinction between the singular and plural forms of the noun DAY is linked to functional profiles of each word form.
3. Methodology While Mahlberg’s study of “day” draws upon data from the Bank of English, the present study makes use of British National Corpus (BNC) data. This is because the former is only available to researchers at the University of Birmingham while the latter is open to public access. Given the restricted accessibility of the Bank of English data, using the BNC as an alternative dataset seems to be a most reasonable and compromising choice. Both the Bank of English and BNC are general corpora widely used in corpus linguistic research. In fact, Mahlberg (2005) used both the Bank of English and BNC to triangulate her frequency-based selection of general nouns in her analysis. After all, the use of BNC data in this study can be useful in exploring the applicability and feasibility of functional categories of time nouns developed on the basis of data from the Bank of English. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that the use of different datasets does not appear very useful in quantitative terms for a study that involves a comparative end. Frequency information presented in the present study, however, is meant to suggest a possible functional tendency of the lexical item under study, rather than to indicate an accurate quantitative disparity between the nouns “day” and “days”. Indeed, the present study focuses more on the qualitative aspect of corpus linguistic research, e.g. interpretation of data and usage-based description of English. Yet, even a qualitative description of textual functions of “days” is also worth a special note. As stated above, since meaning is fuzzy and each functional group does not represent an entirely independent textual function, it is hardly possible in some cases
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to assign a clear-cut category to a certain examples of the noun under study. Categorizing potentially overlapping cases of the concordance lines into a particular functional group involves a certain degree of subjectivity in the interpretation of the examples. Again, this also means that the frequency of each functional group presented in Table 1 below can only be suggestive rather than indicative of the word’s textual contribution. However, as will be clear below, my interpretation is mainly based on an examination of concrete textual features, which in many cases extend beyond a concordance line but over paragraphs. This is in order to maximize the degree of verifiability in the present functional analysis. Having a co-rater is another possibility to reduce the degree of subjectivity but for the purpose of this small-scale study, only concordance line and textual analysis were relied on.
4. Functional categories of “days”: A qualitative analysis The BNC contains 31, 970 tokens of the noun “days”, amounting to a relative frequency of 325.18 instances per million words, while its singular counterpart occurs 60,039 times, or 610.69 instances per million words. Obviously, the singular form is almost twice as many as the plural form, indicating its being more generally used, which in turn explains why it received more attention in Mahlberg’s (2005) study of general nouns. All the hits of “days” in the BNC were thinned to 100 cases for a qualitative analysis so that the number of data matches that used in Mahlberg’s (2005) analysis of the singular noun “day”. This can facilitate a comparison of my analysis with the previous study. Mahlberg’s (2005) functional groups of time nouns were found to cover all cases of “days” in my dataset, as will be illustrated below. In each category, two types of examples of “days” are presented and discussed: (1) those that are representative of a functional category and (2) those that do not seem intuitively representative of a functional group. The former type is meant to illustrate the nature of a given category while the latter is discussed to make it clear why certain cases of “days” were put into a particular functional group.
4.1 Time orientation The time orientation function deals with the temporal aspect of events or actions presented in texts, ranging from specifying a point in time, e.g. “this year”, duration, e.g. “for five years” and repetition, e.g. “all the time”. Most of the examples of time
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nouns are in this category. While this functional label might be seen as relatively broad, Mahlberg (2005) notes that what particularly characterizes this function is the link a time noun provides to the context; the noun creates links both to the clause in which it is embedded and to the contents of the text. For example, the phrase “By the time the bell rang for the end of the lesson […]” is linked both to the clause following it and to the story as it has developed in the preceding text (2005: 71). Examples of the noun “days” in my data that are put in this group include: (a) They would be with me for four days in July. I had known Margo since she was fifteen. (b) Thomas died in December, but it is only in the last few days that Scotland Yard has received information from the FBI about why he was killed. (c) Despite the fact that we don’t hear so much about AIDS these days the problems are increasing. All the examples above illustrate how the noun “days” is used to create a link between the event or action mentioned in the clause and the context of situation in the text, as in (a) and (b), or in the real world, as in (c), where the expression “these days” is used deictically to project a common temporal ground shared between the writer and readers.
