Discourse-pragmatic functions of the present perfect in American English TV and radio interviews
-
Stefan Frazier
Stefan Frazier is associate professor in the Department of Linguistics & Language Development at San José State University (SJSU). He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA and an M. A. TESOL from San Francisco State University. His research interests include pedagogical grammar, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, classroom interaction, writing pedagogy, and gesture and talk. He is currently serving as the Chair of the Academic Senate at SJSU. Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics & Language Development, San José State University, One Washington Square, San José, CA 95192–0093, USA. Email: stefan.frazier@sjsu.edu
and
Hahn Koo
Hahn Koo is associate professor in the Department of Linguistics & Language Development at San José State University (SJSU). He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. He joined SJSU in 2008 after working on Korean text-to-speech synthesis at Nuance Communications, Inc. He is interested in computational linguistics, Korean linguistics, phonology, and psycholinguistics. He is currently the director of the Center for Human Language Technology at SJSU. Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics & Language Development, San José State University, One Washington Square, San José, CA 95192–0093, USA. Email: hahn.koo@sjsu.edu
Abstract
The English present perfect has received a great deal of sentence-based analytical attention in the empirical linguistic literature as well as some corpus-based coverage at the discourse level, in which analysis depends on close scrutiny of the context of a structure’s placement, i.e. several utterances, turns at talk, or sentences before and after. Due to the painstaking nature of such analysis, however, corpora used to date have been relatively small. This study, via a corpus of over 12 million words from television and radio interviews in the United States, categorizes the use of discourse-pragmatic functions of 268 present perfect tokens. From this analysis, one use stood out overwhelmingly: the present perfect in the employment of position-taking or support. Also, only very rarely was the present perfect used to initiate narratives, which is a finding that does not conform to previous understandings. The study contributes to the overall knowledge of present perfect use and has implications for how the tense can be taught to English language learners.
About the authors
Stefan Frazier is associate professor in the Department of Linguistics & Language Development at San José State University (SJSU). He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA and an M. A. TESOL from San Francisco State University. His research interests include pedagogical grammar, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, classroom interaction, writing pedagogy, and gesture and talk. He is currently serving as the Chair of the Academic Senate at SJSU. Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics & Language Development, San José State University, One Washington Square, San José, CA 95192–0093, USA. Email: stefan.frazier@sjsu.edu
Hahn Koo is associate professor in the Department of Linguistics & Language Development at San José State University (SJSU). He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. He joined SJSU in 2008 after working on Korean text-to-speech synthesis at Nuance Communications, Inc. He is interested in computational linguistics, Korean linguistics, phonology, and psycholinguistics. He is currently the director of the Center for Human Language Technology at SJSU. Address for correspondence: Department of Linguistics & Language Development, San José State University, One Washington Square, San José, CA 95192–0093, USA. Email: hahn.koo@sjsu.edu
Appendix: Transcription conventions
Transcripts in this manuscript are generally presented with regular English spell-ing and punctuation and without the specific notations common to conversation analysis. A turn at talk begins with the speaker’s name and a colon. Verbs in focus are in italics. Omitted words are indicated by ellipses. Transcribers’ comments are shown with [brackets]. Utterance restarts are marked by hyphens (–). Corpus sources appear in parentheses at the end of each excerpt.
