英⽂學術論⽂中[N1 of N2]構式之探討 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國⽴政治⼤學英國語⽂學系博⼠班博⼠論⽂. 指導教授：鍾曉芳博⼠ Advisor: Dr. Siaw-Fong Chung. 政治大. 英⽂學術論⽂中[N1 of N2]構式之探討. 立. Investigating English [N1 of N2] Constructions in Academic Writing. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. 研究⽣：陳⽴茵撰 Name: Li-Yin Chen 中華民國 107 年六⽉ June, 2018. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(2) Investigating English [N1 of N2] Constructions in Academic. Writing. A Dissertation Submitted to Department of English,. 政治. National Chengchi University 大. 立. ‧. ‧ 國. 學 er. io. sit. y. Nat. n. aInl Partial Fulfilment i v n Ch U of the Requirements for the Degree of engchi Doctor of Philosophy. by Li-Yin Chen June 2018. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(3) Acknowledgements. A lot of people have helped me in accomplishing this work and throughout my study in the English Department, NCCU. First, I should like to thank my thesis supervisor, Prof. Siaw-Fong Chung. It was because of her work that I continued to be interested in corpus linguistics. She has set a wonderful example of being efficient and productive as an academic. Her enthusiasm towards research seems to be never-ending. I am very grateful to her for all her help,. 治政 I should like to thank my dissertation committee.大 I am very grateful to Prof. Huei立. encouragement and confidence on me.. Ling Lai and Prof. Hsueh-ying Yu. They have been my great mentors since I entered. ‧ 國. 學. the program. I am grateful to their comments and advice which always have helped me. ‧. and driven me to think harder and broader.. sit. y. Nat. I should also like to thank my other committee, Prof. Zhao-Ming Gao and Prof.. io. er. Michael Tanangkingsing. I am particularly grateful for their scepticism and positive. al. iv n C h ewhom There are also many other people h i Ulike to thank: other professors in the n g cI should n. encouragement in shaping this work.. English Department at NCCU; my colleagues and friends at both Lao-Song Elementary School and Yung-Shuen Elementary School; my studying buddies, Jerry, Claire, and Effie; my coding buddies, particularly, Angel and Suet Ching. And finally, and above all, I should like to thank the most important people in my life, my family. My mom Pauline, my husband Abu, my son Humphrey for their support and understanding to indulge me with a long period of don’t-bother-me I’m-writing time. I could not have made it through without you. Thank you to everyone again.. iii. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(4) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iv. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(5) Table of Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. iii. Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. v. List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ix. List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. xi. 中文摘要 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv English Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii. 政治大. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 立. 1.2. The Of -construction and Semantic Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3. 1.3. The Significance of Of -constructions in Academic Writing . . . . . . .. 8. 1.4. Functional Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. 1.5. Using Of -constructions in Academic Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12. 1.6. Statement of the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13. 學. An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. y. sit. n. al. er. io. 3. 1. ‧. Nat. 2. 1. 1.1. ‧ 國. 1. Ch. i Un. v. THE SEMANTICS OF THE OF-CONSTRUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17. engchi. 2.1. The Meanings of Of. 2.2. Functions of the Of -construction in Academic Writing . . . . . . . . . 41. 2.3. An Interim Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17. DATA AND METHODOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 3.1. The Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47. 3.2. Statistical Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49. 3.3. Statistical Analysis Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52. 3.4. Annotation Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(6) 4. NOMINAL GROUPS IN THE OF-CONSTRUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 4.1. Frequency Distribution of the Nominal Groups in the Of -construction . 83. 4.2. Correspondence Analysis of Semantic Categories of N1 and N2 Heads . 88. 4.3. Semantic Relations of the Of -construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91. 4.4. Premodification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94. 4.5. Results of Covarying Collexeme Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98. 4.6. Multiple Of -constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103. 4.7. The Functional Consideration of the Of -construction at the. 4.8. 治政 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .大 . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 立 Construction Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106. 學. OF-CONSTRUCTIONS BEYOND THE CONSTRUCTION LEVEL . . . . 113 The Syntactic Positions of Of -constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113. 5.2. Postmodification on Of -constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135. 5.3. HCFA: Premodification and Postmodification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137. 5.4. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140. 5.5. Chapter Summary . . . .. ‧. 5.1. io. sit. y. Nat. n. 6. al. er. 5. Chapter Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111. ‧ 國. 4.9. iv n C . . h . .e. n . . . . h . . . . . g c . .i . U. . . . . . . . . 142. CONCLUSIONS AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . 145 6.1. Summary of Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145. 6.2. Application to Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146. 6.3. Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154. 6.4. Closing Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172. vi. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(7) Appendix C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vii. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(8) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. viii. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(9) List of Figures Figure 2.1. Cruse’s (1986: 87) model of congruence relations . . . . . . . . 32. Figure 4.1. Proportion of semantic categories of nominal heads in the of -. construction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Figure 4.2. Correspondence analysis of semantic categories of nominal heads. 90. Figure 4.3. Frequency of premodifiers preceding N1 and N2 . . . . . . . . . 95. Figure 4.4. A comparison of types of premodifiers between N1 and N2 . . . 96. Figure 6.1. Distribution of the semantic relations of of -constructions in. 立. 政治大. various sections of a research article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. ix. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(10) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. x. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(11) List of Tables Table 2.1. An illustration of major components of the complex noun phrase . 21. Table 2.2. Francis, et al.’s categorization of [N of n] (1998: 176-199) . . . . 24. Table 2.3. Sinclair’s (1991) Types of Semantic Heads . . . . . . . . . . . . 25. Table 2.4. Metaphors Motivating the Meanings of the Genitive (adopted. from Nikiforidou, 1991) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Table 2.6. Moldovan et al.’s (2004:. 63, 65) Semantic relations of. 政治大. of -constructions* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33. 立. Nastase and Szpakowicz’s (2003) relations based on noun. 學. ‧ 國. Table 2.5. compounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Table 2.7. Kreyer’s (2003: 178) categorization of semantic relations for. ‧. genitive-of -construction alternation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37. y. Nat. Table 2.9. The semantic relations of of -constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . 39. n. al. er. sit. Lindstromberg’s (2010: 208) types of integration . . . . . . . . . 38. io. Table 2.8. Ch. i Un. v. Table 2.10 Partial representation of Kennedy’s (1987: 270-271) categories. engchi. of quantification. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Table 2.11 Flowerdew and Forest’s (2015: 161) investigation of signaling nouns in of -constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Table 3.1. Distribution of academic domains in the BNCweb written corpus. Table 3.2. A summary of BNCweb query result for of -construction . . . . . 48. Table 3.3. Contingency. table. for. covarying. collexeme. 47. analysis. (Stefanowitsch & Gries, 2005: 9) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Table 3.4. Contingency table for correspondence analysis . . . . . . . . . . 54. xi. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(12) Table 3.5. Twenty-five unique beginners for nouns in WordNet (Miller,. 