A Corpus-Based Analysis of Inflectional and Periphrastic Comparatives in English Disyllabic Adjectives
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This study investigated comparative forms of English disyllabic adjectives which alternate between inflectional (-er) and periphrastic (more + Adjective) forms in order to determine what features explain actual usage based on two large-scale corpora. The corpora used in the current study consisted of the 1,000,000-word Brown Corpus of Standard American English and the 12,000,000-word TASA (Touchstone Applied Science Associates) corpus. Specifically, this study examined the occurrences of 30 disyllabic adjectives selected for the frequency of their appearance in recent grammar books. Our findings showed that vowel and syllabic /l/ endings significantly favored inflection (e.g., simpler rather than more simple), whereas consonant endings favored periphrasis (e.g., more common rather than commoner). Among consonant-final adjectives, morphologically complex adjectives tended to be phrasal. This corpus-based study embraces implications of how English usage can change and how the usage can be more effectively taught to non-native speakers of English.
Abstract
This study investigated comparative forms of English disyllabic adjectives which alternate between inflectional (-er) and periphrastic (more + Adjective) forms in order to determine what features explain actual usage based on two large-scale corpora. The corpora used in the current study consisted of the 1,000,000-word Brown Corpus of Standard American English and the 12,000,000-word TASA (Touchstone Applied Science Associates) corpus. Specifically, this study examined the occurrences of 30 disyllabic adjectives selected for the frequency of their appearance in recent grammar books. Our findings showed that vowel and syllabic /l/ endings significantly favored inflection (e.g., simpler rather than more simple), whereas consonant endings favored periphrasis (e.g., more common rather than commoner). Among consonant-final adjectives, morphologically complex adjectives tended to be phrasal. This corpus-based study embraces implications of how English usage can change and how the usage can be more effectively taught to non-native speakers of English.
참고문헌 (30)
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