Expressions of Future in Present-day English: A Corpus-based Approach (Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia)

This is a Ph.D. thesis. This corpus-based study of the use of expressions of future in English has two aims: to examine how certain expressions of future are used in Present-day English, and to explore how electronic corpora can be exploited for linguistic study. The expressions included in the discussion are five auxiliary or semi-auxiliary verb phrases: will, 'll, shall, going to, and gonna. The study examines the patterned ways in which the expressions are used in association with various linguistic and non-linguistic factors. The linguistic factors investigated are co-occurrence with particular words and co-occurrence with items of particular grammatical classes. The non-linguistic factors examined are medium (written vs. spoken), text category, speaker characteristics (age, sex, social class, etc.), region and time. The data for the study are exclusively drawn from computer-readable corpora of Present-day English. Methodological issues related to corpus-based studies in general are discussed in the light of the insights gained from the study. Abstract 4 List of papers 7 Contents 9 List of tables and figures 12 Tables 12 Figures 13 Abbreviations 16 Acknowledgements 17 1. Introduction 19 1.1 Aim and scope 19 1.2 Expressions of future dealt with in the present study 20 1.3 Identifying the expressions of future 22 1.4 Corpora examined 24 1.5 Tools and methods 25 1.6 Plan of the thesis 26 2. Previous research on expressions of future in English 28 2.1 Introduction 28 2.2 Is there a future tense in English? 29 2.3 By what linguistic means is futurity expressed in English? 30 2.4 How have the expressions of future and their use developed over time? 32 2.5 What is the meaning of the expressions of future used in English? 33 2.5.1 Tense symbolisation: Reichenbach and Close 33 2.5.2 Speaker’s perspective 35 2.5.3 Distance in time/relation to present time 35 2.5.4 Will vs. going to: “elliptical” uses 37 2.6 Concluding remarks 38 3. Corpus linguistics as an analytical 40 3.1 Introduction 40 3.2 Corpus 41 3.2.1 ‘Corpus’ definitions 41 3.2.2 Annotation, markup, encoding 42 3.2.3 Specific issues related to the use of spoken data 49 3.2.4 Summary: corpus 54 3.3 Language use 54 3.4 Choice of texts 55 3.4.1 Corpora used 56 3.4.2 Corpus comparability 63 3.5 Methods of data retrieval and analysis 64 3.5.1 Data retrieval 65 3.5.2 Tools used 66 3.5.3 Analysis 68 3.5.4 Identifying systematic variation 70 3.6 Summary 72 4. Medium 73 4.1 Introduction 73 4.2 Overall frequencies and proportions 74 4.3 Quoted context in writing 76 4.3.1 Subset 1: Text categories A and K in LOB and FLOB 77 4.3.2 Subset 2: Going to in four written corpora 79 4.3.3 Subset 3: Gonna and going to in the BNC 80 4.3.4 Conclusions regarding quoted/non-quoted contexts 83 4.4 Summary 84 5. Text category 85 5.1 Introduction 85 5.2 Written corpora 86 5.2.1 Overall frequency of expressions of future 86 5.2.2 Overall proportions of expressions of future 88 5.2.3 Comparison of hyper-categories 93 5.2.4 Gonna and going to across text categories in the BNC 98 5.2.5 Summary: variation in written corpora 100 5.3 Spoken corpora 101 5.3.1 Expressions of future in the CG and DS components 101 5.3.2 Summary: variation in spoken corpora 105 5.4 Summary 106 6. Speaker properties 108 6.1 Introduction 108 6.2 Speakers’ sex 108 6.3 Speakers’ age 110 6.4 Speakers’ social class 113 6.5 Speakers’ education 114 6.6 Multiple variables 117 6.7 Summary 118 7. Region 119 7.1 Introduction 119 7.2 Variation between British, American, and Indian English 120 7.2.1 Will 122 7.2.2 ’ll 122 7.2.3 Shall 123 7.2.4 Going to 125 7.2.5 Gonna 126 7.3 Variation within national varieties of English 126 7.4 Summary 127 8. Time 129 8.1 Introduction 129 8.1.1 Press texts 130 8.1.2 LOB vs. FLOB 131 8.2 Concluding remarks 138 9. Linguistic association patterns 139 9.1 Introduction 139 9.2 Collocation with word-classes 140 9.2.1 Collocations with infinitives 141 9.2.2 Collocations with personal pronouns 150 9.2.3 Personal pronouns as subjects 151 9.2.4 Collocations with nouns 156 9.3 Going to and gonna 158 9.4 Summary 160 10. Summary and conclusions 163 10.1 Introduction 163 10.2 Association patterns 163 10.2.1 Will 163 10.2.2 ’ll 164 10.2.3 Shall 165 10.2.4 Going to 165 10.2.5 Gonna 166 10.3 Analytical framework 167 10.3.1 Language use 167 10.3.2 Choice of text 167 10.3.3 Methods of data retrieval and analysis 168 10.4 Concluding remarks 170 References 172 Appendix A: Abstracts of Studies I – V 179 Appendix B. Tables with raw frequencies 186 Ylva Berglund. Thesis (doctoral) - Uppsala University, 2005. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 172-178).