Minutes of action! A contrastive analysis of time expressions in English and Norwegian football match reports
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Signe Oksefjell Ebeling
Abstract
This contrastive study examines the use of two time expressions – on # minutes and etter # minutes (‘after # minutes’) – in football match reports with the aim of shedding light on their conditions of use in English and Norwegian. The cross-linguistic findings suggest that the patterns are typically used to report on the achievements of players. With regard to syntax, the English pattern is clearly preferred in final position, while the Norwegian pattern is found in either initial or final position, with a slight preference for initial position. A more inconclusive difference can be noted regarding the patterns’ distribution across the 90 minutes; the English pattern is more evenly distributed across the two halves of the match than the Norwegian one.
Abstract
This contrastive study examines the use of two time expressions – on # minutes and etter # minutes (‘after # minutes’) – in football match reports with the aim of shedding light on their conditions of use in English and Norwegian. The cross-linguistic findings suggest that the patterns are typically used to report on the achievements of players. With regard to syntax, the English pattern is clearly preferred in final position, while the Norwegian pattern is found in either initial or final position, with a slight preference for initial position. A more inconclusive difference can be noted regarding the patterns’ distribution across the 90 minutes; the English pattern is more evenly distributed across the two halves of the match than the Norwegian one.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Time in languages, languages in time 1
- Slavery and Britain in the 19th century 9
- Diachronic change in the ordering of kinship binomials 39
- Tracing processes in auxiliarization 67
- Translating verbal tenses between tensed and tenseless languages 95
- From language to language, from time to time 129
- Just a moment 155
- Then and now in English and French 181
- Time adverbials in English and Norwegian news discourse 201
- Minutes of action! A contrastive analysis of time expressions in English and Norwegian football match reports 229
- Cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistic uses of tensed verb phrases in the methods sections of master’s theses 255
- The expression of time in English and Czech children’s literature 283
- Index 305
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Time in languages, languages in time 1
- Slavery and Britain in the 19th century 9
- Diachronic change in the ordering of kinship binomials 39
- Tracing processes in auxiliarization 67
- Translating verbal tenses between tensed and tenseless languages 95
- From language to language, from time to time 129
- Just a moment 155
- Then and now in English and French 181
- Time adverbials in English and Norwegian news discourse 201
- Minutes of action! A contrastive analysis of time expressions in English and Norwegian football match reports 229
- Cross-disciplinary and cross-linguistic uses of tensed verb phrases in the methods sections of master’s theses 255
- The expression of time in English and Czech children’s literature 283
- Index 305