1998: 29) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Table 3.6. List of 14 semantic categories for academic nouns . . . . . . . . 60. Table 3.7. Types of postmodifiers modified from Biber et al. (1999) . . . . . 62. Table 3.8. Dictionary senses under the categorization of semantic relations . 64. Table 3.9. Categories of semantic relations of of -constructions . . . . . . . 74. Table 3.10 The syntactic roles of of -constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Table 3.11 Structural types of postmodification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Table 4.1. The standardized residuals (R) for the semantic categories of N1. 政治大. and N2 heads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85. 立. A summary of CA results with examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91. Table 4.3. Frequency distribution of semantic relations of of -constructions . 93. Table 4.4. Top 50 covarying collexeme pairs attracted to the of -construction. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Table 4.2. io. y. sit. Top 50 covarying collexeme pairs in the of -construction in the. er. Table 4.5. Nat. in the order of △P attraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99. order of collocational strength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. Table 5.1. Distribution of syntactic positions of of -constructions . . . . . . 114. Table 5.2. Distribution of semantic relations of of -constructions as the object 121. Table 5.3. Significant HCFA results for of -constructions as the object . . . . 122. Table 5.4. The characterizing and identifying patterns of the copula. engchi. construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Table 5.5. Distribution of structural types of postmodification of. of -constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Table 5.6. Distribution of phrasal heads in postmodifying prepositional phrases136. xii. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(13) Table 5.7. Significant HCFA configurations for premodification and. postmodification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Table 6.1. List of N1-N2 collexeme pairs generated from ten Nucleic Acid. Research articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Table A1. List of complex prepositions compiled from Hoffmann (2005). and Quirk et al. (1985) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 Table B1. Results of top 150 Covarying Collexeme Analysis (assorted. according to word-to-construction delta P value) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Table B2. Results of top 150 Covarying Collexeme Analysis (assorted. 政治大. according to collocational strength) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179. 立. Online resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186. 學 ‧. ‧ 國 io. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. Table C1. Ch. engchi. xiii. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(14) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. xiv. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(15) 中文摘要. 國立政治大學英國語文學系博士班博士論文提要. 論文名稱：英文學術論文中 [N1 of N2] 構式之探討指導教授：鍾曉芳博士研究生：陳立茵論文提要內容：英文中的 [N1 of N2] 構式 (e.g., every corner of the world) 涵蓋不同種類的名. 政治大. 詞組，被英文的介系詞 of 所連接。這兩個名詞組分別存在於 of 的前後卻產生. 立. 許多不同的語意關係 (semantic relations)，其中最常討論到的為部分－整體關係. ‧ 國. 學. (part-whole) 如：the rim of the mug 以及關係詞語 (relational terms) ，如：the mother of the bride (e.g., Langacker, 1999)。雖然 [N1 of N2] 這個構式常在英語學. ‧. 術言談的文獻中被提到 (e.g., Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad & Finegan, 1999;. Nat. sit. y. Biber & Gray, 2010; Simpson-Vlach & Ellis, 2010)，卻尚少有針對此構式做一個比. er. io. 較完整的研究來了解這些不同的語意關係是否有相關性。因此，本論文的研究. al. 目的為探討不同的 of -構式，藉此找出它們的語意關係之間的連結，並了它們如. n. iv n C 何幫助學術論文作者在文章傳遞訊息。本論文採用量化為本的認知語意學為理 hengchi U. 論架構，針對在 British National Corpus 語料庫中的 of -構式進行研究。研究結果發現相對於語意關係的分類，N1 和 N2 的語意類別無法全然解釋 of -構式中不同的語意。此外，研究結果顯示在學術論文中 of -構式大多為名詞化的動詞 (例如， combination of words) 或是動名詞（如，the advancing of organized interests)，這些 of -構式主要有兩個功能，首先，此構式本身可以不用標記施事者，並且在當做主詞時可以取代施事者 (agent)，可以降低明定施事者的風險，而達到謹言慎行 (hedging) 的效果。of -構式的第二個功能是可以概括前文 (encapsulation) 以一個總結的方式作為主詞，以利後續的銜接 (e.g., Sinclair, 1993)。另外，本論文應用多變量分析來找出特定的模式，如，使用 covarying collexeme analysis 找出專有名詞為 of -構式中最具典範的例子。使用 hiearchical configural frequency xv. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(16) analysis 發現 of -構式在不同的句法位置中，有不同的修飾模式會出現，當它在主詞中出現時，N1 大多會有前方修飾語 (premodifier) 但卻比較不會被後方修飾語 (postmodifier)。當它出現在受詞中，後修飾語常一起出現，卻比較不會有前修飾語。最後，of -構式在學術論文中有可能是一個很重要的評論媒介，可以把評論放如前修飾語中或以名詞的方式出現。本論為最後提出一個教學應用來提升學習者對 of -構式的了解以及一些例子用來提升學習者對 of -構式在 agent demotion 使用上的理解。. 關鍵字：of ，of -構式，N1 of N2，語意關係，學術論文，BNC 語料庫. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. xvi. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(17) English Abstract. English [N1 of N2] constructions (e.g., every corner of the world) consist of a wide range of nominal groups that are linked by the most commonly found preposition of. The two nominal groups that precede and follow of vary with their semantic relations such as part-whole relations (e.g., the rim of the mug) and relational terms (e.g., the mother of the bride) (e.g., Langacker, 1999). Although the [N1 of N2] constructions (henceforth, of -constructions) have been constantly mentioned in recent. 治政大& Ellis, 2010), not much work Finegan, 1999; Biber & Gray, 2010; Simpson-Vlach 立 studies of English academic discourse (e.g., Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad &. has been devoted to considering of -constructions from a comprehensive perspective,. ‧ 國. 學. i.e., how the varieties of of -constructions are congruent in meaning. Therefore, the. ‧. purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which the different types of. sit. y. Nat. of -constructions are linked by various semantic relations and how they are distributed. io. er. in academic writing and their functions. By adopting a quantification-based Cognitive. al. iv n C sub-corpus of the written BritishhNational e n g cCorpus h i Uusing the platform BNCweb. n. Semantics approach, this study investigated of -constructions in the academic Our. analysis demonstrate that categorization of semantic categories of N1 and N2 nominal heads is not sufficient to capture the full spectrum of meanings of of -constructions as compared to using semantic relations. The results also show that there is a prevalence of of -constructions involving actions by means of deverbal nominalization (e.g., combination of words) or nominal gerunds (e.g., the advancing of organized interests) in academic writing.. In association with these nominalized lexical items, two. important functions were identified at the subject position. First, the construction allows a demotion of agent, or a substitution of the of -construction for an agentive. xvii. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(18) subject, possibly to hedge the statement and demonstrate objectivity. The second function is an encapsulation function (Sinclair, 1993) that restates previous statements which in turn sets up the stage or acts as a theme for the academic discourse to build on (e.g., The assessment of practical subjects and their funding remains a problem…). Application of multivariate analyses identified some interesting patterns. First, the covarying collexeme analysis identifies proper names as the most prototypical of -constructions.. Another interesting finding using the hiearchical configural. frequency analysis is that at different syntactic positions, the of -construction is modified differently.. When appearing at the subject position, N1 tends to be. premodified but not postmodified.. 立. 政治大. When appearing at the object position, the. of -construction is more likely to be postmodified but not premodified at all. This. ‧ 國. 學. modification pattern appears to allow a quick access to the main verb for ease of. ‧. processing. Finally, the of -construction could contain evaluative premodifiers (e.g., user-friendly) or evaluative nominal groups (e.g., importance) for evaluation. Towards. y. Nat. er. io. sit. the end of this study, applications to pedagogy involving a mini corpus and instruction for teaching agent demotion were designed to raise learner’s awareness of the semantic. n. al. relations of of -constructions.. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. Keywords: of, of -construction, N1 of N2, semantic relations, academic writing, British National Corpus.. xviii. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(19) CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 An Overview The word of is among the most frequently used English prepositions. A query for of, in, to, and at from the British National Corpus (BNC), a general corpus containing 100 million words, generates the following frequency rates (instances per million words) in a decreasing order: 30,926.82 for of, 18,122.23 for in, 10,266.29 for to, 5,981.47 for on, and 5,305.71 for at. This figure for of, which is almost double that of. 