4.2 Measurement In this functional group, time nouns are mentioned to measure or compare something other than time. In Mahlberg’s study, such patterns as “a day/ year” that expresses a reference point for a measurement as in “a kilogram of CFCs a day”, or “[number] years old” to refer to age, and “times” in expressions of comparison, e.g. “ten times fresher”, are examples of time nouns that serve the measurement function. In my set of examples, such formulaic phraseological patterns that explicitly denote measurement were not found. On the contrary, uses of “days” to convey the idea of measurement in my dataset are expressed in less idiomatic patterns and actually require contextual information from the textual environment to convey meanings related to measurement. For example: (a) The benefit is payable monthly after 15 consecutive days absence from work, […] (b) As the Islamic calendar has fewer days than the Gregorian and there is no allowance for the imperceptible tilt of our spinning world, their months are twenty-nine or thirty days long, never thirty-one.
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(c) On the night of the full moon, people gathered there from as far afield as Bārakot, twelve days' walk away. Example (a) seems more explicitly related to measurement than the other examples. The noun “days” is used in order to express a temporal measurement of one’s absence from work. The reference to “days” in (b) actually does not match Mahlberg’s (2005: 66) definition of the measurement function in that it does not measure “something other than time”. On the contrary, it shows that “days” is referred to in this case to measure a period of time, i.e. a month. Specifically, it is used to show how long a month is in two different calendar systems and yet it can be argued that “days” in this case is used to measure differences between two cultural perceptions of a month. Moreover, the phraseological pattern of expression “[number] + days + long” correlate with that used for referring to age “[number] + years + old” illustrated by Mahlberg (2005); they both share core phraseological elements: “[number] + time noun + adjective”. Hence, although this example does not go exactly in line with the given definition of the measurement function, the pattern and meaning of “days” in (b) is best described as expressing measurement. Example (c) seems relatively less obvious as a measurement expression. The noun “days” can be interpreted as performing the time orientation function since it indicates a period of time in which walking takes. However, I put it in this group because the time noun “days” is used to measure the distance between “there” and “Bārakot”; the phrase “twelve days’ walk away” helps give an idea how long “as far afield as Bārakot” is. In other words, the concept of time, articulated through “days”, is used to measure spatial distance in this example.
4.3 Investing time This functional group of time nouns expresses how time is used for a specific purpose or in a specific way. Mahlberg (2005) notes that this is often expressed through a collocation between time nouns and such verbs as “take”, “give”, “devote” and “spend”. Examples of “days” used for this purpose in my set of 100 concordance lines include: (a) Martine was a middle-aged married woman, her husband a banker who spent three days of every week in Luxembourg, leaving her time to philander. (b) When Isabella wins a military victory she celebrates it with eleven days of psalms and the sonorous severities of priests. The sentence in (a) is a standard case that illustrates a way in which the noun “days” is used to express how time is invested on a daily basis, as suggested by its collocation
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with “spent”. Example (b) does not exhibit a common formal pattern observed in Mahlberg (2005) but is interpreted as performing the time investing function because the reference to the noun “days” helps indicate how time is related to the ways in which someone celebrates her success.
4.4 Time passes While the investing time function relates time to the ways in which something requires time or in which someone uses time, the concept of time in this functional group is seen as something that “passes independently and cannot be manipulated”. And it is the passing of time that has effects on someone or something. Common expressions in this group include “a waste of time” or “to buy someone time”. In the present study, there are only two cases of this function in my examples and this function of theirs is not straightforwardly shown from concordance lines but can only be identified when other sentences in the textual neighborhood are also examined: (a) But it wasn't all plain flying when the wedding was postponed because of low cloud and it wasn't until four days had elapsed that they were able to tell a Florida State public notary: ‘I do’. (b) I am growing tired of it, he wrote. That is how Autumn affects me. The burning of the leaves. The shortening of the days. My ideal home, he wrote: no trees, no sky with fleeting clouds. In (a) “days” are mentioned to indicate for how long a group of people cannot do anything but wait until four days passed so that their wedding can take place. The passing time, thus, is not manipulated by anyone and affects those people’s situation. In the case of (b), the underlined sentence does not contain an agent that shortens “days” and hence it is not acted upon. And because time cannot be manipulated to be longer in this context, it has effects on the speaker/ writer, i.e. it bored him/ her. These two uses of “days” are thus categorized as expressing the time passes function.
