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Abstract

This study investigates learners’ processing of English unaccusative verbs in the inchoative frame ( The door opened; Oil is spilling). Previous approaches explained L2 difficulty with the inchoative construction in terms of learners’ L1 and their perception of discourse or semantic factors hypothesized to be responsible for common overpassivization errors ( The door was opened). The purpose of the present study is to complement the extant inventory by proposing an additional factor instrumental in L2 processing. It is hypothesized that L2 use of unaccusative verbs is contingent on learners’ familiarity with formulaic expressions exemplifying the inchoative construction. The study focuses on the entrenchment of frequent phrases like My jaw dropped in Czech and Polish learners. In a lexical decision task, their reaction times for frequent expressions were found to be faster and fewer mistakes were made than in the case of non-formulaic counterparts ( My hair dropped).
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Authors and Affiliations

Konrad Szcześniak
1 2

  1. University of Silesia
  2. Palacký University
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Abstract

This study focuses on the diachronic development of the discourse marker after all in English. Unlike other approaches by Traugott (1997) or Lewis (2007), the present analysis suggests that the uses of after all are not contingent on conventionalization, whereby stable meaning-form pairings emerge. The alternative proposed here is that the justificative and concessive uses of this and similar expressions follow naturally from the meanings of the individual lexical items found in these expressions. Thanks to the intuitive connection between the original meaning and the newly acquired uses, this discourse marker does not require as much consolidation as in the case of grammaticalized forms where the connection is less obvious.

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Authors and Affiliations

Konrad Szcześniak
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Abstract

The present paper looks at the question of Information Structure (IS) conflicts, especially in the case of Figure and Ground assignment. It is observed that in typical uses in unmarked sentences, Figure-Ground assignment runs counter to the traditional notion of Information Structure. One of the main proposals of this study is that many cases of apparently problematic IS patterns are in fact the reflection of a two-level IS organization of sentences, where an element can bear two opposite IS values. An attempt is made to point out an experiential grounding of this double-layer organization of IS. Finally, the case of possession is examined, whose interpretation is argued to derive from the reciprocal referencing of the possessor and possessum, possible thanks to the double-layer IS and Figure-Ground assignment reversal.

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Authors and Affiliations

Konrad Szcześniak
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Abstract

The present paper focuses on the changing interpretations of the English gerund. Since no method can accurately and uniformly account for the meanings of all instances of existing -ing forms, previous studies have offered approximate characterizations based on small samples. This study looks at the numbers of -ing derivations denoting institutionalized activities, on the assumption that these represent non-eventive readings. The derivations in question are arranged chronologically in terms of their time of coinage to compare changing productivity levels of this process relative to -ry derivations. This count shows that -ing suffi xations outnumber other nominalization processes and this trend has increased in the last two centuries.

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Authors and Affiliations

Aleksandra Ptok
Konrad Szcześniak

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