References
Anderson, Lloyd B. 1982. The “perfect” as a universal and as a language-specific category. In Paul J. Hopper (ed.), Tense-aspect: Between semantics & pragmatics, 227–264. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.1.16andSearch in Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, & Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Essex, UK: Pearson Education Limited.Search in Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins, & William Pagliuca. 1994. The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Carter, Ronald & Michael McCarthy. 2006. Cambridge grammar of English: A comprehensive guide. Cambridge, UK: University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. 1982. Aspect between discourse and grammar: An introductory essay for the volume. In Paul J. Hopper (ed.), Tense–Aspect: Between semantics & pragmatics, 3–18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.1.04hopSearch in Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge, UK: University Press.10.1017/9781316423530Search in Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne & Nicholas Smith. 2009. The present perfect in British and American English: Has there been any change, recently? ICAME Journal 33. 45–64.Search in Google Scholar
Larsen-Freeman, Diane & Marianne Celce-Murcia. 2016. The grammar book: Form, meaning, and use for English language teachers. Boston, MA: National Geographic Learning.Search in Google Scholar
Levey, Stephen. 2006. Tense variation in preadolescent narratives. Journal of English Linguistics 34(2). 126–152.10.1177/0075424206290256Search in Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephen. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511813313Search in Google Scholar
Manning, Chris, Mihai Surdeanu, John Bauer, Jenny Finkel, Steven J. Bethard, & David McCloskey. 2014. The stanford coreNLP natural language processing toolkit. Proceedings of 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics: System Demonstrations. 55–60.10.3115/v1/P14-5010Search in Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. Essex, UK: Pearson.Search in Google Scholar
Richard, Sophie & Celeste Rodríguez Louro. 2016. Narrative-embedded variation and change: The sociolinguistics of the Australian English narrative present perfect. In Valentin Werner, Elena Seoane & Cristina Suárez-Gómez (eds.), Re-assessing the present perfect, 119–145. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110443530-007Search in Google Scholar
Ritz, Marie-Eve & Dulcie Engel. 2008. Vivid narrative use and the meaning of the present perfect in spoken Australian English. Linguistics 46(1). 131–160.10.1515/LING.2008.005Search in Google Scholar
Rodríguez Louro, Celeste. 2009. Perfect evolution and change: A sociolinguistic study of preterit and present perfect usage in contemporary and earlier Argentina. University of Melbourne dissertation.10.1515/shll-2009-1061Search in Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1995. Lectures on conversation: Volumes I & II. Oxford, UK & Cambridge, USA: Blackwell.10.1002/9781444328301Search in Google Scholar
Suh, Kyung-Hee. 1992. A discourse analysis of the English tense–Aspect–Modality system. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali. 2000. The grammaticalization of the present perfect in English: Tracks of change and continuity in a linguistic enclave. In Olga Fischer, Annette Rosenbach & Dieter Stein (eds.), Pathways of change: Grammaticalization in English, 329–354. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.53.16tagSearch in Google Scholar
Walker, Jim. 2011. The emergence of the narrative present perfect in British English: Reality or illusion? Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik 53(2). 71–87.Search in Google Scholar
Werner, Valentin. 2013. Temporal adverbials and the present perfect/past tense alternation. English World-Wide 34(2). 202–240.10.1075/eww.34.2.04werSearch in Google Scholar
Werner, Valentin, Elena Seoane, & Cristina Suárez-Gómez. 2016a. Introduction: The present perfect – A reassessment. In Valentin Werner, Elena Seoane & Cristina Suárez-Gómez (eds.), Re-assessing the present perfect, 1–20. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110443530-003Search in Google Scholar
Werner, Valentin, Elena Seoane, & Cristina Suárez-Gómez (eds.). 2016b. Re-assessing the present perfect. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.10.1515/9783110443530Search in Google Scholar
Yao, Xinyue. 2014. Developments in the use of the English present perfect: 1750–Present. Journal of English Linguistics 42(4). 307–329.10.1177/0075424214549560Search in Google Scholar
Yao, Xinyue. 2015. The present perfect and the preterite in Australian English: A diachronic perspective. In Peter Collins (ed.), Grammatical change in English world-wide, 247–268. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/scl.67.11yaoSearch in Google Scholar
Yao, Xinyue & Peter Collins. 2012. The present perfect in world Englishes. World Englishes 31(3). 386–403.10.1111/j.1467-971X.2012.01756.xSearch in Google Scholar
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- ‘My almost-leggings-so-I’m-kind-of-cheating jeans’: Exploring hyphenated phrasal expressions in fashion discourse
- Investigating ‘care leaver’ identity: A narrative analysis of personal experience stories
- Web-TV as a backstage activity: Emerging forms of audience address in the post-broadcast era
- Discourse-pragmatic functions of the present perfect in American English TV and radio interviews
- Virtual communities: Interaction, identity and authority in digital communication
- Acting out on Twitter: Affordances for animating reported speech in written computer-mediated communication
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- ‘My almost-leggings-so-I’m-kind-of-cheating jeans’: Exploring hyphenated phrasal expressions in fashion discourse
- Investigating ‘care leaver’ identity: A narrative analysis of personal experience stories
- Web-TV as a backstage activity: Emerging forms of audience address in the post-broadcast era
- Discourse-pragmatic functions of the present perfect in American English TV and radio interviews
- Virtual communities: Interaction, identity and authority in digital communication
- Acting out on Twitter: Affordances for animating reported speech in written computer-mediated communication