4.5 History, life According to Mahlberg (2005), this functional group is labelled as such because its examples refer to time as a period in people’s lives or reflect a characteristic of society or history. In the present study, there are relatively quite a few examples that illustrate this use of “days” (see Table 1 below); for instance: (a) Carrie remembered those early days clearly, how Fred had praised her cheerfulness
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and efficiency, and had been quick to point out that the upturn in trade was largely due to her. (b) Prince Sihanouk, whose reign they may associate with the happier days before the Vietnam war and the Khmers Rouges. The noun “days” in (a) explicitly refers to an aspect of a person’s life in the past, which is characterized by admiration from somebody. This is expressed explicitly through the collocation between “days” and “those early”, which is in turn followed and modified by the clause “how Fred …due to her”. Example (b) illustrates how the noun refers to a period of time in history, with positive characteristics reflected by the occurrence of “happier”. While it is arguable that example (b) can be interpreted as performing an evaluation function, due to its collocation with an evaluative adjective “happier”, I put this example in history, life functional group because the evaluation is expressed through the adjective more than through the time noun. On the other hand, the noun “days” in (b), despite occurring without a collocation that indicates the past like “those” or “early” as found in (a), points to a period of time in history before important events occurred. It is therefore categorized as belonging to the history, life group.
4.6 School, university In this group, time is seen in relations to the educational institution, denoting a level of study. In Mahlberg’s study, only the nouns “year” and “years” were found to be used for this purpose, e.g. “the first years” and “the sixth-year master”. Of 100 concordance lines from the BNC, this function was not found in association with “days”. One case deserves to be discussed, however: (a) One of the reasons why Montgomerie has done so well as a professional is that he has stayed basically with the swing which brought him Walker Cup honours in his student days in Texas. Because the time noun “days” is used in collocation with “student”, it is possible to see it as denoting the meaning related to the school, university group. However, that interpretation seems to be influenced by the association of the word “student” with education while the noun “days” refers to a period of time in the past when Montgomerie was successful in this game, rather than to a level of study. The noun adjunct “student” is seen as characterizing a period of time in Montgomerie’s life in the past related to the discussion of his success in the text. For this reason, this instance of “days” was not counted as an example of the school, university but the
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history, life functional group.
4.7 Evaluation, text organization Mahlberg (2005) points out that the group evaluation and text organization is more complex than and closely interrelated to the previous functional categories. This is because time is “so fundamental to our lives that we continually relate to it” (77)”, so the abovementioned functional groups actually illustrate various ways in which time is perceived as important and hence can be evaluative. As can be seen, events and actions in texts are often mentioned in relation to time (time orientation); time can serve as measurement of something; people have to decide how to invest their time; when time passes, it can affect us; a characteristic of one’s life and social history is referred to in relation to time; schooling is described in accordance with time. However, Mahlberg suggests that evaluation and text organization is treated as a separate functional group because it differs from the other groups in that this function seems to be more central to some examples in three ways. First, some examples of the noun “time” express the notion that something should be done or that the situation is appropriate for a particular action, e.g. “it’s time for us to act”, “the time has come for a business realignment” and “it was no time to be clever”. Second, time nouns in an–of or a genitive construction are used to evaluate something within a period of time, e.g. “the best buy of the year”, “a further burning issue of the day” and “good for this year’s fresh look”. Finally, examples of “years of” and “day that/ when” were found to give a description of a quality of time or highlight a specific occasion when something happened. For instance, the reference to “years” in “years of smoking” may be seen in its ability to introduce a quality of the time period and add weight to the negative habit by stressing its duration; the units “day that/ when” mark a specific day