Article
| Title: | A corpus-based analysis of do so anaphora in fictional and non-fictional English |
| Author: | |
| Source document: | Brno studies in English. 2017, vol. 43, iss. 2, pp. [29]-55 |
| Extent: | [29]-55 |
| ISSN: | 0524-6881 (print); 1805-0867 (online) |
| DOI: | 10.5817/BSE2017-2-2 |
| Type: | Article (English) |
| Stable URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/137606 |
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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.
Keywords:
verbal anaphora; 'do so' constructions; textual variation; corpus-based studies; written English
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).
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