The Distribution of Also and Too: A Preliminary Corpus Study
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Volker Gast
Abstract
This paper discusses distributional differences between the two additive particles also and too on the basis of corpus evidence. Three hypotheses are explored: (i) also and too are characteristic of different registers or styles, (ii) the use of also and too is sensitive to structural properties of the 'added constituent', and (iii) the use of the two particles depends on the distribution of 'added material' over the sentence. The discussion centres around the question to what extent corpus-based methods are appropriate to test these hypotheses. While hypothesis (ii) can straightforwardly be tested (and confirmed), the other two hypotheses pose methodological challenges of different types. Corpus-based test procedures are outlined for both hypotheses and preliminary results are given, but it is pointed out that specific types of questions could be answered more easily by applying common elicitation procedures
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Inhalt
- Editorial
- Introduction
- Pedagogical Applications of Corpora: Some Reflections on the Current Scope and a Wish List for Future Developments
- How Reliable are the Results? Comparing Corpus-Based Studies of the Present Perfect
- Distributional Data and Grammatical Structures: The Case of So-Called ’Subject Extraposition’
- The Distribution of Also and Too: A Preliminary Corpus Study
- How Random is a Corpus? The Library Metaphor
- Some Proposals towards a More Rigorous Corpus Linguistics
- Corpora and (the Need for) Other Methods in a Study of Lancashire Dialect
- Using Corpora in the Calculation of Language Relationships
- Buchbesprechung
- Die Autoren dieses Heftes
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Inhalt
- Editorial
- Introduction
- Pedagogical Applications of Corpora: Some Reflections on the Current Scope and a Wish List for Future Developments
- How Reliable are the Results? Comparing Corpus-Based Studies of the Present Perfect
- Distributional Data and Grammatical Structures: The Case of So-Called ’Subject Extraposition’
- The Distribution of Also and Too: A Preliminary Corpus Study
- How Random is a Corpus? The Library Metaphor
- Some Proposals towards a More Rigorous Corpus Linguistics
- Corpora and (the Need for) Other Methods in a Study of Lancashire Dialect
- Using Corpora in the Calculation of Language Relationships
- Buchbesprechung
- Die Autoren dieses Heftes
