Exploring occurrences of verb phrase ellipsis in journalistic discourse and in a sample of modern American fiction

Q2 Arts and Humanities

Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice Pub Date : 2023-04-14 DOI:10.1558/jalpp.20213

Golsa Khodadadi, Yaser Hadidi

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Abstract

Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) is a prevailing syntactic phenomenon, yet only a few studies have focused on its occurrences and most of these have been concerned with only a single genre. This study compares two genres: journalistic discourse and modern American fiction, in a sample size of approximately 260,000 words, in terms of their uses of VPE. On the assumption that there is such a thing as differential typological and ontological resources of syntax, these two genres are expected to be constituted by sufficiently distinct syntactic resources. VPE was found to occur three times more frequently in modern American fiction than in journalistic discourse. This suggests that VPE in modern American fiction is driven by such factors as the heightening of emotion, engaging readers and challenging readers’ minds. However, VPE is less common in journalistic discourse, the ellipsis being considered bad form for journalists. Nonetheless, this marginal use can still also elicit emotional responses from readers and be used as a deterrent to face-threatening behavior.

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探讨新闻语篇和现代美国小说中动词短语省略的出现

动词短语省略（VPE）是一种普遍存在的句法现象，但很少有研究关注它的出现，大多数研究都只关注一个类型。这项研究比较了两种类型：新闻话语和现代美国小说，样本量约为26万字，就其VPE的使用而言。在存在句法的差异类型资源和本体资源的前提下，这两种类型的句法资源应该由足够不同的句法资源构成。VPE在现代美国小说中的出现频率是新闻话语的三倍。这表明，美国现代小说中的VPE是由情绪高涨、吸引读者和挑战读者心智等因素驱动的。然而，VPE在新闻话语中并不常见，省略被认为是记者的不良形式。尽管如此，这种边缘使用仍然可以引起读者的情绪反应，并被用作面对威胁行为的威慑。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice Arts and Humanities-Language and Linguistics

CiteScore

0.70

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice was launched in 2004 (under the title Journal of Applied Linguistics) with the aim of advancing research and practice in applied linguistics as a principled and interdisciplinary endeavour. From Volume 7, the journal adopted the new title to reflect the continuation, expansion and re-specification of the field of applied linguistics as originally conceived. Moving away from a primary focus on research into language teaching/learning and second language acquisition, the education profession will remain a key site but one among many, with an active engagement of the journal moving to sites from a variety of other professional domains such as law, healthcare, counselling, journalism, business interpreting and translating, where applied linguists have major contributions to make. Accordingly, under the new title, the journal will reflexively foreground applied linguistics as professional practice. As before, each volume will contain a selection of special features such as editorials, specialist conversations, debates and dialogues on specific methodological themes, review articles, research notes and targeted special issues addressing key themes.