Adjectives in extraposed constructions with that-clauses : a quantitative corpus-driven analysis

Vol.44,No.1(2018)

Jarosław Wiliński

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2018-1-5

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/138669

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Abstract
This paper employs the background assumptions of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 2006) and Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1982) as well as a quantitative corpus-driven method for investigating the reciprocal interaction between adjectives and the extraposed construction with that-clauses in American English. The method, referred to as the attraction-reliance measure (Schmid 2000; Schmid & Küchenhoff 2013), is applied to the determination of strongly attracted and repelled adjectives of the it is ADJ that-construction. On the basis of the data extracted from the academic sub-corpus of COCA, the paper indicates that some adjectives are more strongly attracted to this construction than others, and that the occurrence of certain adjectives in this construction is more significant than their use in different types of extraposed constructions. In addition, the findings seem to point to frame-semantic knowledge as a determining factor affecting the mutual association between adjectives and the construction under study.

Keywords:
extraposition; attraction-reliance method; frame semantics; COCA corpus

Pages:
83–102
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