41 |
From chairman to chairwoman to chairperson: exploring the move from sexist usages to gender neutrality
|
|
|
|
BASE
|
|
Show details
|
|
50 |
Can and may: Monosemy or polysemy?
|
|
Collins, Peter C.. - : School of English, Media & Art History, University of Queensland, 2007
|
|
Abstract:
This paper argues, on the basis of a corpus-based study of the meanings of can and may in contemporary British, American and Australian English, that a polysemy-based analysis is applicable to both modals. With may, epistemic possibility is the dominant meaning, but the dynamic and deontic possibility meanings still account for over 16.5% of tokens. By contrast the meanings of can, apart from a small percentage (1.1%) of epistemic cases, are united through the concept of potentiality. Nevertheless there are signs that the epistemic possibility meaning is becoming established, as it sheds its syntactic/semantic restriction to non-affirmative contexts.
|
|
Keyword:
2003 Language Studies; 2004 Linguistics; 380200 Linguistics; 420101 English; 420199 Language Studies not elsewhere classified; Can; Corpus; English; May; Modals; Monosemy; Polysemy
|
|
URL: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:12785 https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:12785/Collins_ALS2006.pdf
|
|
BASE
|
|
Hide details
|
|
|
|