Bernard De Clerck
List of John Benjamins publications in which Bernard De Clerck is involved.
2019 Theory versus practice: A closer look at transactional and interpersonal stance in English electronic complaint refusal notifications English Text Construction 12:1, pp. 103–136 | Article
In this paper, we investigate the attention given to and the impact of interpersonal, people-oriented and transactional, problem-oriented stance in English complaint refusals in business correspondence. The analysis is based on a sample analysis of English e-mail sequences from a Belgian… read more
2016 Non-human agents as subjects in English and Dutch: A corpus-based translation study Atypical predicate-argument relations, Ruchot, Thierry and Pascale Van Praet (eds.), pp. 87–112 | Article
In English sentences with a verb denoting an action like give, the subject usually plays the semantic role of agent. While in English non-human agents such as this manual in This manual gives instructions on the correct assembly occur quite frequently, Dutch seems to apply more restrictions, as… read more
2015 Patterns of regularisation in British, American and Indian English: A closer look at irregular verbs with t/ed variation Grammatical Change in English World-Wide, Collins, Peter (ed.), pp. 335–372 | Article
This paper explores ongoing processes of verb regularisation (see Lieberman et al. 2007) in British, American and Indian English in a selection of thirteen verbs that allow both irregular (t) and regular (ed) forms. We examine the extent to which inter- and intra-varietal differences reflect the… read more
2011 The syntactic flexibility of (new) verbs of instrument of communication: A corpus-based study Functions of Language 18:1, pp. 57–86 | Article
In this paper, the structural possibilities of well-established ‘verbs of instruments of communication’ (Levin 1993) such as telephone, fax and telegraph are compared with the syntactic possibilities of recent newcomers to the field such as skype and blackberry. The analysis, which is based on… read more
2011 Intersubjective positioning in French and English: A contrastive analysis of ‘ça dépend’ and ‘it depends’ Contrastive Pragmatics, Aijmer, Karin (ed.), pp. 37–72 | Article
Similar to the uses of default discourse markers such as ‘well’, ‘you know’ and ‘I mean’, instances of ‘it depends’ and ‘ça dépend’ can be attested in which the speaker’s intersubjective positioning seems to be the main motivation behind their use (Moissinac and Bamberg 2004). In this paper we… read more
2010 I blackberried him twice and skyped him a happy Father’s day: A propos des (nouveaux) verbes de Communication. Une étude contrastive français – anglais basée sur corpus French Syntax in Contrast, Lahousse, Karen, Béatrice Lamiroy and Kristel Van Goethem (eds.), pp. 285–306 | Article
In this article we zoom in on the Verbs of Instrument of Communication (B. Levin 1993) in English and French and address a number of interesting issues. We examine the structural possibilities of the old and new Verbs of Instrument of Communication in comparison with one another and across the two… read more
2009 Intersubjective positioning in French and English: A contrastive analysis of ‘ça dépend’ and ‘it depends’ Contrastive Pragmatics, Aijmer, Karin (ed.), pp. 37–72 | Article
Similar to the uses of default discourse markers such as ‘well’, ‘you know’ and ‘I mean’, instances of ‘it depends’ and ‘ça dépend’ can be attested in which the speaker’s intersubjective positioning seems to be the main motivation behind their use (Moissinac and Bamberg 2004). In this paper we… read more
2008 Accounting for ditransitive constructions with envy and forgive Functions of Language 15:2, pp. 187–215 | Article
This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the English verbs envy and forgive in the ditransitive argument structure pattern [Sbj V Obj Obj]. Since the ditransitive construction is often associated with a basic ‘transfer of possession’ meaning in existing analyses of its constructional semantics,… read more