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Grammatical Metaphor in Clause Combining

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A Corpus-Based Approach to Clause Combining in English from the Systemic Functional Perspective

Part of the book series: The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series ((TMAKHLFLS))

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Abstract

The research based on the Crown corpus, the BNC, and the COCA shows that different types of clausal relation have different genre distribution trends. The research based on the COHA shows that different patterns of clause combining have different diachronic distribution trends, and these distribution trends are to a great extent complementary: the decrease of one relation is compensated for by the increase of another relation, and this compensated distribution is consistent with certain historical evolution trend.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    English gerunds in the Present-day English can be divided into nominal gerunds and verbal gerunds (Heyvaert 2008). Diachronically verbal gerunds were developed out of nominal gerunds (Donner 1986; Jack 1988; Houston 1989; van der Wurff 1993; Tajima 1996; Fanego 1996a, b, 1998, 2004; Kranich 2006; De Smet 2008). We collected both nominal and verbal gerunds using the 20th regular expression. For example:

    1. (1)

      I pretended to ignore his ignoring me. (BNC_FIC) [verbal gerund]

    2. (2)

      The Pharisees looked forward to the coming of the Messiah. (BNC_MISC) [nominal gerund]

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

    Qingshun He

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He, Q. (2019). Grammatical Metaphor in Clause Combining. In: A Corpus-Based Approach to Clause Combining in English from the Systemic Functional Perspective. The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7391-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7391-6_6

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