1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910781908003321

Autore

Szmrecsanyi Benedikt <1976->

Titolo

Morphosyntactic persistence in spoken English [[electronic resource] ] : a corpus study at the intersection of variationist sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis / / by Benedikt Szmrecsanyi

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berlin ; ; New York, : Mouton de Gruyter, c2006

ISBN

1-282-19416-X

9786612194160

3-11-019780-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (264 p.)

Collana

Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs, x 1861-4302 ; ; 177

Classificazione

18.04

Disciplina

425/.9

Soggetti

English language - Morphology

English language - Syntax

English language - Discourse analysis

English language - Grammar

English language - Variation

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [227]-242) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- Chapter 2 Previous research on persistence phenomena -- Chapter 3 Method and data -- Chapter 4 Persistence in comparison strategy choice -- Chapter 5 Persistence in genitive choice -- Chapter 6 Persistence in future marker choice -- Chapter 7 Persistence in particle placement -- Chapter 8 Persistence in complementation strategy choice -- Chapter 9 Discussion of findings -- Chapter 10 Conclusion -- Back matter

Sommario/riassunto

Language users are creatures of habit with a tendency to re-use morphosyntactic material that they have produced or heard before. In other words, linguistic patterns and tokens, once used, persist in discourse. The present book is the first large-scale corpus analysis to explore the determinants of this persistence, drawing on regression analyses of a variety of functional, discourse-functional, cognitive, psycholinguistic, and external factors. The case studies investigated include the alternation between synthetic and analytic comparatives, between the s-genitive and the of-genitive, between gerundial and



infinitival complementation, particle placement, and future marker choice in a number of corpora sampling different spoken registers and geographical varieties of English. Providing a probabilistic framework for examining the ways in which persistence - among several other internal and external factors - influences speakers' linguistic choices, the book departs from most writings in the field in that it seeks to bridge several research traditions. While it is concerned, in a classically variationist spirit, with internal and external determinants of grammatical variation in English, it also draws heavily on ideas and evidence developed by psycholinguists and discourse analysts. In seeking to construct a comprehensive model of how speakers make linguistic choices, the study ultimately contributes to a theory of how spoken language works. The book is of interest to graduate students and researchers in variationist sociolinguistics, probabilistic linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics.