Expressions of Future in Present-day English: A Corpus-based Approach (Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia)

This is a Ph.D. thesis. This corpus-based study of the use of expressions of future in English has two aims: to examine how certain expressions of future are used in Present-day English, and to explore how electronic corpora can be exploited for linguistic study. The expressions included in the discussion are five auxiliary or semi-auxiliary verb phrases: will, 'll, shall, going to, and gonna. The study examines the patterned ways in which the expressions are used in association with various linguistic and non-linguistic factors. The linguistic factors investigated are co-occurrence with particular words and co-occurrence with items of particular grammatical classes. The non-linguistic factors examined are medium (written vs. spoken), text category, speaker characteristics (age, sex, social class, etc.), region and time. The data for the study are exclusively drawn from computer-readable corpora of Present-day English. Methodological issues related to corpus-based studies in general are discussed in the light of the insights gained from the study.