英语口语中的情态动词Must, Should, May and Might.doc
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1、Silvie RisingerovMasarykova univerzita v BrnFilozofick fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky30.6.2006Magistersk diplomov prce z oboru anglick lingvistikaThe use of pronoun subjects I and you in connection with the modal verbs Must, Should, May and Might in the spoken English produced by men an
2、d womenI proclaim that I have written this thesis by myself and that the research presented is my own work.I would like to thank PhDr. Nadezda Kudrnacova, CSc. for her support and professional guidance. Contents:Introduction.5Aim and scope.5Corpus Linguistics.7The British National Corpus (the BNC).9
3、Method.11Analysis and discussion22Conclusion.72Sources.76References.76Introduction:Sociology is becoming more and more important for our multicultural society. We have to learn more about each other and only then can we understand our differences and be more tolerant. This understanding can facilita
4、te communication in my opinion. My research is a sociolinguistic one. I have been interested in gender linguistics. Many books have been written on this subject and most of them state that there are relatively great differences between the language of women and the language of men. I would like to f
5、ind out if this is true and, if so, what these differences are in the field of modal verbs. When we read the list of the most common words occurring in the corpora, we see that modal verbs and pronouns are at the top of the list. Their frequencies are one of the highest ones in the corpora. If we pr
6、esume that there is a significant difference between the female and male languages, then it must be visible in the way women and men connect the pronouns I and you in the subject position with the modal verbs. The research is carried out only on the spoken part of the corpus as this is a more natura
7、l form of language than the written language and it is connected with the common daily language.Aim and scope:Firstly, as the length of this paper is limited, decision has been taken to study the verbs must, should, may and might in detail after having briefly looked at all the main modal verbs. The
8、 first two verbs form a semantically related group and the third and fourth verb are also semantically related ones. The reader will be presented a table of all the most frequent modal verbs and their occurrences with I and you, however the further investigation which is carried out in detail is lim
9、ited to must, should, may and might. The alternative variants of the modal verbs are left out with the exception of have to as this would lead to an extensive study that cannot be carried out in a Master thesis and thus it has to be dealt with elsewhere.It has to be noted down that the pronoun you i
10、s a problematic one. It was not possible to find out whether the pronoun was used for the second person singular or second person plural. This could be probably found out from the context nevertheless many of the examples are ambiguous. I have decided not to differentiate between these two uses. Sec
11、ondly, the paper does not contain research on the interrogative uses of the verbs must, should, may and might; only declarative sentences have been studied, including the negation. The questions have a different meaning and this has to be dealt with elsewhere. Thirdly, the research is carried out on
12、 two age groups. The age range is from 25 to 44 years of age. The reason for this is that this group of people can be considered as the productive age group. These people are most probably the ones who pass the language to their children. Thus there is certain continuity and we can expect the childr
13、en to acquire the linguistic habits of their parents. Coates (1993:125) describes Engles study that he made in 1980 of the language of parents when they play with their children and points out the differences between mothers language and fathers language. Fathers favour directions such as “Why dont
14、you make a chimney?”, yet mothers tend to consult childs wishes such as in “What else shall we put on the truck?”. There is a difference when fathers talk to a daughter or to a son. Men are inclined to use more directives with sons than with daughters. In general, fathers introduce new ideas while m
15、others put emphasis on interaction and help their children learn how to choose. The people are divided into two groups, one group ranges from 25 to 34 and the other one from 35 to 44. There was not any special intention in dividing the sample. However, interestingly enough, we can observe difference
16、s between these two categories. The aim of this research is to collect material for each verb in all of the needed categories (age, gender) and to investigate the instances where we could see significant differences or similarities, these will be further investigated and theoretical conclusions draw
17、n. “One of the purposes of corpus-based research is the testing of theoretical claims made in literature” (de Haan, Ferdinand. 2002:91). The purpose of this investigation is to study the theoretical background of modal verbs and gender linguistics and to find out if the results of the analysis suppo
18、rt the theories or, if they do not, to propose new theories based on the results drawn from the actual spoken data from the BNC. Corpus Linguistics:The corpus linguistics has many supporters but there are also many linguists who are against the use of this method for example Chomsky (Aarts, Bas. 199
19、9:5-13). The problem is the same as between the formalist and the functionalist approach in linguistics. Formalists see the importance in the study of competence/langue and functionalists prefer to study the real language production, that is to say the performance/parole. Corpus linguists study the
20、latter. Chafe 1992 formulates the research process that the corpus linguists should follow. The scientist proceeds from observation of language data through description to explanation. He warns against the danger of using corpora only for collection of data and forgetting to analyse it and to draw c
21、onclusions out of it. Nowadays also grammarians use corpora as a basis of modern grammar books. Grammar has become, thanks to it, alive. It is based on language that is used in daily conversation and therefore it is up-to-date. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English 1999 (Biber, Johansson, Co
22、nrad, Finegan) and A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language 1985 (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech Svartvik) are just two examples of this kind of grammar books.One of the supporters of the corpus linguistics is Halliday (Cognitive linguist). He is particularly glad for the creation of spoken language
23、 corpora. “Precisely because there are patterns which dont occur in writing, we need a corpus of spoken language to reveal them” (Halliday. M.A.K. 2004:11-38). Halliday sees the importance of these corpora in possibility of studying language in progress. Written language can create systemic patterns
24、 by an exceptional entry. This is what Halliday calls the Hamlet factor. However, by studying the spoken language, we can find systemic patterns formed unconsciously by native speakers. The problem is that the spoken language still has a low value in culture but because of its essential nature (its
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