Simon-Vandenbergen / Aijmer The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty

A Corpus-Based Study of English Adverbs
1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-3-11-019892-8
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 56, 405 Seiten, Gewicht: 10 g

Reihe: Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL]

In spite of the vast literature on modality in English, very little research has been done on modal adverbs as a group. While there are studies of individual adverbs, the semantic and pragmatic relations between them have been left largely unexplored. This book takes a close look at the whole field of modal certainty as expressed by adverbs in English. On the basis of corpus data the most frequent adverbs of certainty, including certainly, indeed, and no doubt, are examined from the point of view of their syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics. The corpus used is the International Corpus of English - Great Britain, supplemented by data from other present-day English corpora, and questionnaires testing native speakers' intuitions on fine-grained similarities and differences between closely related adverbs. The methodology also includes the study of cross-linguistic equivalents as indicators of semantic-pragmatic relations between adverbs. Translation corpora yield correspondences in Swedish, Dutch, French and German. A detailed study of those correspondences adds useful information for setting up a semantic-pragmatic profile of each adverb, showing where their meanings overlap and where the boundaries are. The concept of semantic maps is relied on for plotting these relations. The book not only provides a thorough empirical study of English adverbs expressing certainty, it also contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the complexity of modal certainty, how it is related to speakers' goals and to other semantic areas. It is the first in-depth study of this kind, combining rich information on English as well as opening up perspectives for further empirical and theoretical research into modality.

Zielgruppe

Researchers and Advanced Students of English, Libraries

Autoren/Hrsg.

Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie

Aijmer, Karin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Einzelne Sprachen & Sprachfamilien
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Semantik & Pragmatik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Frontmatter;1
2;Table of contents;7
3;Chapter 1. Aims, methodology and data;11
4;Chapter 2. Establishing meaning relations: Problems and solutions;20
5;Chapter 3. The linguistic categories of modality and evidentiality;34
6;Chapter 4. An integrated model for describing adverbs of certainty;50
7;Chapter 5. Classification of adverbs of certainty;67
8;Chapter 6. The epistemic certainty adverbs certainly, definitely, indeed: Syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions;90
9;Chapter 7. The epistemic certainty adverbs no doubt, surely: Syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions;131
10;Chapter 8. Evidential, expectation and speech act adverbs: Syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions;157
11;Chapter 9. Adverbs of certainty and the wider context: Text types and genres;205
12;Chapter 10. Semantic-pragmatic relations: Networks and maps;257
13;Chapter 11. Semantic-pragmatic relations: Parameters and features;288
14;Chapter 12. Conclusions;331
15;Backmatter;335

Über Autor(innen)

Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, Ghent University, Belgium; Karin Aijmer, Göteborg University, Sweden.