Hilde Hasselgård

In this original study, Hilde Hasselgård discusses the use of adverbials in English, through examining examples found in everyday texts. Adverbials - clause elements that typically refer to circumstances of time, space, reason and manner - cover a range of meanings and can be placed at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a sentence. The description of the frequency of meaning types and discussion of the reasons for selecting positions show that the use of adverbials differs across text types. Adverbial usage is often linked to the general build-up of a text and part of its content and purpose. In using real texts, Hasselgård identifies a challenge for the classification of adjuncts, and also highlights that some adjuncts have uses that extend into the textual and interpersonal domains, obscuring the traditional divisions between adjuncts, disjuncts and conjuncts.

Adjunct Adverbials in English

Karin Aijmer

Selected Papers from the Göteborg-Oslo Symposium 18-19 October 2003

Translation and Corpora

Signe Oksefjell Ebeling

This volume sheds new light on verb constructions by exposing them to cross-linguistic analysis based on multilingual corpora. It is composed of nine studies which provide insights into various aspects of cross-linguistic diversity, including showing that seemingly equivalent verb constructions may differ in their semantics, and that similar meanings may be expressed by different types of constructions. In other words, this book shows that different languages have different ways of lexicalising verb-based meanings, most notably by means of other, divergent verb constructions. A range of lexicogrammatical aspects of verb constructions are explored throughout the book, including time reference; modality; voice; light verb constructions; non-finite complementation of lexical verbs; posture-verb constructions; semiperiphrastic constructions; and the construction and semantic composition of verbs of putting. All of the contributions consider English in comparison with at least one of the following languages: Czech, German, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish. As such, this volume offers a truly multilingual perspective on verb constructions. The diversity of comparisons also highlights the multi-faceted nature of the verb phrase, which seems to have virtually limitless potential for exploration in the fields of tense, aspect, modality, lexical semantics, syntax, and phraseology.

Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Verb Constructions

Jarle Ebeling

A hallmark of corpus linguistics is the study of patterns of language use. The studies presented in this volume all use corpora to investigate patterns of lexis from various perspectives. The first section, “Sequence and Order”, presents theoretical and practical aspects of the linguist’s task of uncovering the principles that determine such patterns. The next section, “Competing Constructions”, discusses the relationship between lexical patterns with similar meanings in the light of diachronic, regional and register variation. New developments in terms of lexicogrammatical meaning and patterning are dealt with in the section “Emerging Patterns”. The final section, “Correlating patterns and meaning”, discusses ways in which meaning can be studied in corpus data despite the lack of narrowly defined search terms. Though situated at different points on a continuum between lexical and grammatical emphasis, the studies all confirm the inseparability of lexis and grammar.

Corpus Perspectives on Patterns of Lexis

Anna Čermáková

Thomas Egan

Sylvi Rørvik

This volume comprises a collection of contrastive studies on language and time. Languages represented include Czech, French, German, Mandarin, Norwegian and Swedish, all of which are contrasted with English. While the amount of published research on temporal relations in general is considerable, less work has been carried out on comparing how we talk about time in various languages and how languages change over time. Several methodological challenges are addressed and solutions proposed, such as how to deal with poor quality historical data and how to identify n-grams in typologically different languages for purposes of comparison. The results of the various studies show how multilingual corpora can increase our knowledge of language-specific features as well as linguistic, typological and cultural differences and similarities across languages.

Time in Languages, Languages in Time

Lorna Sinclair-Knight

Collins Engelsk-norsk Ordbok

Signe Oksefjell

Main headings: Introduction. - I. Representing language use. - II. Grammar and lexis in English corpora. - III. Contrastive and translation studies. - IV. English abroad. - List of Stig Johansson's publications (selection).

Hilde Hasselgård

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