on which something happened when in fact the conjunction “when” can be used as well but the reference to “day” can give more emphasis to the specific time in which something occurred and hence can be regarded as a means of text organization. In the present study, there are three examples of “days” that can be interpreted as being specifically used for the evaluative, text organization function. (a) THE Channel Islands claim the British sunshine record and are a good bet for some late rays and warm days at this time of year. (b) The first seven days of heavy fighting and shelling have caused a large number of casualties; the Commando units in some instances are down to less than half strength. (c) A meeting on Sept. 4, 1989, between King Birendra and the then Indian Prime
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Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, […] failed to produce a breakthrough in the conflict with India over trade and transit rights […]. Following the November 1989 change of government in India, however, two days of talks on ending the nine-month trade and transit dispute took place on Jan. 4-5, 1990, […]. The government of V. P. Singh expressed its willingness to reach an early mutually acceptable and beneficial solution to all outstanding issues with Nepal but concrete proposals to break the deadlock remained undecided. In example (a) the noun “days” is used to characterize “this time of year”, thereby contributing to an evaluation of the year referred to in the text. The other two instances are less obvious. They are categorized into this functional group because the noun “days” introduces a noun phrase denoting an action or activity that took place, i.e. heavy fighting and shelling” in (b) and “talks ending the nine-month trade and transit dispute” in (c). If paraphrased, the sentences in (b) and (c) could be expressed with the noun phrases functioning as subjects of the sentences and the references to “days” as part of noun phrase modifiers, as follows: (a) “heavy fighting and shelling in the first seven days have caused […]” (b) “talks on […] took place for two days on Jan. 4-5, 1990”. Therefore, the use of “days” as the head of the noun phrase in the BNC examples serves to highlight the period of time in which the given actions happened. This can be seen as a means of text organization and strategies of evaluation. In (b) the fact that the first seven days is given weight and described as being full of heavy fighting and a large number of casualties suggests how serious the situation was from the very beginning of the event. In (c), the noun phrase “two days of talks” as the subject of the sentence highlights the importance of duration of the activity. The focus on the time period of “two days” is also exhibited through its being put in juxtaposition with another time expression “nine-month […] dispute”. This can bring up a contrast between two periods of time in which the relevant events occurred, “talk” and “dispute”, thereby encouraging an evaluative interpretation of the talks, i.e they were relatively short (lasting for two days) compared with the period of time in which the problems has been in existence (nine months). This is then followed by statements about results of the talk. The reference to the event as “two days of talk” is thus linked to the success and failure of the talk, thereby contributing to the structure and organization of the text as well as encouraging evaluation of the events under discussion. Without an explicit expression of assessment of the situations concerned in (b) and (c), the references to “days” allows the writers to manage different pieces of information in the texts and encourage an evaluative interpretation of the events. Finally, it should be noted that
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the above two cases of “days” in (b) and (c) share the phraseological pattern “[number] days of [action]” and colligational pattern of functioning as subjects of the clauses (cf. Hoey 2005). These patterns also correspond to Mahlberg’s (2005) observation on the use of the phrase “years of” and subject position of “day that/ when”. It seems interesting for future studies to examine the relationship between these formal patterns of time nouns and their text organization, evaluation function.
4.8 Combinations Unlike the above previous notional groups, this group focuses on formal rather than functional properties of time noun expressions. It contains combinations of nouns, or nouns and adjectives, e.g. lunch time, time limit, fiscal year, new year’s resolution, opening-day. In the present study, only one instance of “days” was found to be used in such a compound construction: (a) The offer by the DoE Environment Service is to mark European Heritage Days on September 11 and 12. In this case, “days” is used in combination with “European Heritage” to form a compound proper noun referring to a special occasion, which lasted two days.
