A corpus-based study of the discourse functions of English tense: the co-occurrence of tense and lexical aspect at various textual positions of news reports

Abstract

This study analyses the discourse functions of tense in the New York Times Corpus under a three-dimensional framework – the three dimensions being tense, verb and textual position. The texts are divided into ten 10 percent sub-sections and the distribution of the tenses along textual positions, the distribution of verb categories along textual positions as well as the distribution of tense-verb construction along textual positions are calculated to examine the features of tense use in news reports. The association between tense and verb categories is calculated using WordSmith log-likelihood statistics. Quantitative distribution analysis of the tenses reveals their distribution patterns. The distribution of the present and the present perfect follows a multi-peaked curve while there is a steady increase of preterit from the beginning to the end. The association between tense and verb shows that different tenses have attractions for different verb categories. The present tense attracts state verbs, the past tense attracts achievement verbs, and the present perfect prefers achievement and activity verbs. Analysis of tense-verb constructions along textual positions reveals that tense-verb constructions have localised functions – within different textual positions, tense-verb constructions take on various features and focus on different functions. All these findings constitute the stylistic use of tenses in news reports and reveal modern news values in the journalistic community.