... is provided by the patterns of comparable grammaticalizing constructions based on motion verb... more ... is provided by the patterns of comparable grammaticalizing constructions based on motion verbs. ... contribute to', 'succeed in' and 'proceed to') only 12% of the time (Gesuato forthcoming). ... to Heine and Kuteva (2002: 2), there are four mechanisms involved in grammaticalization: ...
ABSTRACT This study considers four pairs of English near-synonyms Italian learners have difficult... more ABSTRACT This study considers four pairs of English near-synonyms Italian learners have difficulties telling apart because their members are translated the same way into Italian (island - isle 'isola', feeble - weak 'debole', gratefully - thankfully 'con gratitudine', and to adore - to worship 'adorare'). It examines concordances of the near-synonym pairs from the Bank of English to identify the phraseological patterns these terms are associated with. The data collected indicate that each term is characterized by a distinct prototypical usage, but can also occur in the context of use of its near-synonym (although not to the same extent). The findings suggest that foreign language students should be sensitized to the prototypical context specificity of each near synonym, as this may prevent an incorrect use of terms. At the same time, they also reveal that, in the case of near-synonyms, a term and its immediate co-text are not always reliable predictors of each other.
This paper raises the issue of the identifiability of moves in speech and writing. The question a... more This paper raises the issue of the identifiability of moves in speech and writing. The question addressed is whether reliable, convergent criteria can be provided for their recognition in stretches of discourse. The discussion is motivated, on the one hand, by the variety of coding schemes presented in the literature for the description of, supposedly, the same kinds of goal-oriented discourse, and on the other, by the frequent lack of explicit motivation in the adoption of one or the other of the available coding schemes for the analysis of exemplars of given texts or tokens of given text units. While the complexity of interactional phenomena cannot be reduced to neat classification templates – with clear-cut boundaries between neighboring categories of communicative behavior – just for the sake of building elegant theoretical models, the various functional descriptions offered on speakers’ and writers’ rhetorical choices should be justified only by the varied manifestations of discursive behavior themselves rather than the varied intuitions of researchers; more importantly, the suitability and accuracy of these descriptions in accounting for discursive behavior should be explicitly verified. To this end, this paper proposes a focused reflection on the non-obviousness and degree of analytical “fitness” of a fundamental tool of the trade in text analysis – the move. This notion, which has been fruitfully applied to the examination of many types of discourse, bringing to light the rhetorical structure and strategic nuances of speech acts and genres, is however often identified intuitively, and not explicitly operationalized. A proposal is therefore made on how to systematically go about defining and recognizing moves in discourse through a staged, multi-perspective procedure, which takes multiple parameters into consideration.
ABSTRACT Motion verbs can literally encode goal-oriented motion (come to the office; come to the ... more ABSTRACT Motion verbs can literally encode goal-oriented motion (come to the office; come to the meeting) or metaphorically express a change of state (come to a decision), including when they are followed by non-finite complements (come to say goodbye; come to conclude). Analysis of about 1,400 corpus concordances reveals that go to V mainly encodes its motional meaning, in association with human subjects (88 percent; Jeremy goes to answer the door) and, occasionally, four related figurative ones: 'other-determined transfer or use (of a resource)' in association with inanimate subjects (three percent; and everything went to pay debts); 'contribution to an outcome' when collocating with verbs denoting involuntary processes (two percent; there are too many factors that go to make up a great marathon runner); 'succeeding (in demonstrating)', if co-occurring with pronominal subjects identifying inanimate, abstract entities, and with the verbs prove or show (six percent; and it just goes to prove anybody can play); and 'going on or proceeding (with a course of action)' in association with human subjects performing deliberate acts not involving physical motion (one percent; we then have to go to develop the job into [...] a strategy). Acceptability judgements expressed by twelve native speakers on 20 sample sentences show that the motional meaning of go is also applicable to the construction variant be going to V if the scenarios represented express short-term goals. The motional meaning of go thus appears to be synchronically relevant to its verbal complements in specific lexico-syntactic environments, allowing metaphorical extensions outside the domain of tense.
This paper examines the pragmatic functions and structural organisation of 100 Calls for Conferen... more This paper examines the pragmatic functions and structural organisation of 100 Calls for Conference Abstracts (CfCAs) in Biology, Computing, History and Linguistics. These goal-oriented communicative acts focus on the representation-dissemination of disciplinary values and goals. They comprise the communicative core, the invitation – textually marginalised – and various auxiliary, textually prominent moves: informative, regulatory and persuasive-argumentative (announcements, offers, orders and requests). These qualify the CfCAs as representative, directive and commissive texts. The CfCAs are structurally similar – they share moves appearing in typical sequences – but do not instantiate an identical text type or structure potential, as no functional component is common to them all. The individual CfCAs thus exemplify the genre to different degrees of prototypicality, which paves the way for generic innovation.
... is provided by the patterns of comparable grammaticalizing constructions based on motion verb... more ... is provided by the patterns of comparable grammaticalizing constructions based on motion verbs. ... contribute to', 'succeed in' and 'proceed to') only 12% of the time (Gesuato forthcoming). ... to Heine and Kuteva (2002: 2), there are four mechanisms involved in grammaticalization: ...