政治大 is also reflected 立 in its wide spectrum of meanings best attested in. in, indicates that there are approximately three of ’s in every hundred words. The ubiquity of of. ‧ 國. 學. English dictionaries. For example, the Collins English Dictionary lists 19 entries for of, and the Macmillan Open Dictionary lists 21 entries. The overwhelming number of. ‧. senses, most of which are related, is characteristic of English prepositions, which is. Nat. sit. y. referred to as word polysemy (Cruse, 1986; Lakoff, 1987). There exists a large number. n. al. er. io. of word polysemy studies investigating prepositions, particularly spatial prepositions. i Un. v. such as in, on, at, and over (e.g., Lakoff, 1987; Tyler & Evans, 2003). The results of. Ch. engchi. these studies have further inspired instructions based on cognitive linguistic theories such as image schemas (e.g., Tyler, 2012). In an empirical study, Wang, Zhao, and MacWhinney (2018) have demonstrated the effectiveness of implementing image schemas to explaining the polysemy of English prepositions in, at, and over with intermediate L2 learners at the secondary level. While most of the research effort has been expended on spatial prepositions, fewer studies pay much attention to the preposition of. In their seminal work in the semantics of English prepositions, Tyler and Evans (2003) point out that some of of ’s spatial senses (e.g., away, away from) were lost but retained in off. They briefly discuss of in terms of the cognitive paradigm. 1. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(20) using Trajector (TR), or the moving entity, and Landmark (LM), or the background. They argue that the proto-scene for of “involves a part-whole designation, with the TR being a specified part of the LM” (p. 210). Some prototypical examples of this spatial relation given by the authors are the top of the hill, the front of the chair, and the side of the car (p. 210). They also add that of designates an intrinsic relationship as described in Langacker (1982, 1999): “humans will typically interpret the TR and LM as being related in some non-accidental, non-random way and will interact with the two entities in a particular way because of this interpretation” (p.. 211).. The. description of an intrinsic relationship seems to be mainly applied to a part-whole. 政治大. relation which has been discussed as a fundamental relation in natural language. 立. (Chaffin & Hermann, 1987) or encyclopedic knowledge (Murphy, 2003).. ‧ 國. 學. Schonthal (2016) is one of the few exceptions who takes a Construction Grammar. ‧. perspective to pin down a comprehensive list of the meanings of of using the BNC corpus (both spoken and written included). On the basis of Conceptual Blending Theory. y. Nat. er. io. sit. (Fauconnier & Turner, 2003), Schonthal applies conceptual blending to view N1 and N2 each as a conceptual entity that can be blended to create an of -construction. He. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. also identifies textual functions of of based on their role in supporting textual cohesion.. engchi. However, Schonthal does not focus on the academic genre. We would expect differences to be found between the academic genre and other registers as Biber and colleagues (e.g., Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad & Finegan, 1999; Biber & Gray, 2013) have illustrated. Furthermore, the academic written genre is known for its efficient and economical way in information packaging (e.g., Halliday & Hasan, 1976; Venotola, 1996), implying its characteristic nature to be differentiated from other registers. As of is also prevalent in academic writing (Biber & Gray, 2010), an investigation with genre specificity is necessary. In brief, what functional roles of plays in academic writing and how can the. 2. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(21) multiple senses of of be linked in a network are therefore the topics under investigation for the current study.. 1.2 The Of -construction and Semantic Relations This study investigates a complex noun phrase (CNP) containing of, designated as an of -construction, i.e., constructions in the form of [N1 of N2], where N1 and N2 are noun phrases (NPs). We focus on English academic writing. Corpus examples taken from the academic subcomponent of BNC are shown in (1.1) with the of -construction underlined. (1.1). 政治大. a. James sought to reassert the divine right of kings, and Parliament combined against him. (J57_675) possessive. 立. ‧ 國. 學. b. Some idea of the effect can be gained by depressing the surface of a table tennis ball with the thumb. (J0T_360) part-whole. ‧. c. Bile acids are necessary for the absorption of dietary fats and cholesterol from the intestine. (HU2_7495) nominalization. y. Nat. io. sit. These examples demonstrate three distinct functions expressed by of -constructions.. n. al. er. First of all, the of -construction in (1.1a) exemplifies a possessive relationship between. i Un. v. the divine right and kings which, in general, has been considered as a prototypical. Ch. engchi. function of the s-genitive construction which, under certain circumstances, can alternate with the of -construction (e.g., Kreyer, 2003; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech & Svartvik, 1985; Stefanowitsch, 2003).. The second example (1.1b) epitomizes a. cognitively fundamental relationship, the part-whole relation (e.g., Chaffin & Herrmann, 1987), signaled by the NPs the surface and a table tennis ball. The third example in (1.1c) contains the nominalization of a phenomenon, which is also commonly associated with the of -construction, particularly prevalent in academic discourse (e.g., Halliday & Martin, 1993). The variety of of -constructions illustrated here demonstrates the complexity of the constructions due to the wide range of meanings involved. Furthermore, the relationship between the two NPs, which is. 3. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(22) referred to as a semantic relation throughout this study, appear to facilitate our comprehension of the of -construction. Semantic relations, according to Chaffin and Herrmann (1987), is rich in natural language in terms of their varieties. While a semantic relation can be described between nouns (e.g., a hyponymic relation between animal and dog), it can also describe the relations between adjectives (e.g., an antonymic relation between large and small) or between an adjective and a noun (e.g., a property relation between heavy and weight). In terms of the of -construction, the semantic relation is between two nouns, N1 and N2. Fellbaum (2002) defines the term semantic relations in her work on troponomy. She describes semantic relations as to be derived from the situation where. 政治大 that they differ in systematic ways 立that are characterizable in terms of similarities or “If one examines the lexicalized concepts in relation to one another, it becomes clear. ‧ 國. 學. contrasts” (p.23). For the purpose of this study, we adopt Fellbaum’s use of lexicalized concept to denote semantic relations as the association between meanings of words in. ‧. context. Although the of -construction is well considered mainly from the literature on. y. Nat. genitive alternation between of and s-genitive (see Rosenbach, 2014 for a. io. sit. comprehensive review), there have been comparatively fewer cases that examine the. n. al. er. semantic relations of the of -construction in detail (e.g., Hasselgård, 2016; Langacker,. Ch. i Un. v. 1982, 1999; Lindstromberg, 2010; Schonthal, 2016). For example, Lindstromberg. engchi. (2010) uses the term integration to classify various types of of -construction including part-whole (e.g., the eye of a storm), product-source (e.g., a result of hard work), action-agent (e.g., the howling of dogs), action-patient (e.g., the delivery of goods), and example-type (e.g., a sample of tissue).. This approach, which considers the. relationship between the two NPs, is very similar to the research in information technology where automatic processing of human language is the goal. The work of Moldovan, Badulescu, Tatu, Antohe, and Girju (2004) represents one of them. In their study, automatic labelling of semantic relations on a variety of NP-associated phrases such as noun-noun compounds, adjective phrases, s-genitives, and of -constructions are considered. Out of a total number of 35 relations, they suggest that there are 21. 4. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(23) relations found in the of -construction. While the types of semantic relations have been established, what remains to be done is to determine how different types of semantic relations are used by language users and with what purposes. Furthermore, although of ranks the top most frequent preposition in a variety of text types (e.g., Biber & Gray, 2010), the of -construction has rarely been considered in its own right in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) where instructions for L2 novice writers in addition to language research are both covered (Hyland & Shaw, 2016). This may be due to the misconception that of is a meaningless function word on the one hand, and on the other hand that it is well-established that of expresses a fundamental concept of part-whole relation and it is commonly viewed as the. 