Concessive constructions in varieties of English

Ole Schützler

Synopsis

This volume presents a synchronic investigation of concessive constructions in nine varieties of English, based on data from the International Corpus of English. The structures of interest are complex sentences with a subordinate clause introduced by although, though or even though. Various functional and formal features are taken into account: (i) the semantic/pragmatic relation that holds between the propositions involved, (ii) the position of the subordinate clause, (iii) the conjunction that is used, and (iv) the syntax of the subordinate clause. By exploring patterns of variation from a Construction Grammar perspective, the study works towards an explanatory model, whose point of departure is at the functional (semantic/pragmatic) level, and which makes hierarchically organised predictions for different formal levels (clause position, choice of connective and realisation of the subordinate clause). It treats concessives as complex form-function pairings, and develops arguments and routines that may inform quantitative approaches to constructional variation more generally.

Statistics

Author Biography

Ole Schützler, Leipzig University

Ole Schützler is Professor for Varieties of English at Leipzig University. He holds a doctoral and a postdoctoral degree from the University of Bamberg, and his work is mainly within the frameworks of sociophonetics and corpus linguistics. Ole takes a general interest in variation and change in English from the Early Modern period to the present day, with a particular focus on Scottish varieties.

Book cover

Published

December 1, 2023
LaTeX source on GitHub

Print ISSN

2366-7818
Cite as
Schützler, Ole. 2023. Concessive constructions in varieties of English. (Language Variation 9). Berlin: Language Science Press. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.8375010

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Details about the available publication format: PDF

PDF

ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-96110-422-2

doi

10.5281/zenodo.8375010

Details about the available publication format: Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN-13 (15)

978-3-98554-080-8

Physical Dimensions

180mm x 245mm