4.9 Other According to Mahlberg (2005), this category contains examples that do not occur often enough for the definition of a functional group, with a meaning that is less assimilable within the broad time meaning shared by the other groups. It also includes unclear cases. As for the present study, two instances of “days” were put in this group. They are used as a metalinguistic expression that refers to the word “days”, rather than denoting the meaning of time. Note that an expanded contextual stretch is needed to interpret this use in each case. (a) Most people are fascinated by the way words change their meanings and their form and spelling: your pupils may not know that the history of any one word can be a story in itself (like the etymology of the word "history"). Some words, indeed, have stories attached to them, like psych-; others, hard to spell, like sword, gnat, knight or parliament, the days of the week and the months of the year, become accessible and memorable when their stories are known. (b) This is not a treatise on geology, biology, or any other science. We are not told when creation took place. Nor are we given details as to how God brought the
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earth and life into being–or how long it all took. The "days" are taken by some to be periods of time.
5. Comparison of “days” and “day” Based on the qualitative analysis illustrated above, the distribution pattern of “days” in the present study and that of its singular counterpart found in Mahlberg (2005), according to functional groups, is demonstrated as follows: Table 1. Distribution patterns of “day” and “days” (a total number of examples per noun: 100) Functional group
day
days
Time orientation
37
47
Measurement
3
7
Investing time
1
8
Time passes
1
2
History, life
0
30
School, university
0
0
Evaluation, text organization
13
3
Combination
21
1
Other
24
2
Based on the frequency information above, it can be seen that the history, life function is the major function associated with “days”, which marks it off from its singular counterpart. In fact, it is likely to be a canonical textual function of “days” since the lexical item is more frequently used to express this meaning than other time nouns in Mahlberg’s study: time (4 instances), times (18 instances), year (0 instance) and years (3 instances). As far as the singular–plural distinction is concerned, it can be stated that the plural form of DAY is different from its singular counterpart not only in its grammatical meaning in denoting plurality but also in its text-functional dimension; it is used to refer to a period time in the past while the singular form is not likely to have this property. The difference between the two words is hence not simply grammatical. This in turn suggests that grammatical aspects of a lexical item are closely related to meanings and textual functions. The frequency above also points to a strong tendency in which “days” is used to
Exploring the Text-Lexicogrammar Interface: A Corpus-Driven Analysis of the Plural Noun “days” ･ 37
express meanings about investing time more often than the singular form. This might be because activities presented in texts and verbs that realize this function, e.g. “spend”, “take” and “devote”, are likely to require a period of time of more than a day. The function measurement is also another specific textual function that displays a higher frequency of “days” than “day”. However, it would be too risky to interpret that the plural noun “days” is used to measure things more than its singular counterpart. This is because the use of “days” for the measurement function is less formulaic or idiomatic than “day”. While examples in Mahlberg’s study display three cases of “… a day” and “ … per day”, the plural noun “days” takes various representations in expressing the concept of measurement. This in turn points to a tendency in which “days” is used in more various textual patterns. It seems then better to note that “days” is used more flexibly to express measurement than “day”. As for “time orientation”, it is basically a shared function of all time nouns, so the difference in frequencies between the singular and plural forms of DAY does not seem very useful in describing how grammatical forms can be related to textual functions of the two lexical items. The two functions associated with “day” that seem particularly more frequent than “days” are those related to evaluation, text organization and combination. The latter is not very surprising given that the singular form tends to be more commonly used in combination with other words to form a compound noun; “day” can be used as the first element, as in “day lotion”, or the second element, e.g. “Easter day”. The plural form “days” in my BNC examples occurs only once when two days are referred to as European Heritage Days. As for the evaluation, text organization function, it is not clear why there are much fewer examples of “days” for this function. A possible explanation based on the data used here is that the 100 concordances lines of “days” reflect remarkably high proportions of time orientation and history, life functions, both of which constitute 77% of “days”. Other functions therefore tend to be marginal. Moreover, as noted above, the evaluation, textual organization function of the singular noun “day” is associated with a relatively more formulaic unit of meaning, such as “of the day”, “a day of” and “day when”, while that of “days” cannot be precisely identified on the basis of 100 concordance lines. A further study of this function of “days” is clearly needed to explain this disparity. As for the Other function, it seems hardly possible to explain a big gap between the frequencies of “day” and “days” in this category, i.e. 24 vs. 2, respectively, because this function is concerned with marginal uses of the nouns. However, the fact that the singular noun “day” is found much more frequent than its plural counterpart in this group hints at a larger functional variety of the singular form “day” while textual functions of the plural form are centered on the concepts of time orientation and history, life.
