Current Changes in English Syntax

Mair, Christian; Leech, Geoffrey

doi:10.1002/9780470753002.ch14

Cited by 92 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…To test this hypothesis I analysed all the linguistic features that interact to distinguish literate and oral varieties of English as described in Biber andFinegan (1989a and, to see whether scientific English is drifting towards a more colloquial style. The analysis shows that in this particular register, unlike other text-types (Leech and Smith 2006;Mair and Leech 2006;Leech et al 2009), there is no ongoing colloquialisation of discourse. In other words, as far as the colloquialisation of written English is concerned, scientific discourse proves to be more resistant to this particular change -more "uptight" to use Hundt and Mair's (1999) term -than other, more "agile" text-types.…”

Section: Introduction: Previous Research On the Decrease Of Passives mentioning

confidence: 68%

“…also Fairclough 1992;Wilkinson 1992;Halliday and Martin 1993, 53, 180;Segal 1993, 522-525;Gläser 1995;Sarewitz 1997, 32;Biber and Clark 2002, 63-64;Leech et al 2009;Farrelly and Seoane 2012). Mair and Leech (2006) also believe that the decline in the use of passives may be a response to such social conditioning: "In the current social climate, demands for writing to be more accessible and readable affect writing practice in many fields -from journalism and academia to the design of official forms, and because of this a decrease in the frequency of the passive is to be expected" (Mair and Leech 2006, 332).…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Seoane and Loureiro-Porto 2005;Seoane 2006a), the frequency of be-passives with respect to transitive actives decreases notably towards the end of the twentieth century in written scientific discourse, both in British and in American English. This tendency towards a less frequent use of passives is evident not only in scientific discourse, but, as shown in Leech (2004), Leech and Smith (2006), Mair and Leech (2006) and Leech et al (2009), among others, is a generalised feature of all text-types in the two varieties of English in the century in question. In scientific English specifically, the findings are summarised in Table 1.…”

Section: Introduction: Previous Research On the Decrease Of Passives mentioning

confidence: 85%

See 2 more Smart Citations

On the conventionalisation and loss of pragmatic function of the passive in Late Modern English scientific discourse

Seoane

2013

JHP

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This paper seeks to explain the radical decrease in the use of the passive voice in Present-day English scientific discourse. A number of different linguistic factors having been discounted in previous research, it is hypothesised here that passives are being omitted for two reasons. Firstly, they became conventionalised in scientific discourse and subsequently lost the pragmatic function which originally justified their high frequency in scientific texts. Secondly, over the course of the twentieth century two sociocultural circumstances converge that exert pressure on conventionalised passives to disappear, namely (i) the increasing competitiveness in the scientific community, and (ii) the democratisation of discourse. This hypothesis is tested in the present paper by analysing the function of passives in scientific discourse before the drop in frequency began, that is, in Late Modern English . With data from ARCHER and other sources I will try to show that passives in Late Modern scientific English exemplify the conventionalisation and loss of contextual function of pragmatic strategies, a scenario that, given the right sociohistorical conditions, leads to linguistic change.

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Section: Introduction: Previous Research On the Decrease Of Passives mentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction: Previous Research On the Decrease Of Passives mentioning

confidence: 85%

See 1 more Smart Citation

On the conventionalisation and loss of pragmatic function of the passive in Late Modern English scientific discourse

Seoane

2013

JHP

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“…Mair and Leech (2006) provide evidence of a rise in the frequency of the quasi-modals and a decline in the frequency of the modals in recent British and American writing. Using four parallel written corpora, two with data originating in the 1960s (the British LOB corpus and the American Brown corpus), and two with data originating in the 1990s (the British FLOB corpus and American Frown corpus), they determine the difference between the frequency of items in the 1960s' corpora, and that in the 1990s' corpora, as a percentage of the former: see Table 1.…”

Section: Modality Modals and Quasi-modalsmentioning

confidence: 83%

Modals and quasi‐modals in world Englishes

Collins¹

2009

World Englishes

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This paper reports findings from a study of the frequency and distribution of a set of modals and quasi-modals in nine matching corpora representing British, American, Australian, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indian and Kenyan English. The analysis presented is form-based, with meanings dealt with only in an exemplary, qualitative manner. The findings are discussed in the light of two complementary trends noted by corpus linguists: a rise in the popularity of the quasi-modals, and a decline in that of the modals. The study notes a strong tendency for American English to be leading the way in these developments within the four 'Inner Circle' varieties, and for the South-East Asian varieties as a set to be leading the way within the 'Outer Circle' varieties. The evidence furthermore indicates that stylistic variation is a contributing factor in the trends observed, with quasi-modals flourishing in speech and their modal counterparts more at home in written registers.

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“…Mair and Leech (2006) and Leech et al (2009) summarized English grammatical changes observed in English over the last few decades by showing data obtained from corpora (Note 1). Research on the changes in present-day English, including Mair and Leech (2006) and Leech et al (2009), mainly focus on describing English lexical changes and grammaticalization. However, little attention has been paid to showing the actual behavior of newly emerged phrases (generally defined as repeatedly used word-combinations consisting of at least two words).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Actual Behaviors of Newly Observed Phraseological Units Comprising Two Prepositions

Inoue

2014

IJEL

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This paper describes, from a phraseological perspective, phrases created by combining two prepositions into a complex preposition (CP), defined as a word group that functions as a single preposition; for example, into, within, and upon. In particular, this work focuses on the newly observed CPs on against and in to and proposes that be on against and be in to are newly observed phraseological units in contemporary English, which have not yet been described in previous research or English dictionaries. A recent trend in English is to combine two prepositions into new CPs such as in at, and in for. In particular, two adverbial particles in and on co-occur with various prepositions and help establish new CPs. For example, MED 2 (Macmillan English Dictionary, 2nd edition) lists new CPs such as in at, in for, in on, on about, and on at. Data obtained from corpora of present-day English show that on against and in to mainly co-occur with be verbs, and be on against and be in to are also observed. However, an extensive literature review shows that previous research and English dictionaries do not address this trend. This research describes their polysemy in different contexts, their functions, formations, and stress patterns.

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Current Changes in English Syntax

Cited by 92 publications

References 66 publications

On the conventionalisation and loss of pragmatic function of the passive in Late Modern English scientific discourse

On the conventionalisation and loss of pragmatic function of the passive in Late Modern English scientific discourse

Modals and quasi‐modals in world Englishes

Actual Behaviors of Newly Observed Phraseological Units Comprising Two Prepositions

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