The volume deals with the topic of illocutionary shell nouns in English, i.e. nouns that encapsulate a content that is usually expressed in a complement or in a separate sentence or clause, and report or characterize it as a specific speech act. The book reports a usage-based study of the complementation patterns in a corpus of 335 illocutionary nouns distributed across the five Searlean classes of assertive, commissive, directive, expressive, and declarative nouns. The investigation aims to verify the association between the meaning of these nouns and their complementation patterns, and between their semantic similarity and the similarity in the distribution of complementation patterns.
Based on an empirical study of a corpus of 335 English illocutionary shell nouns, the book investigates the issue of semantic compatibility between the meaning of these nouns and their complementation patterns, and between their semantic similarity and the similarity in the distribution of complementation patterns.
Introduction – Data and methodology – Assertive shell nouns – Commissive shell nouns – Directive shell nouns – Expressive shell nouns – Declarative shell nouns – Discussion and conclusion – References – Appendix 1 –Appendix 2 – Index of illocutionary shell nouns – Index of subjects
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Carla Vergaro is Associate Professor of English language and linguistics at the University of Perugia, Italy. Her main research interests lie in pragmatic linguistics, literary pragmatics, text and discourse analysis, cognitive semantics, and applied linguistics.