政治大 words are inherently low立 in semantic content has no longer been held to be true in the. alternative of the genitive, and nothing else. While the argument that most function. ‧ 國. 學. cognitive linguistic paradigm (Langacker, 1982, 1999), like many other preposition words, of is gaining its status in meaning content. Other fields in linguistics, however, For example, Renouf and Sinclair (1991). ‧. have investigated of in more detail.. y. Nat. demonstrate that highly frequent grammatical words such as to and of form. io. sit. collocational frameworks that associate with particular groups of words.. They. n. al. er. examine several word sequences containing to and of that can be filled with various. Ch. i Un. v. lexical items in between two fixed words such as [be+?+to], [too+?+to], [a+?+of ],. engchi. [an+?+of ], [for+?+of ], [had+?+of ], and [many+?+of ] and found that the slot in [a+?+of ] consists of a large number of quantity nouns such as couple, series, and lot, whereas [an+?+of ] tends to be occupied by a number of nominalized words such as extension and indication.1 This study and Sinclair’s (1991) work on the semantic head of of -constructions are devoted to demonstrate the complexity that of is woven in the semantic network of collocation. Another data-driven work that also demonstrates a rich system of of -constructions is perhaps Francis, Hunston, and Manning’s (1998) contribution to the pattern [N of N]. A total of 39 subcategories have been identified based on the semantics of the first N including subcategories such as the 1. Each question mark occupies one slot for a word.. 5. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(24) announcement group (e.g., charges of murder, accusations of being ‘soft’), the sign group (e.g., a neighbourly gesture of goodwill, the proof of a good song), and the cause and result group (e.g., an agent of change, the secret of your success). This work illustrates a multitude of meanings of of, while Renouf and Sinclair demonstrate a multitude of phrasal structures involving the word of. Polysemous words like English prepositions are difficult to attain for second/foreign language (L2) learners of English (e.g., Cho, 2010).. In fact,. prepositional studies based on error analysis, such as those using an error-tagged learner corpus, have demonstrated L2 learners’ struggle with English prepositions including of (e.g., Chan, 2010; Chuang & Nasi, 2006). Although the productivity of. 政治大 in teaching, the fact that it is characteristic of academic writing has been confirmed 立 the of -construction has not drawn much attention on how it can be taught effectively. ‧ 國. 學. (e.g., Biber, et al., 1999; Halliday & Martin, 1993; Halliday, 2004, Ventola, 1996), particularly in conjunction with nominalization (such as deverbal nouns, e.g.,. ‧. pronunciation, or deadjectival nouns, e.g., effectiveness) or postmodifier complexes. y. Nat. (e.g., in a number of ways) (Biber, et al., 1999: 642). In an investigation into lexical. io. sit. density in English academic writing, Ventola (1996) notices the increased structural. n. al. er. complexity of nominal groups by using multiple of -constructions with the center. Ch. i Un. v. nominal group to be surrounded by both a premodifier and a postmodifier. (1.2). engchi. the solution of the stationary distribution of the stochastic cash-management model (taken from Ventola, 1996: 180). In Example (1.2), there are three nominal groups (underlined) headed by solution, distribution, and model. Ventola suggests that the interpretation for this complex of -construction can be followed in two steps. First, the very last nominal phrase, the stochastic cash-management model, qualifies the second nominal phrase, the stationary distribution. In turn, these two phrases function together to serve as a qualifier for the first nominal group, the solution. The author states that the last of -construction “actually functions as a Qualifier of a Qualifier” (p.180) and packaging of information of this kind is particularly common in academic writing. 6. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(25) However, considering an of -phrase (i.e., of + NP) as a qualifier of the previous NP might face problems when we have phrases like the disruptive power of certain kinds of language (5491-J2K). It would be awkward to say that language qualities certain kinds. Therefore, a different perspective perhaps is necessary to re-examine this type of constructions. Another important source of research that demonstrates the close association of of -constructions in academic writing is that by Biber et al. (1999). In a large-scale, corpus-based investigation, Biber et al. examine of by comparing its use in academic prose with another register, conversation. The authors adopt the analysis of lexical bundles, defined as “the sequences of words that most commonly co-occur in a. 政治大 The result not only reveals 立areas of contrast between the two registers, it also shows. register” or “extended collocations” (p.989), to investigate the patterns of word strings.. ‧ 國. 學. that a fair number of these lexical bundles in academic prose contain an of -phrase fragment (e.g. the end of the, the position of the, as a result of, and about the nature. ‧. of ). These lexical bundles appear to be part of an NP or a prepositional phrase which. y. Nat. are common in academic writing, whereas lexical bundles in conversation are more. io. sit. commonly found in verb phrases. This approach exposes a list of collocating word. n. al. er. strings containing of -constructions by taking into account of register variations.. i Un. v. In general, previous studies have demonstrated that the of -construction is not only. Ch. engchi. complicated in terms of its multiplicity in meanings but also its presence in various syntactic positions. Just like any nominal group, the of -construction can appear in the subject, object, and complement not only as a noun phrase but also as a prepositional phrase. The results of Biber et al.’s study show that the of -construction seems to have an affinity with prepositional phrases. The purpose of this study is therefore to identify how these of -containing bundles work in various syntactic positions and to what extent they are used as a prepositional phrase. While the discussion above highlights some fruitful findings, teaching intervention seems to remain difficult to be constructed. One of the hurdles is perhaps the lack of sufficient information on the second nominal in relation to the first. For example,. 7. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(26) Biber et al.’s work informs us about the likely collocates of N1 (e.g., the end of, as a result of ), but an expectation of an automatic filling in appropriate words at N2 might cause a problem for some L2 learners as they might not have sufficient amount of target input yet. In other words, a comprehensive analysis that considers the entire set of of -constructions could perhaps benefit L2 learners by raising their awareness of of ’s complexity.. 1.3 The Significance of Of -constructions in Academic Writing Despite a dearth of studies that support a constructional perspective on of constructions to date, the need to understand of in academic writing can be illustrated. 政治大 Lancaster-Olso/Bergen corpora 立 (Kennedy, 1998: 139), of tops the 14 most frequent in at least three ways.. First, according to a statistical measure in Brown and. ‧ 國. 學. prepositions which altogether account for about 90% of all prepositional use. This is evident from a query of the British National Corpus exemplified in 1.3 with each. a. An ubiquitous feature of post-colonialism is the dominance of the state in the process of capital accumulation. (HTF-1192). sit. y. Nat. (1.3). ‧. of -construction underlined.. n. al. er. io. b. An important feature of economic reorganization in the industrial West is the development of business by members of ethnic minorities. (HY6729). Ch. engchi. i Un. v. c. …that the state of a man’s mind is as much a question of fact as is the state of his digestion. (EB2-1078) d. Knowledge of human physiology would enable witnesses of the bump to predict the appearance of the bruise. (CM2-399) From these examples, we can see that it is possible for a sentence to be nested by a few of -constructions simultaneously, implying of ’s ubiquity in use. The second piece of evidence demonstrating the need of of -constructions in academic writing is that a number of researchers (e.g., Halliday, 2004; Biber & Gray, 2010) have noticed the increased use of nominalization in academic writing. Nominalization, according to Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), is a grammatical process “whereby any element or group of elements is made to function as a nominal 8. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(27) group in the clause” (p.69). Snow (2010) points out that this process plays a role in determining the conciseness in academic writing and states that “[s]cience teachers are not generally well prepared to help their students penetrate the linguistic puzzles that science texts present” (p.452).. Nominalization is sometimes accompanied by a. postmodifying device that specifies additional information to the head noun. In other words, we would expect a heightened frequency of of -constructions in academic writing. The third reason for investigating of -constructions in academic writing is that a growing number of studies in academic writing have identified the lexico-grammatical patterns of various constructions in detail (e.g., Biber, Conrad & Cortes, 2004; Hyland,. 政治大 example, Groom (2005) 立 examines the introductory it as found in the grammar patterns. 2008; Oakey, 2002) but have not yet paid full attention to the of -construction. For. ‧ 國. 學. [it v-link ADJ that] (e.g., It is clear that…) and [it v-link ADJ to-inf] (e.g., it is important to compare…). Another study considers the lexico-grammatical pattern of. ‧. if -conditionals in medical discourse (Carter-Thomas & Rowley-Jolivet, 2008). These. y. Nat. studies demonstrate that some textual functions are genre-specific, implying a need to. io. sit. take into account of the text type, genre, and even disciplinary variation when. er. analyzing textual functions. In the current study, we consider the of -construction as. n. al. i Un. v. equivalent to a lexico-grammatical pattern in the form of [N1 of N2] where N1 and N2. Ch. engchi. are variables to be applied to the construction. How different nominal groups are employed by academic writers in the construction is what we are seeking to find. These three reasons account for the need to investigate of -constructions in academic writing. The first research question of this thesis is therefore to ask which nouns do academic writers commonly use in of -constructions and what semantic relations do these nouns create. In the next section, we will consider the functions that of -constructions have in academic writing, from which we will introduce the second and third research questions.. 1.4 Functional Considerations. 9. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(28) In addition to the need of of -construction in academic writing, previous studies have investigated of -containing expressions from a functional perspective of linguistic devices which happen to contain of -constructions. One of these linguistic devices is a special group of nouns referred to as shell nouns (Hunston & Francis, 1999; Schmid, 2000) that “can act like “empty shells” in certain contexts because they can enclose or anticipate surrounding discourse” (emphasis original, Aktas & Cortes, 2008: 4). To put it in another way, the meanings of shell nouns vary depending on their context and, thus, could function as cohesive devices. In a study of shell nouns as cohesive devices, Aktas and Cortes (2008) analyze the distribution of 35 highly prevalent shell nouns in seven lexico-grammatical. patterns among. which two. 政治大. are of -constructions. ([definite/indefinite article + shell noun + of prepositional phrase], e.g., the process of. 立. administering the service, a process of empowerment) (p.10). The results show that. ‧ 國. 學. some shell nouns are more favorable to certain patterns. For instance, of -constructions that contain shell nouns such as effect, result, and process were found to be used in a. ‧. higher rate in non-native graduate writers’ research papers than in professional writing. sit. y. Nat. of journal articles. Yet, an opposite trend was found for the shell noun problem. Aktas. io. al. er. and Cortes also point out that shell nouns in the of -constructions function to. n. “semantically characterize a piece of experience in a general way” (p.11) as exemplified in (1.4). (1.4). Ch. engchi. i Un. v. One technique, which is often used, is the Round Trip Time (RTT). The problem of this technique, [is that] it does not work if the mirrors are protected by firewalls. (student –Computer Science) (Aktas & Cortes, 2008: 11, emphasis added). According to the authors, the problem is the shell noun that functions to characterize additional information to be attributed to the postmodifying prepositional phrase. In addition to characterization, there are also two other textual functions identified in this study, namely, concept-formation and linking. Concept-formation is a term adopted from Schmid (2000) who describes it as “[t]he recurrent association between the linguistic form and the idea results in the formation of a more or less stable concept” (p.16).. This textual function is particularly common with the of -construction as 10. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(29) exemplified in (1.5). (1.5). The effect of a change will vary with the values of the independent variables. (published - Economics - APFEC) (Aktas & Cortes, 2008: 12, emphasis added). Specifically, the of -construction in (1.5), the effect of a change, represents a temporary concept serving at the subject position of a sentence. Linking is another textual function discussed by Aktas and Cortes. The authors point out that the pattern [th- + N] was found to express this function. Example (1.6) illustrates this function with This fact (underlined). (1.6). For all the clay samples, the only fraction of chemisorbed ammonia was converted into the DeNOx products, while majority of NH3 descorbed from the clay surface. This fact suggests that only part of chemisorbed ammonia is activated properly to be converted into DeNOx products. (published Environmental Engineering -ENVIR) (Aktas & Cortes, 2008: 13, emphasis added). 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. ‧. While this work draws our attention to pedagogical considerations on shell nouns as cohesive devices, it also inspires us further to look closely at shell nouns in the second. y. Nat. sit. nominal position in the of -construction.. er. io. Another study that mentions of -constructions among other discussions is. al. n. iv n C U h e n g c lines analyses demonstrates that the concordance the construction a shred h i containing. Hunston’s (2010) work on evaluative language. For example, one of her corpus. of tend to connote with words like truth, dignity, decency, and hope, all of which appear in a context associated with negatively evaluated words (e.g., not, without, scarcely, and lacking) (p.60).. Furthermore, Hunston also identifies modal-like. expressions from several grammatical patterns among which one particular of -construction, [N + of + -ing] (e.g., the problem of finding free dates), can be found (pp.78-9). What is significant about these expressions is that they are independent of the modal auxiliaries (e.g., can, could, may, might, will, and would) or modal adverbials (e.g., I think, in fact, and possibly) but serve similar modal functions in expressing possibility, obligation, and inclination. Hunston points out that this finding is relevant to writing instructions as these modal-like expressions may serve as 11. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(30) alternatives to modal auxiliaries that are frequently used by native speakers of English. L2 Learners of English, on the other hand, may not be aware of this type of linguistic resources and be limited strictly to using modal auxiliaries. An example to illustrate her point is shown in (1.7). (1.7). a. She did not cry out for help for fear of being further assaulted. b. If she had cried out she might have been assaulted again. (taken from Hunston, 2010: 87). Example (1.7a) is a corpus example and (1.7b) is its paraphrase. Specifically, the former containing the modal-like expression for fear of can be paraphrased as the latter by using the modal auxiliary might. One of the important findings from Hunston’s research is that. 政治大. non-native English speakers’ misuse of of -constructions could have been compensated. 立. by their underuse. This implies that we might need to examine L2 writer’s writing. ‧ 國. 學. carefully.. According to the studies discussed above, the of -construction may have several. ‧. textual functions including a cohesive function and an evaluative function. In addition. sit. y. Nat. to what Hunston has found with the use of evaluative words such as problem at N1,. io. al. er. evaluative adjectives (e.g., central, important, main, and peripheral) as discussed in. n. Swales and Burke (2003) could also be used as premodifiers for N1 and N2. Our. Ch. i Un. v. second research question is therefore to ask what textual functions the of -constructions carry in academic writing.. engchi. 1.5 Using Of -constructions in Academic Writing As mentioned earlier that the of -construction has not drawn much discussion in terms of L2 instructions. Similarly, work on L2 learner’s production does not focus much on the of -construction except for error analysis of prepositions. Recent evidence from error analysis studies suggests that L2 learners may have difficulty in using of constructions appropriately. Ever since the compilation of learner language corpora such as the International Corpus of Learner English (Granger, 2003) has sprung, a number of studies have attempted to renew the role of error analysis in English language teaching 12. