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In:Cross-linguistic Register Variation
Edited by Sylvi Rørvik and Marlén Izquierdo
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 125] 2026
► pp. 191–213

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Chapter 8
‘Hemming and hawing their way through’

An English-Spanish cross-linguistic study on register variation of the way-construction

ORCiD logo with link | University of León
Published online: 20 February 2026
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.125.08lab
Abstract
This cross-linguistic paper aims to study register variation in the use of the way-construction, and of its lexical components, i.e., the verbs preceding and the particles following the noun phrase formed by a possessive determiner plus the noun way. It also provides an analysis of the Spanish translations and some pedagogical implications to enhance the learners’ processing of this semantic schema and elicit its use. The data have been extracted from two English-Spanish parallel corpora: the P-ACTRES 2.0 subcorpora (fiction, non-fiction, newspapers and magazines) and the Ted Talks subcorpus of PaEnS. The diversity of the study, including data from two languages and different registers and corpora, has allowed for the identification of variation in the usage of the way-construction.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Results and discussion
    • 3.1Cross-register variation of the way-construction
    • 3.2Spanish translations of the way-construction
    • 3.3Pedagogical implications and suggestions
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendix
References (27)
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