Of-Constructions in the Predicate of Demonstrate and Show in Academic Discourse

Of-constructions in the Predicate of demonstrate and show in Academic Discourse Liyin Chen Siaw-Fong Chung National Chengchi University No.64, Sec.2, ZhiNan Rd., Wenshan District, Taipei City 11605, Taiwan National Chengchi University No.64, Sec.2, ZhiNan Rd., Wenshan District, Taipei City 11605, Taiwan 98551505@nccu.edu.tw sfchung@nccu.edu.tw Abstract This study investigates of-constructions in the predicates of two verbs, demonstrate and show, in academic discourse. A construction perspective is taken to examine how the two predicate constructions (‘demonstrate N1 of N2’ and ‘show N1 of N2’) would differ when the information-weighting of N1 and N2 are considered. The noun phrases were compared following Sinclair’s (1991) conception of semantic headedness. He notes the peculiarity of of through the expression of double-headed constructions (i.e., considering both N1 and N2 as the semantic heads). This study adopts this framework and applies it to analyze the of-constructions of the two synonymous verbs. The results show that headedness of the of-constructions can be used to identify the subtle differences between the two synonyms. Demonstrate displays greater information weight predominated by double- headed constructions and tends to be associated with abstract conception. Show follows closely after demonstrate, but further analysis reveals that show tends to provide more ‘relational’ evidence described in terms of partitive uses through nouns like variety, degree, incidence, level, rate and range. 1 Introduction In Sinclair’s (1991) book chapter “The meeting of lexis and grammar”, he provides his insightful analysis on the word of to demonstrate the fusion of lexis and grammar. The word of, being one of the commonest English words, is conventionally conceived as a preposition with a postmodifying function. However, Sinclair underlines the encompassing roles of of. In particular, nominalization structures (e.g., the effectiveness of the telescope; the importance of symoblisation) have drawn much research attention (e.g., Halliday & Martin, 1993; Kreyer, 2003; Quirk et al., 1985). For example, Quirk et al. (1985) investigate the substitutability of genitive constructions (e.g., China’s economy) with of- nominalization (e.g., the economy of China) and the results suggest that several restrictions comply. In a similar vein, Kreyer (2003) investigates corpus data which also allow for a possible alternation between genitive and of- construction (e.g., the chairman of the committee and the committee’s chairman) and shows that processability and degree of human involvement are two crucial factors influencing speakers’ selection of the constructions. Specifically, of- construction is more likely to be selected when the second noun phrase is pre-modified (e.g., the son of the Royal Bucks secretary) and when the semantic relationship between the two noun phrases is more objective, attributive and partitive. In other words, in comparison with genitive constructions, of-constructions are hardly used when it comes to describing possessive, and kinship relations. The word of, along with other prepositions, also plays a role in nominalization structure. Prepositional phrases are conventionally regarded as postmodifiers (e.g., the overall ehthalpy charge for the conversion of graphite to cardon dioxide) to provide additional semantic content in scientific texts (Halliday & Martin, 1993). Halliday and Martin examine scientific texts and show a high …

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