38 ･ Corpus Linguistics Research, Volume 3
6. Conclusion The present study addresses an interface between grammatical and textual dimensions of a lexical item, using the singular–plural forms of the noun DAY as a case study. Based upon an analysis of 100 instances of “days”, two major functions of time nouns are particularly associated with the plural noun under study: time orientation and history, life. The latter, however, is found to be the one that distinguishes the plural from the singular forms on the text-functional plane. In fact, it is arguably the major function of “days”, given that the time orientation meaning applies to time nouns in general. In this respect, findings from the present study contribute to the existing functional account of time nouns. At a more general theoretical level, the results suggest that grammatical forms of a noun not simply denote singularity or plurality but can be very closely associated with textual meanings and functions. This relationship is dialectical. On the one hand, a particular grammatical form of a word is opted for to create meanings and help in organization of texts; for instance, the plural noun “days” is used to refer to a historical period in a society mentioned in particular texts, e.g. news reports or novels. At the same time, certain meanings and textual function patterns occur so repeatedly in association with a particular grammatical form of words that they become part of the usage profile of the word form, as illustrated by dominance of the history, life function of the plural noun “days”. Clearly, analyses of other kinds of grammatical differences, such as verb tenses and aspects, are needed to provide empirical evidence on the grammatical form–textual function relationship, in addition to the singular–plural forms of nouns addressed in this study. It is also worthy of note that although the present study is theoretically-oriented, it has some pedagogical relevance. Specifically with regards to the word under study, the core textual functions of “days” as an expression of history, life should be particularly emphasized to learners of English, instead of parsing it as a plural form of DAY. This would enable learner to express meanings related to the past in addition to other expressions like “in the past”, “formerly” or “previously”. After all, the plural noun “days” is a frequent general noun and ranked among the top 38 most frequent nouns in British English (cf. Mahlberg 2005). Learners’ awareness of its usage patterns would benefit their receptive and productive skills. At a more general level, the relationship between grammar and text should be brought to attention or underline the design of course materials and textbooks, so that treatment of grammar in the pedagogic context can be theoretically and systematically integrated with communicative purposes.
Exploring the Text-Lexicogrammar Interface: A Corpus-Driven Analysis of the Plural Noun “days” ･ 39
References Halliday, M. A. K. & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London, UK: Longman. Hoey, M. (2005). Lexical priming: A new theory of words and language. Oxon, UK: Routledge. Hunston, S. & Francis, G. (2000). Pattern Grammar: A Corpus-driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins. Mahlberg, M. (2005). English General Nouns: A Corpus Theoretical Approach. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins. Partington, A. (1998). Patterns and Meanings. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins. Sinclair, J. (2004). Trust the Text: Language, Corpus and Discourse. London, UK: Routledge. Sinclair, J. (2003). Reading Concordances. London, UK: Longman. Stubbs, M. (2015). The textual functions of lexis. In N. Groom, M. Charles & S. John (Eds.), Corpora, Grammar and Discourse. (pp. 97-116). Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins. Teubert, W. (1999). “Corpus linguistics – a partisan view”. Retrieved from http://tractor.bham.ac. uk/ijcl/teubert_cl.html. Tognini-Bonelli, E. (2001). Corpus Linguistics at Work. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: John Benjamins. Wijitsopon, R. (forthcoming) Computer, Literature, Linguistics: A Corpus Stylistic Study of Singular and Plural Keywords in Persuasion. Kemanusiaan: The Asian Journal of Humanities.