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(31) (e.g., Dagneaux, Denness, & Granger, 1998; Granger, 1998; Ferris, 2011; Chuang & Nasi, 2006; Henry & Roseberry, 2007). In an investigation into the types of errors made by Chinese learners of English, Chuang and Nasi (2006) report that preposition errors are one of the most problematic grammatical category in their corpus of undergraduate essays. There are at least three types of preposition errors identified: mis-selection between prepositions (1.8a), missing prepositions (1.8b), and redundant prepositions (1.8c) (the correct answers are presented in brackets at the end). (1.8). a. *There is a huge increase of part-time workers… [in] b. *People want to get a better qualify * life. [a better quality of life]. 政治大. c. *The United Kingdom still remain outside of the European Union. [redundant of] (p. 268). 立. ‧ 國. 學. As demonstrated in (1.8a), a mis-selection of the preposition of was used instead of in. Example (1.8b) exemplifies a missing of, and example (1.8c) is a case of redundant. ‧. of. Chuang and Nasi also suggest that prepositions cause problems for Chinese learners. sit. y. Nat. because of the fundamental differences between the two languages.. io. al. er. On the basis of prepositional studies and lexical bundles studies, L2 learners appear. n. to encounter difficulties in using the of -construction in an appropriate way. However,. Ch. i Un. v. there seems to be a lack of bridging between the varying senses of the of -construction. engchi. and the functional categories of of -construction. Our third research question therefore relates the semantic relations (research question 1) and textual functions (research question 2) to pedagogical implications (research question 3) for EAP and L2 learners.. 1.6 Statement of the Problem Overall, the evidence presented thus far suggests that a systematic approach to understanding the of -construction is necessary to providing a more comprehensive view on the role of of -constructions in academic writing. Specifically, a point of contention in this study is that the of -construction not can only be considered as a lexical and syntactic phenomenon, but also that of discourse. The investigation of 13. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(32) textual functions of the of -construction will be included and their potential relevance to academic writing instructions for L2 learners will be predicted in this study. This dissertation aims to fill the research gap by investigating how of -constructions contribute to the characterization of academic writing. Three research questions are stated below: (1.9) Which nouns do academic writers commonly use in of -constructions and what semantic relations do these nouns create? (1.10) What lexico-grammatical functions do of -constructions have in different syntactic and modification patterns? (1.11) After obtaining results from previous two research questions, what pedagogical implications can be directly applied to EAP for L2 learners?. 學. ‧ 國. 政治大 To answer the first research question in (1.9), a general distribution of the 立 frequency of N1 and N2 will be accounted for and a semantic categorization of the nouns will be carried out by applying statistical measures.. The second research. analyses of the corpus data.. ‧. question in (1.10) was answered by a combination of qualitative and quantitative An examination into the modification patterns and. y. Nat. sit. syntactic positions of the of -construction will be carried out. It is aimed to identify the. er. io. functions of the of -constructions that are commonly used by academic writers. The. al. n. iv n C hacademic incorporated into the teaching of English e n g cwriting h i Uto L2 learners. A teaching last research question in (1.11) draw on how of -constructions can be taught and. approach based on the compilation of a mini-corpus will be presented as the core of teaching the semantic relations associated with of -constructions. The rest of the dissertation is organized as follows. Chapter 2 presents a review of previous studies on of -constructions mainly from grammatical,. cognitive,. phraseological, and functional perspectives as well as the literature on semantic relations and various functions that are in association with of -constructions. Chapter 3 describes the methodology for carrying out a corpus-based study with a detailed description of the corpus, statistical tools as well as annotation categories and procedures. Chapter 4 provides an intra-constructional account of of -constructions focusing merely on parameters relevant to the nominal groups. Chapter 5 inspects the 14. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(33) of -constructions at the sentential level by examining closely their syntactic positions and types of special constructions that reflect their use and functions. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes the results and contributions of this study and relates them to the real word applications and the prospect of the future.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 15. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(34) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 16. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(35) CHAPTER 2 THE SEMANTICS OF THE OF-CONSTRUCTION This chapter will begin with a literature review on two major topics: the word of and the semantic relations between the nominal groups mediated by of. A discussion on previous accounts of the meanings of of will be presented first, and then how semantic relations could work to establish the meanings of the of -construction will be explored. The last section considers the discourse functions of of -construction in academic writing.. 2.1 The Meanings of Of. 政治大. What does of mean? The traditional account of of highlights the syntactic roles that. 立. it plays in language, serving as a grammatical functor, i.e., a preposition, without delving. ‧ 國. 學. into the meanings it carries (Napoli, 1989; Aarts, 1998). However, this view has been expanded as a plethora of prepositional studies have identified the meanings of these. ‧. function words by means of image schemas, or the basic representation of our bodily. sit. y. Nat. experience (e.g., Lakoff, 1987; Langacker, 1999; Tyler & Evans, 2003). The meanings. io. er. of of appear to be best described along with its neighbors, or its preceding and following lexical items (i.e., N1 and N2). In other words, to investigate the meanings of of, it. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. is necessary to consider the entire construction (e.g., Kim & Sells, 2015; Schonthal,. engchi. 2016). In addition to its co-occurring neighbors, semantic relations that capture the relation between of ’s two neighbors appear to be important. The following discussion will first survey previous work from three perspectives: grammatical, cognitive, and phraseological. Then, Section 2.2 is dedicated to discussing semantic relations that are pertinent to of -constructions. Finally, the last section will consider previous studies on how of -constructions are applied and realized in the written discourse by examining their discourse functions.. 17. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(36) 2.1.1 A Grammatical Account Previous grammatical approach to the of -construction concentrates on two of its functions: its possessive and postmodifying functions. For the first function, the possessive function, Quirk et al.. (1985) indicate that a number of instances of. of -construction can be paraphrased by its genitive alternative as shown in (2.1). (2.1). a. the city’s population b. the population of the city (taken from Quirk et al., 1985: 1276). Apart from syntactic difference, the difference of (2.1a) and (2.1b) is the word. 政治大. order of the two NPs. The authors also consider factors affecting the NPs, including. 立. ‘lexical’ (e.g., animate, inanimate), ‘relational’ (e.g., partitive, quantitative),. ‧ 國. objective,. subjective),. ‘syntactic’ (e.g.,. premodification,. 學. ‘perspective’ (e.g.,. postmodification), and ‘communicative’ (e.g., end-weight, end-focus) that may. ‧. influence one’s selection of the construction. A corpus-based study by Kreyer (2003). sit. y. Nat. elaborates on Quirk et al.’s consideration and suggests that processability and the. io. er. degree of human involvement may represent two polar-end factors influencing one’s choice of construction. Processability, according to Kreyer, concerns weight and. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. syntactic complexity such as the presence of postmodification following N2. Example. engchi. (2.2) is a case where the of -construction is heavily postmodified (shown in bold). (2.2). The aggressive ardour of the professional golfer who might try to cut the slight dogleg and set himself up for an easier shot into the two-tier green (CS4) (Kreyer, 2003: 194; emphasis added). Human involvement ranges in a continuum, called “the personality scale” (Kreyer, 2003: p.175) ranging from individual (e.g., proper names such as Peter) to non-personal (e.g., inanimate entities such as chair). He found that the of -construction is selected when the degree of human involvement is low such that in Example (2.3a) and when more complex syntactic structure is involved such as postmodification by preposition phrases or premodification on N2 (2.3b).. 18. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(37) (2.3). a. the condition of the market in which it is to be sold (ARY) (p.192) b. the potential of his drab and neglected establishment (EA5) (p.198) (Kreyer, 2003; emphasis added). There are a number of previous studies on genitive alternation like Kreyer’s that determine the underlying factors that possibly control a user’s choice between the genitive and of -construction (see Rosenbach (2014) for a comprehensive review). Although there are factors listed that may have helped characterize of -constructions, the picture may not be comprehensive enough as non-alternating of -constructions have not been considered such as those specify a part-whole relation (e.g., the roof of this house), measurement (e.g., a tin of soup) or type (e.g., this kind of work) (Kreyer,. 政治大. 2003: 170-171; or Quirk et al., 1985: 703 for additional examples). There may also be. 立. other types yet to be discovered.. ‧ 國. 學. Now turning to the second function of of -construction, i.e., the postmodifying function, Quirk et al. (1985) state that“[t]he most common preposition, of, occurs. ‧. chiefly as a postmodifier in NPs in a function similar to that of the genitive” (p. 703).. al. n. b. the earth’s gravity. Ch. y. sit er. a. the gravity of the earth. io. (2.4). Nat. To illustrate of as a postmodifier, consider Example (2.4).. i Un. (Quirk et al., 1985: 703, emphasis added). engchi. v. On the basis of genitive alternation, (2.4a) is considered to be equivalent to (2.4b), indicating that the of -phrase (of the earth) functions like a modifier (the earth’s) with the only difference in syntactic position: a premodifier in (2.4b) and a postmodifier in (2.4a). Throughout Quirk et al.’s volume, at least four senses and three relations are identified including ‘a sense of cause/means’ (He died of hunger, p.700), ‘having’ (a man of courage, p. 704), ‘concerning’ (a story of a princess, p.710), and ‘material’ (a bracelet of solid gold, p. 711). The three relations include ‘partition’ ((a) part of the city), ‘quality’ (a kind of wood), and ‘quantity’ (a lot of people) (p. 703). Furthermore, two additional functions, appositive and possessive, involving of -constructions are discussed. According to the authors, apposition describes a relation between two NPs 19. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(38) that “must normally be identical in reference” (p. 1301). As shown in (2.5), both Amy and my best friend are co-referential. (2.5). Amy, my best friend, was here last night. (Quirk et al., 1985: 1301). While there are various grammatical means to express apposition, of -construction is among one of them as shown in (2.6). (2.6). a. the city of Rome b. Rome is a city. c. The city (that I mean) is Rome. (Quirk et al., 1985: 1284). 政治大 The construction in (2.6a) is立 related to its copular alternatives in (2.6b) and (2.6c). ‧ 國. 學. where the city and Rome have the same real-world referent.. Classifying of as one of the postmodifiers like other prepositions (e.g., in, at, on, and. ‧. to) is a coherent and logical thinking, because of along with in, at, on, and to belong to the same functional category of preposition, implying that their functions are also. y. Nat. io. sit. similar. However, the peculiarity of of has been noticed by a number of researchers (e.g.,. n. al. er. Langacker, 1982; Sinclair, 1991). Ample evidence shows that of functions more than. i Un. v. a postmodifier (Sinclair, 1991). In fact, those of -constructions which depict relations. Ch. engchi. of partition, quantity, and quality as discussed above all illustrate a non-postmodifying status, because the primary semantic content resides in the of -following NP (e.g., the city rather than part in part of the city). As a matter of fact, Sinclair (1991) argues for a special status for of as a preposition from a phraseological perspective, which will be explored in more detail in the following section. 2.1.2 A Phraseological Account of Of -construction The phraseological approach has been incorporated into research in various academic fields including lexicography (e.g., Kjellmer, 1994), second language acquisition (e.g., Pawley & Syder, 1983), conversation analysis (e.g., Coulmas, 1981),. 20. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(39) and collocations (e.g., Renouf & Sinclair, 1991), just to name a few. All of the research share an underlying assumption which is well-captured by Sinclair’s (1991: 110) idiom principle: [A] language user has available to him or her a large number of semipreconstructed phrases that constitute single choices, even though they might appear to be analyzable into segments. The idiom principle underscores the role of conventionalized phrases or prefabricated chunks in language use (Erman & Warren, 2000). In other words, the major difference between a phraseological account of of and that of a grammatical account (Section 2.1.1) is that the former considers the entirety of an of -construction (e.g., the city of. 政治大 city) and a postmodifying 立of -phrase (e.g., of Rome). The importance of identifying Rome) rather than dividing the construction into a phrasal head usually at N1 (e.g., the. ‧ 國. 學. conventionalized phrases has also been recognized in academic discourse (e.g., Adel & Erman, 2012; Biber et al., 1999; Oakey, 2002). Biber et al. (1999), for example, take. ‧. both deductive and inductive approaches to investigating of -constructions in complex noun phrases (CNP). Here, the deductive approach is aimed to identify the. y. Nat. io. sit. lexico-grammatical patterns and can be regarded as a problem-solving strategy which. n. al. er. targets at one particular grammatical structure (in this case, the of -construction) in. i Un. v. order to identify its collocating patterns. On the other hand, the inductive approach to. Ch. engchi. pattern finding does not target at any linguistic forms or structures, and is also employed by Biber et al. (1999) under the research called lexical bundles (chapter 13). Table 2.1 An illustration of major components of the complex noun phrase determiner. premodifiers head noun. postmodifiers. the. increasing. of western society to information and information processing activities. orientation. Example taken from Biber et al. (1999:643) In the deductive approach, Biber et al. (1999) regard the of -construction as a CNP with four major components including a determiner, a premodifier(s), a head noun, 21. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(40) and a postmodifier(s) as illustrated in Table 2.1. Note that in this example, the authors follow the conventional grammatical approach to classifying of by considering its role in postmodification and identify the collocating patterns of various types of NPs including ‘collective nouns’ (e.g., batch of and pack of ), ‘unit nouns’ (e.g., pair of, piece of, and trace of ), ‘quantifying nouns’ (e.g., box of, cup of, and packet of ), and ‘species nouns’ (e.g., sort of, kind of, type of, and class of ). In comparison with other prepositions, the authors found that the use of of is the most pervasive, occupying about 60-65% of all the prepositional modifiers. The collocation patterns of each type of NPs are also examined in all four registers including conversation, fiction, news, and academic writing. One special finding about academic prose is its prevalence of. 政治大 an important function of classification 立 in academic discourse.. species nouns such as type(s) and kind(s). The authors reason that these nouns signal Another variation is. ‧ 國. 學. found in fiction where collective nouns are sometimes metaphorically expressed (e.g., a flock of messages, and a swarm of panicked men, p.249), unlike the other three. ‧. registers (conversation, news, and academic writing) where collective nouns are found. y. Nat. to be specific to one semantic category such as people with crowd and gang, animals. io. sit. with flock and herd, and inanimate objects with batch and set.. n. al. er. In the inductive approach, Biber et al. (1999) consider lexical bundles which is. Ch. i Un. v. referred to as “extended collocations” or “bundles of words that show a statistical. engchi. tendency to co-occur” (p.989). In their study, lexical bundles are determined by frequency of occurrence and are limited to co-occurring word strings with at least three words. The most common sequences identified by the authors are three-word bundles, followed by four-word bundles. The authors found that register variation between academic prose and conversation can be identified by examining the distribution patterns of lexical bundles.. First, the number of lexical bundles is higher for. conversation (over 80,000 instances per million words) than academic prose (over 60,000 instances per million words). Second, the bundle types diverge between the two registers. There are far more of -containing lexical bundles in academic prose than in conversation, as the former register is closely associated with NPs (e.g., the use of ). 22. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(41) and prepositional phrases (e.g., as a result of ) and the latter with verb phrases (e.g., I don’t know). Moreover, a large number of these lexical bundles in academic prose contain an of -phrase fragment (e.g., the end of the, the position of the, as a result of, and about the nature of ). As most of these fragments constitute the first part of the of -construction (N1 and of ), it remains unknown to what extent the N2s in these bundles have in common. Another data-driven approach to of -constructions can be found in Francis, Hunston, and Manning’s (1998) seminal work on English grammar.. In their. pattern-oriented corpus study, Francis et al. identify a total of 39 categories with the pattern [N of n]. This work is not only comprehensive but also provides a large. 政治大 Yet, the categorization allows room for further work as there are some 立. inventory of words under each category as partially represented in the examples in Table 2.2.. ‧ 國. 學. instances categorized under ’others’ that could not have been sorted into the previously mentioned categories.. ‧. Sinclair’s (1991) work on of -constructions is one of the earliest to show concern. y. Nat. on a treating of merely as a postmodifying device. His concern is contingent on his. io. sit. analysis of headedness for of -constructions. On the basis of corpus data, he maintains. n. al. er. that the semantic head, defined as the most crucial element(s) to convey meaning of a. i Un. v. phrasal structure, of an of -construction varies with the types of nominal groups. Ch. engchi. involved. In other words, the semantic head of an of -construction does not necessarily correspond to the nominal at the N1 position, designated as an N1 head, as would have been viewed from the of -phrase-as-a-postmodifier perspective (Section 2.1.1). Sinclair supports his argument with corpus examples and his analysis shows that three types of semantic heads (N1 heads, N2 heads, and double-heads) can be identified (see Table 2.3). While N1-heads contain a postmodifying of -N2-phrase, N2-heads contain N1 groups with lighter semantic content including partitive and quantifier nouns (e.g., middle, evening). The double-heads are exemplified by titles, nominalizations, and premodified N1 (e.g., British premodifies view). Embarking from Sinclair’s work, Chen and Chung (2015) continued the. 23. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(42) Table 2.2 Francis, et al.’s categorization of [N of n] (1998: 176-199) Category. Examples. announcement construction love diagram sign cause and result rise and fall flow support issue magnitude town look era piece gang box type mixture kilometer fraction percentage article sample episode rim stage extremes architect fragrance mood aim site thunder possibility shortage way giant others. account, biography, values demonstration, application, diversion admiration, dislike, fear imitation, diagram, prototype badge, mark, symptom agent, root, result absence, arrival, downfall arrival, entry, return approval, backing, guidance act, dream, benefit age, estimate, investment borough, county, kingdom cry, look, expression age, hour, life, term amount, block, bundle abundance, crew, mass bag, bucket, glass brand, generation, manifestation blend, cocktail, fusion acre, kilo, mile dash, fragment, suggestion bit, majority, portion act, bolt, item example, masterpiece, sample attack, fit, outbreak area, boundary, continuation fabric core, heart, remnant depths, heat, extremes creator, founder, writer accuracy, dimensions, life affections, mood, pulse job, objective, role field, scene, theatre beating, buzz, thunder chance, hope, possibility lack, scarcity, poverty means, method, way a giant of a man, a jewel of a boat the 10th anniversary of her mother’s death, a choice of three dishes. 學. sit. io. n. al. er. Nat. y. ‧. ‧ 國. 立. 政治大. Ch. engchi. 24. i Un. v. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(43) Table 2.3 Sinclair’s (1991) Types of Semantic Heads Semantic heads. Examples. N1-head N2-head. operations of this sort, the age of eight the middle of a sheet, the evening of 5th August the British view of the late senator, the new President of Zaire. Double-heads (Examples taken from Sinclair, 1991). investigation of of -constructions by conducting a near-synonymy study of two reporting verbs, namely, demonstrate and show. We hypothesized that the types of. 政治大 semantic variation between the two verbs. The results affirmed our hypothesis in two 立. of -constructions in the object position of these two verbs would differ due to the subtle. ‧ 國. 學. ways. First, semantic headedness can be used to indicate the relative information load that each construction carries. We would expect a double-headed construction (e.g.,. ‧. the possibility of spontaneity) to carry more information than a single-headed one (e.g., the range of possibility). It was found that demonstrate tends to co-occur with a higher. y. Nat. io. sit. proportion of double-headed constructions (both of the nominal groups are considered. n. al. er. as a head) than show, implying demonstrate’s heavier role in expressing more abstract. i Un. v. notions. The second finding concerns with the fact that the verbs exhibit selective. Ch. engchi. restrictions on the types of of -constructions. Demonstrate associates closely with abstract notions, particularly for evaluative and modal purposes (e.g., demonstrate the validity of this principle, demonstrate a harsher reality of that desire). Show, on the other hand, associates closely with evidential function and measurement (e.g., show conventional signs of mild disapproval, show the wide range of conditions). While Sinclair’s semantic head approach presents one way to classify the of -constructions, more work appears to be needed if we want to understand the of -construction as a whole. One aspect of the research is to investigate the relationships that the head and non-head nominals maintain in each of -construction. For example, the N2-headed construction parts of the body would indicate a part-whole relation which would be. 25. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.

(44) quite different from any double-headed constructions that are more likely to denote an abstract notion such as titles (e.g., the Duchess of Bedford) and nominalization (e.g., the widespread avoidance of call-up, the design of nuclear weapons) (examples taken from Sinclair, 1991: 90-91). To some extent, the meaning of the of -construction is maintained by stimulating a relation between the two nominal groups as having been addressed by cognitive linguists presented in the next section. 2.1.3 A Cognitive Account A major tenet in cognitive grammar is that we use general cognitive mechanisms, such as memory and categorization to process language (e.g., Croft & Cruse, 2004;. 治 mechanism called attention 政 Another 大. Evans & Zinken, 2007; Schmid, 2007).. 立. allocation, or the concept of perceptual salience, has been successfully demonstrated in. ‧ 國. 學. the studies of prepositions (e.g., Lakoff, 1987; Schmid, 2007; Zlatev, 2007). As explained by Schmid (2007), cognitive linguists have adopted the concept and. ‧. terminology of Gestalt psychology, a branch of psychology that studies perception. sit. y. Nat. which stems from the idea that the whole is not the same as the sum of its parts (Rock. io. er. & Palmer, 1990), Figure/Ground alignment, to distinguish different degrees of salience. According to Talmy (2000), “[t]he Figure is a moving or conceptually. n. al. Ch. i Un. v. movable entity” and “[t]he Ground is a stationary reference entity” (p.289). Such a. engchi. distinction clearly demonstrates the pairing of the Figure with primary salience and the Ground with secondary. The Figure/Ground terminology is sometimes referred to as trajector/landmark to be used specifically for prepositions by cognitive linguists (Schmid, 2007: 128). While ample research has been given to spatial prepositions such as in and over, much less attention has been paid to non-spatial prepositions or prepositions like of with both spatial and non-spatial senses (Tyler & Evans, 2003). Despite the lack of interest, of has been analyzed by Langacker (1982; 1999) to demonstrate another fundamental claim of cognitive grammar or the premise that grammar simply consists of symbolic units which form an arbitrary linking between a semantic structure and a phonological form (Langacker, 1987; 2008). Elaborating. 26. DOI:10.6814/DIS.NCCU.ENG.006.2018.A09.