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Syntactic complexity, discourse status and animacy as determinants of grammatical variation in Modern English1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2009

ELENA SEOANE
ELENA SEOANE*
Affiliation:
Department of English, Facultade de Filoloxía, University of Santiago de Compostela, Avda Castelao s/n, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, [email protected]
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Abstract

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the syntactic, pragmatic and semantic determinants of word-order variation in Modern English, exemplified by the specific case of the use of long passives as order-rearranging devices. Word order in English and in most other SVO languages is affected by a number of factors such as animacy, semantic role, discourse status and syntactic complexity (Sornicola 2006). In this article, which analyses the influence of such factors in the use of long passives, I will try to show that their effects are construction-specific; in particular, that factors which are crucial in determining word order in some constructions – factors such as the animacy of the constituents involved – are entirely overruled by others in the case of Modern English long passives. Corpus data presented here will also serve to address issues pertaining to the nature of the determinants of grammatical variation, such as their independent versus epiphenomenal character, their interactions, and the locus of their effects on word order.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , November 2009 , pp. 365 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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