◆ About the authors ◆ Raksangob Wijitsopon Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Henry Dunant Rd., Patumwan, Bangkok 10330, Thailand
[email protected]
40 ･ Corpus Linguistics Research, Volume 3 [Appendix] The benefit is payable monthly after 15 consecutive
days absence from work, during the
auentzienstrasse, where Isherwood lodged in different
days as the East Berliners queue for fruit
equal Palace's best ever FA Cup score. In his early
days with us Hamilton was one of those
med strange to those who had known Nigel in his early days as a conscientious objector to find ing by regaling us with some reminiscences of his early
days in Parliament, where he has served
dget with which to buy published material. In the early
days of the clearinghouses it was anticip
The Pistols He made us focus our thoughts. In the early days of the band, before John arrived, he on the Church. The most contentious issue in the early
days of the second session was the colleg
t it. Seeing silver stars Heather Couper recalls the early
days of London's Planetarium MANY
distribution have changed dramatically since the early
days
ng behind the counter. Carrie remembered those early
days clearly, how Fred had praised her ch
of the twopenny library. The publis
r broke down, the sheets didn't get changed for eight
days . Everyone complained. We all felt
lla wins a military victory she celebrates it with eleven
days of psalms and the sonorous severiti
died in December, but it is only in the last few
days that Scotland Yard has received info
ctually made a bomb in Leicestershire over the last few
days
. I thank the League Against Cruel
in's studious absence from public view for the past few
days forced the two parties to seek a
earth and abated after the end of a hundred and fifty
days . A hundred and fifty days. Okay.
d French help arrived, and resigned his command. Five
days later the Ulster rising went ahead
ing bomb-making materials on a trip from France. Five
days later three terrorists were apprehen
night shift — finishing at 11 00pm. Over the next five
days , Roland Don and Peter held one-to-
nd later that summer. They would be with me for four
days in July. I had known Margo since
‘He will be out of hospital in three or four
days . He is awake and alert.’ Among
ostponed because of low cloud and it wasn't until four
days had elapsed that they were able to
uake. All the mothers died at once. However fourteen
days later they were still pulling out er
nouk, whose reign they may associate with the happier
days before the Vietnam war and the
DoE Environment Service is to mark European Heritage
Days on September 11 and 12.
kind of thing a man would remember for the rest of his days . Yes, he could imagine it now, forty osphere needed for a truly British Romantic film set in
days gone by. And many would say
h have circadian rhythms which divide our time up into days , the fly lives its day at a much faster . In the past this exercise would take at least three man days and, due to the "five bar gate" that it was difficult to climb downstairs. I trained most
days from then on. Training hurt and it
club has officially confirmed the appointment nineteen
days after Liam Brady resigned the
ak. Oh he's [pause] [unclear] He's alright a couple of
days and [pause] getting old I think. Mark
eeks with this bathroom, Norm's worked a couple of
days , you know and in between of cours
ger to climb somewhere different. Actually I had lots of days free and was making the most of
Exploring the Text-Lexicogrammar Interface: A Corpus-Driven Analysis of the Plural Noun “days” ･ 41
on Breville on the night of 12th June. The first seven
days of heavy fighting and shelling have c
guration on Feb. 7 was preceded by the deaths several
days earlier of four boys and one membe
er with a poisonous prawn that laid him low for several days and was out of the match with diarr f Northamptonshire. Rose of the Shires. Spend several
days visiting all 15 sites which include
g with a ten-day suspension. Cauthen had a further six
days added to the four-day suspension h
cial Work (CCETSW) insists upon a minimum of sixty
days ' training culminating in formal exa
‘When I play, some days it's off, some
days it's on, and I take it for what it is
which brought him Walker Cup honours in his student days in Texas. Once again, the alteration ween 0 and 7.5 hours, and they spent the subsequent
days being tested in the laboratory on
the province's roads so far this year to 87. Ten
days ago, a 28-year-old Bushmills man
"I'm sure if I ask Muslim brother for another ten
days
spell, like sword, gnat, knight or parliament, the
days of the week and the months of the
with you,’ he swore. ‘Now and all the
days of my life.’ He slanted a playfully
it will be all right, " the Shah replie
