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Transitive Structures with Generic or Indefinite Object-Arguments in English as Functionally Antipassive Constructions

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Nicolas, Aline ULiège
Promotor(s) : Van linden, An ULiège
Date of defense : 26-Aug-2019/6-Sep-2019 • Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2268.2/7946
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Title : Transitive Structures with Generic or Indefinite Object-Arguments in English as Functionally Antipassive Constructions
Author : Nicolas, Aline ULiège
Date of defense  : 26-Aug-2019/6-Sep-2019
Advisor(s) : Van linden, An ULiège
Committee's member(s) : Brems, Lieselotte ULiège
Perrez, Julien ULiège
Language : English
Keywords : [en] English linguistics,
[en] transitivity
[en] discourse
[en] antipassive constructions
Discipline(s) : Arts & humanities > Languages & linguistics
Institution(s) : Université de Liège, Liège, Belgique
Degree: Master en langues et lettres modernes, orientation germaniques, à finalité didactique
Faculty: Master thesis of the Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres

Abstract

[en] This research paper is concerned with Hopper & Thompson’s conceptual redefinition of transitivity in Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse (1980) in which they reject the dichotomous nature of transitivity and claim that it should be seen as a scalar notion so that structures are ranked as more or less transitive. It concentrates on transitive structures that contain generic or indefinite object-arguments in Present-day English. A corpus study of 1200 analysed instances was carried out to analyse 'people' and 'stuff' as generic, plural and uncount nouns and 'someone', 'anyone', 'somebody', 'anybody', 'something', 'anything' as indefinite pronouns, occurring in object position. The aims of this corpus study are: a) to investigate to what extent these show reduced transitivity and backgrounded discourse status in the sense of Hopper and Thompson (1980), and b) to show that constructions containing such generic or indefinite object-arguments exhibit characteristics of object demotion and support the emergence of functionally antipassive constructions in Present-Day English.


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Author

  • Nicolas, Aline ULiège Université de Liège > Master lang. & lettres mod., or. germ. à fin.

Promotor(s)

Committee's member(s)

  • Brems, Lieselotte ULiège Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de langues modernes : ling., litt. et trad. > Langue anglaise & Linguist.synchro.& diachro.de l'anglais
    ORBi View his publications on ORBi
  • Perrez, Julien ULiège Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de langues modernes : ling., litt. et trad. > Langue néerlandaise moderne et linguistique synchronique
    ORBi View his publications on ORBi
  • Total number of views 38
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