An Analysis of split Infinitive in the 19th Century US Presidential Speech : With Special Reference to Abraham Lincoln's Speeches

DOI HANDLE Open Access

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • 19世紀米国大統領演説における分離不定詞 : Abraham Lincoln の事例から
  • 19 セイキ　ベイコク　ダイトウリョウ　エンゼツ　ニ　オケル　ブンリ　フテイシ　Abraham Lincoln　ノ　ジレイ　カラ

Abstract

The present study attempts to discuss a part of the diaclrronic usage of split infinitive in American English from various angles, using the presidential speech text data included in the Corpus of Presidential Speeches (CoPS). As a preliminary survey, in this paper, we focus on Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president who was active in the middle of the 19th century. In order to extract the structures, we add POS-tags to each text of the speeches in CoPS and use a corpus analysis application, namely CasualConc. Due to the influence of prescriptivism, split infinitive seldom appeared in the data of presidents who took office by the mid-19th century; but this investigation reveals that Lincoln was the frrst US president to use the construction frequently in his speech. In the case study, we classify the part-of-speech usages (i.e., NOMINAL usage; ADJECTIVE usage; ADVERBIAL usage) of Lincoln's split infinitives. We also observe the context focusing on specific adverbs, such as not and so. The multiple perspectives enable us to present several new findings on the style and rhetoric characteristic of the split infinitives used by him.

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Keywords

Details 詳細情報について

  • CRID
    1390853651202662016
  • NII Article ID
    120007164656
  • DOI
    10.18910/85009
  • HANDLE
    11094/85009
  • Text Lang
    ja
  • Data Source
    • JaLC
    • IRDB
    • CiNii Articles

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