ABSTRACT This study considers four pairs of English near-synonyms Italian learners have difficult... more ABSTRACT This study considers four pairs of English near-synonyms Italian learners have difficulties telling apart because their members are translated the same way into Italian (island - isle 'isola', feeble - weak 'debole', gratefully - thankfully 'con gratitudine', and to adore - to worship 'adorare'). It examines concordances of the near-synonym pairs from the Bank of English to identify the phraseological patterns these terms are associated with. The data collected indicate that each term is characterized by a distinct prototypical usage, but can also occur in the context of use of its near-synonym (although not to the same extent). The findings suggest that foreign language students should be sensitized to the prototypical context specificity of each near synonym, as this may prevent an incorrect use of terms. At the same time, they also reveal that, in the case of near-synonyms, a term and its immediate co-text are not always reliable predictors of each other.
This paper raises the issue of the identifiability of moves in speech and writing. The question a... more This paper raises the issue of the identifiability of moves in speech and writing. The question addressed is whether reliable, convergent criteria can be provided for their recognition in stretches of discourse. The discussion is motivated, on the one hand, by the variety of coding schemes presented in the literature for the description of, supposedly, the same kinds of goal-oriented discourse, and on the other, by the frequent lack of explicit motivation in the adoption of one or the other of the available coding schemes for the analysis of exemplars of given texts or tokens of given text units. While the complexity of interactional phenomena cannot be reduced to neat classification templates – with clear-cut boundaries between neighboring categories of communicative behavior – just for the sake of building elegant theoretical models, the various functional descriptions offered on speakers’ and writers’ rhetorical choices should be justified only by the varied manifestations of discursive behavior themselves rather than the varied intuitions of researchers; more importantly, the suitability and accuracy of these descriptions in accounting for discursive behavior should be explicitly verified. To this end, this paper proposes a focused reflection on the non-obviousness and degree of analytical “fitness” of a fundamental tool of the trade in text analysis – the move. This notion, which has been fruitfully applied to the examination of many types of discourse, bringing to light the rhetorical structure and strategic nuances of speech acts and genres, is however often identified intuitively, and not explicitly operationalized. A proposal is therefore made on how to systematically go about defining and recognizing moves in discourse through a staged, multi-perspective procedure, which takes multiple parameters into consideration.
ABSTRACT Motion verbs can literally encode goal-oriented motion (come to the office; come to the ... more ABSTRACT Motion verbs can literally encode goal-oriented motion (come to the office; come to the meeting) or metaphorically express a change of state (come to a decision), including when they are followed by non-finite complements (come to say goodbye; come to conclude). Analysis of about 1,400 corpus concordances reveals that go to V mainly encodes its motional meaning, in association with human subjects (88 percent; Jeremy goes to answer the door) and, occasionally, four related figurative ones: 'other-determined transfer or use (of a resource)' in association with inanimate subjects (three percent; and everything went to pay debts); 'contribution to an outcome' when collocating with verbs denoting involuntary processes (two percent; there are too many factors that go to make up a great marathon runner); 'succeeding (in demonstrating)', if co-occurring with pronominal subjects identifying inanimate, abstract entities, and with the verbs prove or show (six percent; and it just goes to prove anybody can play); and 'going on or proceeding (with a course of action)' in association with human subjects performing deliberate acts not involving physical motion (one percent; we then have to go to develop the job into [...] a strategy). Acceptability judgements expressed by twelve native speakers on 20 sample sentences show that the motional meaning of go is also applicable to the construction variant be going to V if the scenarios represented express short-term goals. The motional meaning of go thus appears to be synchronically relevant to its verbal complements in specific lexico-syntactic environments, allowing metaphorical extensions outside the domain of tense.
This paper examines the pragmatic functions and structural organisation of 100 Calls for Conferen... more This paper examines the pragmatic functions and structural organisation of 100 Calls for Conference Abstracts (CfCAs) in Biology, Computing, History and Linguistics. These goal-oriented communicative acts focus on the representation-dissemination of disciplinary values and goals. They comprise the communicative core, the invitation – textually marginalised – and various auxiliary, textually prominent moves: informative, regulatory and persuasive-argumentative (announcements, offers, orders and requests). These qualify the CfCAs as representative, directive and commissive texts. The CfCAs are structurally similar – they share moves appearing in typical sequences – but do not instantiate an identical text type or structure potential, as no functional component is common to them all. The individual CfCAs thus exemplify the genre to different degrees of prototypicality, which paves the way for generic innovation.
Pragmatic Issues in Specialized Communicative Contexts, edited by Francesca Bianchi and Sara Gesu... more Pragmatic Issues in Specialized Communicative Contexts, edited by Francesca Bianchi and Sara Gesuato, illustrates how interactants systematically and effectively employ micro and macro linguistic resources and textual strategies to engage in communicative practices in such specific contexts as healthcare services, TV interpreting, film dialogue, TED talks, archaeology academic communication, student-teacher communication, and multilingual classrooms. Each contribution presents a pedagogical slant, reporting on or suggesting didactic approaches to, or applications of, pragmatic aspects of communication in SL, FL and LSP learning contexts. The topics covered and the issues addressed are all directly relevant to applied pragmatics, that is, pragmatically oriented linguistic analysis that accounts for interpersonal-transactional issues in real-life situated communication.
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