Title: A corpus-based analysis of do so anaphora in fictional and non-fictional English
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2017, vol. 43, iss. 2, pp. [29]-55
Extent
[29]-55
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2017-2-2
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/137606
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
This paper presents an in-depth corpus-based analysis of 'do so' verbal anaphora constructions in different fictional and non-fictional written English texts taken from different computerised corpora of British and American Present-day English, comprising texts from the 1960s, 1990s and 2000s. 'Do so' verbal anaphora, as in 'I ate an Apple yesterday in the park, and Peter did so last week', has received extensive attention from a theoretical perspective. Research has focused mainly on the analysis of the categorical factors – i.e. semantic and syntactic – that determine the use of the construction. Little research, however, deals with the analysis of 'do so' anaphora in real written English. The present analysis, based on tested criteria of multidimensional linguistic variation, sheds light on the linguistic and textual factors that drive the pragmatic use and the distribution of the construction. It will be shown that, in addition to semantic and grammatical factors, genre variation also plays an important role in the use of 'do so' anaphora in written discourse.
Note
I am grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for generous financial support (National Programme for Excellence in Scientific and Technical Research; grant FFI2014-52188-P).
References
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[39] Miller, Philip (2011) 'The choice between verbal anaphors in discourse'. In: Hendrickx, Iris, Devi Sobha Lalitha, Antonio Branco and Mitkov Ruslan (eds.) Anaphora Processing and Applications. Berlin: Springer, 82–95.
[40] Miller, Philip (2013) 'Usage preferences: The case of the English verbal anaphor do so'. In: Stefan Müller (ed.) Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications, 121–139.
[41] Potts, Christopher (2002) 'The syntax and semantics of As-parentheticals'. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20(3), 623–689. | DOI 10.1023/A:1015892718818
[42] Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
[43] Reppen, Ranci, Nancy Ide, and Keith Suderman (2005) American National Corpus. Linguistic Data Consortium.
[44] Ross, John Robert (1973) 'Nouniness'. In: Fujimura, Osamu (ed.) Three Dimensions of Linguistic Theory. Tokyo: TEC Corporation, 137–258.
[45] Souesme, Jean-Claude (1987) 'Valeurs et emplois respectifs de DO et DO SO'. Modèles Linguistiques 9, 65–92.
[46] Stirling, Lesley and Rodney Huddleston (2002) 'Deixis and anaphora'. In: Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1449–1564.
[47] Ward, Gregory and Andrew Kehle (2002) 'Syntactic form and discourse accessibility'. Available at http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ward/DAARC02.pdf (Accessed 8 October 2017).
[2] Atkinson, Dwight and Douglas Biber (1994) 'Register: a review of empirical research'. In: Biber, Douglas and Edward Finegan (eds.) Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 351–385.
[3] Baayen, Rolf H (2008) Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
[4] Baker, Paul (2009) Contemporary Corpus Linguistics. London: Continuum.
[5] Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan (1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.
[6] Biber, Douglas (1987) 'A textual comparison of British and American writing'. American Speech (62), 99–119. | DOI 10.2307/455273
[7] Biber, Douglas (1988) Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[8] Biber, Douglas (1992) 'Using computer-based text corpora to analyze the referential strategies of spoken and written texts'. In Svartvik, Jan (ed.) Directions in Corpus Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton, 213–252.
[9] Biber, Douglas (1995) Dimensions of Register Variation: A Cross-linguistic Comparison. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[10] Bolinger, Dwight (1970) 'The meaning of do so'. Linguistic Inquiry 1, 140–144.
[11] Bos, Johan and Jennifer Spenader (2011) 'An annotated corpus for study of VP ellipsis'. Language Resources and Evaluation 45, 463–494. | DOI 10.1007/s10579-011-9142-3
[12] Bouton, Lawrence (1970) 'Do So: Do + adverb'. In: Sadock Jerrold and Anthony Vanek (eds) Studies Presented to Robert B. Lees. Alberta: Linguistic Research Inc, 17–38.
[13] Butler, Christopher (1985) Statistics in Linguistics. Oxford. Blackwell.
[14] Chafe, Wallace L. (1994) Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[15] Cornish, Francis (2006) 'Discourse anaphora'. In: Keith Brown (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier, 631–638.
[16] Culicover, Peter W. and Ray Jackendoff (2005) Simpler Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[17] Davies, Mark (2008) The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present.
