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- Title
MANDATIVE SENTENCES IN BRITISH ENGLISH: DIACHRONIC DEVELOPMENTS IN NEWSWRITING BETWEEN THE 1990S AND THE 2010S.
- Authors
Ruohonen, Juho
- Abstract
British English preferences in the type of finite verb phrase used in that-clauses after suasive expressions have been shown to be in flux at the turn of the millennium. Previous research suggests that, in the 1990s, the mandative subjunctive was catching up to the previously prevalent should-construction, some studies claiming it had already become the majority variant, others reporting that the should-variant was still predominant. The indicative has reportedly emerged as another viable alternative in the late 20th century. This study has two goals. Firstly, it uses the methodology, corpus design, and results of Crawford (2009), together with analysis of new corpus data, to investigate the diachronic development of BrE selection patterns within a set of 33 suasive items between the 1990s and the 2010s. Secondly, it argues that the Crawfordian, form-based classification scheme is inadequate when the new indicative variant is included in the analysis. The results reveal that although the MS might have narrowly overtaken the should-construction, both variants have declined overall. This appears to be due to a rise of the indicative variant. The result cannot be confirmed using the Crawfordian method, however - an accurate analysis of the full spectrum of variants would require an updated methodology in which the variants are identified by not only their form but also their function.
- Subjects
HISTORICAL linguistics; JOURNALISM writing; SENTENCES (Grammar); AMERICAN English language; AUSTRALIAN English language
- Publication
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 2017, Vol 118, Issue 1, p171
- ISSN
0028-3754
- Publication type
Article