The purpose of this research is to explore three English synonyms, namely critical, serious, and crucial, with a particular focus on meanings, degrees of formality, collocations, and semantic preferences. Two dictionaries, namely the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary online, as well as the Corpus…

The dominance of syntactic studies in linguistics has caused lexis and grammar to be perceived as two distinct categories. With introduction of the paradigm of cognitive linguistics, the studies in syntax have been replaced by those in lexis and concepts. Semantics has come to the fore through the studies in cognitive linguistics, and there has…

Explores the use of the English phrase "I wish," focusing on the use of past and present tenses, the addition of the word "would," and both positive and negative uses of the phrase. (CB)

Study of a group of logical connectors in English demonstrates how the meanings of those connectors signal the grounding of the clauses they introduce in absolute terms, unlike other linguistic means of grounding performed by tense, aspect, mood, voice, or verbal categories. (14 references) (Author/CB)

Identifies the characteristics and functions of carrier nouns (such as "purpose"), including their function as countable abstract nouns, occurrence in "container" sentences, similarity to pronouns, and endophoric and exophoric references. Special focus is on ways that carrier nouns capture more than concepts. (19 references) (CB)

Analysis of the differences in use and meaning of simple verb phrases ("to look") and nominalized phrases ("to have a look") points out that such constructions are not semantically empty, light, or weak, because these structures introduce meanings that are uniquely determined by the basic sense of the verb in question. (40 references) (CB)

Discusses the secondary convergence (convergence which is not attributable to common heritage) occurring with English and German complement clauses. Independently, the two languages have developed a structural type of subject clause that enables speakers to avoid committing themselves as to whether the state of affairs they're referring to is a…

Analysis of the structural, semantic, and textual aspects of a corpus of 330 English examples of the postpositive conjunctions "though,""as," and "that" focuses on concessive clauses, clauses of reason, clauses of manner, and clauses with postpositive conjunctions and normal clauses. (CB)

Secondary resultatives exist in Italian and English, where both languages exhibit freedom with PP resultatives but semantic restrictions with AP resultatives (strongly in Italian and weakly in English). This contrast between freedom and restrictions is mirrored in the fact that AP arguments in postobject position as sisters to V are marked in both…

Discusses the development of phraseological machine translation based on the theory that in natural languages, phraseological units cannot always be reduced to words. Describes the phraseological translation process of computer software and machine dictionary systems that translate Russian into English and English into Russian. (JMV)

Describes rules for the use and interpretation of "verbally determinate ellipsis" involving the English verb group. Discussion covers: verbal determinacy and indeterminacy; verb group vs. verb phrase; the verb group as a five-part system; verb group echoing vs. auxiliary contrasting ellipsis; passive auxiliary; interpretation rules;…

Discusses the use of prepositional phrases as subjects and objects through consideration and analysis of: (1) characteristics of such phrases; (2) category status of prepositional phrases in typical noun phrase positions; and (3) sentences containing prepositional phrases in typical noun phrase positions. (CB)