The Absolute Phrase in Contemporary English
James Vanden Bosch
Abstract
Until recently it has been difficult to obtain good information about the relative freąuency of the absolute phrase in spoken and written English. With a POS-tagged corpus like the ICE-GB, however, it is possible to use extraction formulas to find absolute phrases in the ICE-GB, a million-word corpus of contemporary English. In this study, I describe the re- sults of that corpus work, especially in terms of relative distribution by genre.
Keywords:
absolute phrase, absolute clause, nominative absolute, fixed absolutes, stereotyped absolutes, extraction formulas, tagged corpus, sentence fragments, syntax, relative frequency in spoken and written English, ICE-GB, POS-tagged corpusReferences
COCA Davies M., 2008- , The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 385 mil- lion words, 1990-present. Available online at .
ICE-GB \nternational Corpus of English — Great Britain. Survey of English Usage, University College: London, 1998.
TIME Davies M., 2007-, TIME Magazine Corpus: 100 million words, 1920s-2000s. Available online at.
Elmore L., Mr. Paradise. New York: William Morrow, 2004.
Kortmann B., 1991, Free Adjuncts and Absolutes in English: Problems of Control andInterpretation. London: Routledge.
McCarthy C., 2006, The Road, New York: Knopf.
Quirk R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech, and J. Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman, 1985.
Vanden Bosch J., Sentence Fragments in the <NBC Nightly News>: A Grammatical Ana- lysis. “Stylistyka” Stylistics and Poetics XI (2002): 315-323.
The Eagles. A Long Road Out Of Eden. Woodland Hills, CA: Eagles Recording Company, 2007.
Authors
James Vanden BoschStatistics
Downloads
License
Copyright (c) 2009 Stylistyka
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
1. Copyrights to published works are held by the University of Opole (to the collective work) and the Authors (to individual parts of the collective work that have an independent meaning).
2. Only previously undistributed works can be published in the scientific journal "Stylistics".
3. The University of Opole does not restrict the possibility of the author's further dissemination of his work on condition that the scientific journal "Stylistics" is indicated as the original place of publication and the consent of the University Publishing House.
4. Consent to the publication of the work in the scientific journal "Stylistics" is tantamount to granting the author a non-exclusive license to the University of Opole, including the right to use the work without territorial restrictions and time limits in the following fields of exploitation:
a) within the scope of recording and multiplication of the work - production of any number of copies of the work in whole or in part using a specified technique, including printing, reprography, magnetic recording and digital technique, introduction of the work into computer memory and computer networks,
b) within the scope of circulation of the original or copies on which the work has been recorded - circulation, lending or hiring of the original or copies,
c) within the scope of dissemination of the work in a manner other than specified in item 2 - making the work or its abstract available on the Internet by enabling the recipients to access the work on-line or enabling them to download the work to their own device that makes it possible to read it, placing the work in electronic databases that disseminate scientific works, including in particular the CEEOL database (Central and Eastern Online Libray) and the abstract in English in the CEJSH database (The Central Europaen Journal of Social Scienes and Humanites).
d) within the scope of creating and distributing dependent works created using the work - using them in the fields of exploitation specified in points 1-3.
5. The author is not entitled to compensation for granting the license to the work.
6. The author agrees that the University may grant further permission to use the work (sublicense) in the fields of exploitation specified in par. 2 paragraph 4.
7. The author agrees that, in connection with the distribution of the work, his or her personal information, that is, name, affiliation, and e-mail address, may be made public.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- James Vanden Bosch, Sentence Fragments in the NBC Nightly News: A Grammatical Analysis , Stylistyka: Vol. 11 (2002): Stylistics and Poetics
- James Vanden Bosch, Sentence Fragments in Major US Network News Broadcasts: The Nightly News on ABC, CBS, and NBC , Stylistyka: Vol. 15 (2006): Styl i kultura