Pressing -ing into service: I don't want you coming around here any more
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Michael P. Wherrity
Abstract
In this paper we focus on a common construction which has received relatively little attention to date in the literature, namely, want [NP Ving] as in I don’t want you coming around here anymore. Recent British newspaper corpora suggest that this construction is becoming increasingly popular among speakers. Although it occurs in affirmatives and interrogatives, it is most frequently encountered in negative utterances which perform imperative, proclamatory, and exhortatory functions. One reason for this, we maintain, is that the -ing complement, by virtue of its semantics, is felt by speakers to be more forceful and, accordingly, more appropriate to such utterances than an infinitive complement would be. Whereas the infinitive to tends to temporally distance the activity of the verb from the present, the ‑ing reifies the activity of the matrix verb as something ongoing, i.e., in process, thereby rendering it both vivid and immediate. Thus, the construction want [NP Ving] can be regarded as a handy device for speakers to brighten up and strengthen utterances, especially when they want them “to stick”.
Abstract
In this paper we focus on a common construction which has received relatively little attention to date in the literature, namely, want [NP Ving] as in I don’t want you coming around here anymore. Recent British newspaper corpora suggest that this construction is becoming increasingly popular among speakers. Although it occurs in affirmatives and interrogatives, it is most frequently encountered in negative utterances which perform imperative, proclamatory, and exhortatory functions. One reason for this, we maintain, is that the -ing complement, by virtue of its semantics, is felt by speakers to be more forceful and, accordingly, more appropriate to such utterances than an infinitive complement would be. Whereas the infinitive to tends to temporally distance the activity of the verb from the present, the ‑ing reifies the activity of the matrix verb as something ongoing, i.e., in process, thereby rendering it both vivid and immediate. Thus, the construction want [NP Ving] can be regarded as a handy device for speakers to brighten up and strengthen utterances, especially when they want them “to stick”.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Exploring the dynamics of linguistic variation through public and private corpora 1
-
Part I. Creating discourse
- Introduction 13
- ' And so now …': The grammaticalisation and (inter)subjectification of now 17
- Self-repetition in spoken English discourse 37
- Modal adverbs in interaction – obviously and definitely in adolescent speech 61
- Pressing -ing into service: I don't want you coming around here any more 85
-
Part II. Moving across varieties
- Introduction 101
- Conversations from the speech community: Exploring language variation in synchronic dialect corpora 107
- The English modals and semi-modals: Regional and stylistic variation 129
- Patterns of negation: The relationship between NO and NOT in regional varieties of English 147
- Verb-complementational profiles across varieties of English: Comparing verb classes in Indian English and British English 163
- Angloversals? Concord and interrogatives in contact varieties of English 183
- South Pacific Englishes – Unity and diversity in the usage of the present perfect 203
-
Part III. Levelling out variability
- Introduction 223
- Feature loss in 19th century Irish English 229
- The written wor(l)ds of men and women in early white Australia 245
- The progressive and phrasal verbs: Evidence of colloquialization in nineteenth-century English? 269
- Probabilistic determinants of genitive variation in spoken and written English: A multivariate comparison across time, space, and genres 291
- Her daughter's being taken into care or her daughter being taken …? Genitive and common-case marking of subjects of verbal gerund clauses in Present-day English 311
- Subject index 335
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Exploring the dynamics of linguistic variation through public and private corpora 1
-
Part I. Creating discourse
- Introduction 13
- ' And so now …': The grammaticalisation and (inter)subjectification of now 17
- Self-repetition in spoken English discourse 37
- Modal adverbs in interaction – obviously and definitely in adolescent speech 61
- Pressing -ing into service: I don't want you coming around here any more 85
-
Part II. Moving across varieties
- Introduction 101
- Conversations from the speech community: Exploring language variation in synchronic dialect corpora 107
- The English modals and semi-modals: Regional and stylistic variation 129
- Patterns of negation: The relationship between NO and NOT in regional varieties of English 147
- Verb-complementational profiles across varieties of English: Comparing verb classes in Indian English and British English 163
- Angloversals? Concord and interrogatives in contact varieties of English 183
- South Pacific Englishes – Unity and diversity in the usage of the present perfect 203
-
Part III. Levelling out variability
- Introduction 223
- Feature loss in 19th century Irish English 229
- The written wor(l)ds of men and women in early white Australia 245
- The progressive and phrasal verbs: Evidence of colloquialization in nineteenth-century English? 269
- Probabilistic determinants of genitive variation in spoken and written English: A multivariate comparison across time, space, and genres 291
- Her daughter's being taken into care or her daughter being taken …? Genitive and common-case marking of subjects of verbal gerund clauses in Present-day English 311
- Subject index 335