owing belief in astrology in Hellenistic times and in the days of the Roman empire. The cyclical me. The burning of the leaves. The shortening of the
days . My ideal home, he wrote: no trees,
here have been fortified buildings on this site since the
days of the Viking invaders. The castle is
! INDIANS GET U.S. CASH FOR DRY STORES The
days when the white man could comman
wall is constructed from slag blocks, a testimony to the
days when Fromebridge rang to the
rizontally scrolling blasters for the C64. Those were the
days , son. Grand they were too ― none
les and things [unclear] round there you know, in them days . Then we come in here it was a ‘I'm not there much, though. Pretty busy these
days .’ ‘You're doing well,’ she said,
it. For one thing you can't be too careful these
days , and for another I always manage
case. ‘You'll forget your own head one of these
days ,’ said Mrs. Hennessy. ‘What else
have some novelty value. What's the going rate these
days ?’ Reeling under the dreadful insult,
how it is. We take no pride in our work these
days .’ As a young romeo, Crawford had
'll need all their sharpness. It's a hard world these
days . Not like the old days at all. Ah, the
spinning world, their months are twenty-nine or thirty . For all his qualities, which are many, in those completed, which houses the Embassy today. In those
days long, never thirty-one. Therefore days Dennis still had a huge chip on his days Great Britain was represented by an
didn't wear gloves no they didn't wear gloves in those
days oh, is, is a real connection [pause]
t, disciplined regime that was usual in Jamaica in those
days . Learning was by rote and strictly
uldn't carry the barley. It was all manhandled in those
days . About eight men and a foreman
the kind of place it is today. The staff in those
days included the formidable and devout
, it was a number sixty six [gap:address] Street in those days , there were new houses built on had to go to the Valley. Valley was the name those
days . Oh dear dear it was worse than I c-
raced in for the kill. Clearly Crusaders had one of those days in-form teams dread. They could
42 ･ Corpus Linguistics Research, Volume 3 en would probably be Hugh's last. So far during three
days and nights they had seen no sign of
sessions deterred members from staying the full three
days and led one disgruntled art historian
(chemistry/mathematics), presently job-sharing three
days per week at a school in Birmingham.
r consultation by subscribers with sick horses on three
days a week, with little or no call upon
arried woman, her husband a banker who spent three
days of every week in Luxembourg,
m The Challenge is a marathon spread over four tough
days , though La Santa offers much more
le gathered there from as far afield as Bārakot, twelve
days ' walk away. In the moonlight they
(Form 6.33 in Sched 4 to the rules) within twenty-one
days of the bankruptcy order or such
ber 1989 change of government in India, however, two
days of talks on ending the nine-month
to Sellafield, said: ‘Greenpeace were at Dover for two
days and finally had to admit the sand
now, remember it, and then destroy it. In two
days ’ time you must appear there. I
to survive two weeks of his company when a mere two
days would disrupt her whole life?
dose of capsaicin was given in four injections over two days (first day: 25 mg/kg in the morning to er to to do, he said it'd take two
days . And I said well we can't [unclear]
record and are a good bet for some late rays and warm days at this time of year. Jersey is the into being ― or how long it all took. The "
days " are taken by some to be periods of
rences and with a united opposition the Conservatives'
days were numbered. A vote of no confid
unt of money paid out depended on how many hours,
days or weeks a prisoner had been
s sense of smell develops gradually, and after about 10
days an infant can identify the smell of its
te, consider an investor who purchases a 91-day bill 10
days after issue at a rate of discount of
ian 25 days in clinics in teaching hospitals and just 10
days in clinics in district general hospitals
at least 43 people had died in Sind in the previous 12
days as a result of armed attacks by gun
he brutal killings at the Nine Mile Reef beauty spot 12
days ago. Police, who swooped on Thurs
ronic diarrhoea, and 33% (21/64) had diarrhoea for 21
days or more. In view of these findings an
PO1). The paid leave entitlement is 20 days and 25
days after five years service. The leave
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days FIND OUT ABOUT: ∙All of the
2 A 57 year old man was referred for ERCP, 49
days after laparoscopic removal of a
he therapist agreed to see Pamela as in outpatient in 5
days ' time to provide her with a further
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