Assignment for this week

Do the following assignment

Exercise 7.4
Below are extracts from an academic paper by Susan Hunston and from the novel
Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott (the latter extract was downloaded from Project
Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/fi les/514/514-h/514-h.htm#chap08). Analyse
the dependencies and the logico-semantic relations in the clause complexes, and,
focusing especially on the uses of projection, consider how the diff erences in the two
extracts can be related to the diff erent registers that they realize.
One of the outcomes of corpus studies in the last 20 years has been to draw
attention to two aspects of a single phenomenon. The fi rst is the interdependency
of lexis and grammar, such that lexical choices cannot be seen as independent of
grammar, or indeed as consequent upon grammar, but rather as driving
grammatical context. The second is the importance of recurrent but variable
sequences of words in creating meaning. These sequences demonstrate that
meaning is prosodic, in that many sequences have a meaning that exceeds that of
the words within the sequence.
A number of studies develop these themes in diff erent ways. Sinclair (1991), for
example, suggests that much naturally-occurring language is comprehended in
accordance with ‘the idiom principle’, where meaning is attached to frequentlyoccurring
sequences rather than to their constituent lexical or grammatical items.
Sinclair also argues that lexical and grammatical processes are not independent of
each other, or of meaning. Continuing the theme that meaning and grammar are
connected, Francis (1993) shows that any grammatical sequence or ‘pattern’ will
occur with a restricted set of lexical items only, and that those items will share
aspects of meaning. Thus, Sinclair’s and Francis’s work suggests that each recurring
word sequence represents a single language choice, with an unanalysed meaning
for the language user, rather than a series of grammatical and lexical operations.
“Are you sure she is quite safe?” whispered Jo, looking remorsefully at the golden
head, which might have been swept away from her sight for ever under the
treacherous ice.