A Descriptive Study on Split Infinitive in the SOTU: With a Focus on the Examples from the 1960s to 2020

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  • 米国一般教書演説における分離不定詞についての記述分析 : 1960 年代から2020 年の用例を中心に
  • ベイコク　イッパン　キョウショ　エンゼツ　ニ　オケル　ブンリ　フテイシ　ニ　ツイテ　ノ　キジュツ　ブンセキ　1960 　ネンダイ　カラ　2020 　ネン　ノ　ヨウレイ　ヲ　チュウシン　ニ

Abstract

This paper describes and analyzes some of the features of split infinitive appearing in the State of the Union Address (SOTU). The investigation aims to shed light on some of the typical usages of split infinitive in political contexts. We construct a corpus by accumulating the data of speeches about 230 years from the end of the 18th century to the present, and annotate the text to extract the constructions’ examples. In the discussion, we combine quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Specifically, we observe the transition in the frequency of split infinitive examples and focus on the period from the 1960s to 2020, when a relatively large number of contexts are available, to explore the characteristics of usage from the extracted examples. As a result of the analysis, we get several clues to uncover a part of the usage of the split infinitive structure, which is characteristic of the State of the Union Address.

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