[18] Fox, Barbara A. (1987) Discourse Structure and Anaphora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[19] Halliday, Michael Alexander K. (1967) 'Notes on transitivity and theme in English: part 2'. Journal of Linguistics 3, 199–244. | DOI 10.1017/S0022226700016613
[20] Halliday, Michael Alexander K. and Ruqaiya Hasan (1976) Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
[21] Hankamer, Jorge and Ivan A. Sag (1976) 'Deep and surface anaphora'. Linguistic Inquiry 7, 391–426.
[22] Herman, David (2001) 'Spatial reference in narrative domains'. Text 21, 515–541.
[23] Hofland, Knut, Anne Lindebjerg and Jørg Thunestvedt (1999) ICAME Collection of English Language Corpora. 2nd edition, CD-ROM version. Bergen: The HIT Centre.
[24] Houser, Michael J. (2010) The Syntax and Semantics of Do So Anaphora. PhD dissertation, University of California. Berkeley
[25] Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum (2002) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[26] Johnson, Keith (2008) Quantitative Methods in Linguistics. Oxford: Blackwell.
[27] Kehler, Andrew and Gregory Ward (1999) 'On the semantics and pragmatics of identifier so'. In: Ken Turner (ed.) The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface from Different Points of View (Vol. I). Amsterdam: Elsevier, 233–256.
[28] Kehler, Andrew and Gregory Ward (2004) 'Constraints on ellipsis and event reference'. In Horn, Laurence R. and Gregory Ward (eds.) Handbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell, 383–403.
[29] Kjellmer, Göran (1998) 'On contraction in modern English'. Studia Neophilologica 69, 155–162. | DOI 10.1080/00393279708588204
[30] Kurzon, Dennis (1985) 'Signposts for the reader: A corpus-based study of text deixis'. Text 5(3), 187–200.
[31] Lakoff, George and John Robert Ross (1976) 'Why you can't do so into the kitchen sink'. In: Mc-Cawley, James D. (ed.) Syntax and Semantics 7: Notes from the Linguistic Underground. New York: Academic Press, 101–111.
[32] Lakoff, George (1966) Stative Adjectives and Verbs in English. Computational Laboratory, Harvard University.
[33] Levin, Nancy S. (1986) Main Verb Ellipsis in Spoken English. New York: Garland.
[34] Lord, Carol and Dahlgren, Kathleen (1997) 'Participant and event anaphora in newspaper articles'. In: Bybee, Joan, John Haiman, and Sandra A. Thompson (eds.) Essays on Language Function and Language Type, Dedicated to Talmy Givòn. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 323–356.
[35] Macía-Vega, Beatriz and John Payne (2007) 'Do So'. Talk delivered at the Second International conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English. University of Toulouse-le Mirail.
[36] Mair, Christian (2002) 'Three changing patterns of verb complementation in Late Modern English: a real time study based on matching corpora'. English Language and Linguistics 6, 105–131.
[37] Michiels, Archibald (1978) 'A note on the relation between agent and stativity'. Neophilologus 62, 172–177. | DOI 10.1007/BF01510981
[38] Miller, Philip (1990) 'Pseudogapping and do so substitution'. In: Ziolkowski, Michael, Manuela Noske, and Karen Deaton (eds.) Papers from the 26th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 293–305.
[39] Miller, Philip (2011) 'The choice between verbal anaphors in discourse'. In: Hendrickx, Iris, Devi Sobha Lalitha, Antonio Branco and Mitkov Ruslan (eds.) Anaphora Processing and Applications. Berlin: Springer, 82–95.
[40] Miller, Philip (2013) 'Usage preferences: The case of the English verbal anaphor do so'. In: Stefan Müller (ed.) Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications, 121–139.
[41] Potts, Christopher (2002) 'The syntax and semantics of As-parentheticals'. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20(3), 623–689. | DOI 10.1023/A:1015892718818
[42] Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
[43] Reppen, Ranci, Nancy Ide, and Keith Suderman (2005) American National Corpus. Linguistic Data Consortium.
[44] Ross, John Robert (1973) 'Nouniness'. In: Fujimura, Osamu (ed.) Three Dimensions of Linguistic Theory. Tokyo: TEC Corporation, 137–258.
[45] Souesme, Jean-Claude (1987) 'Valeurs et emplois respectifs de DO et DO SO'. Modèles Linguistiques 9, 65–92.
[46] Stirling, Lesley and Rodney Huddleston (2002) 'Deixis and anaphora'. In: Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum (eds.) The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1449–1564.
[47] Ward, Gregory and Andrew Kehle (2002) 'Syntactic form and discourse accessibility'. Available at http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~ward/DAARC02.pdf (Accessed 8 October 2017).