The aim of this essay is to investigate the claims made by Robin Lakoff regarding women’s language, where she claims that women use hedges more than men. The aim of this essay is to investigate whether this statement is true. To put it differently, this essay aims to look at gender differences in the use of modal adverbs as hedges. As a method, a frequency analysis has been conducted, where data from the British National Corpus 2014 (BNC2014) has been used. Since hedging involves various linguistic forms, this essay focuses on the modal adverbs presented by Huddleston and Pullum. The results show that women do use more hedges than men. Regardless, there are not any major dissimilarities across genders. Although there were some findings that supported Lakoff’s claims, there were also some that contradicted her claims.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(文学) / 甲第18710号 / 文博第668号 / 新制||文||612(附属図書館) / 31661 / 京都大学大学院文学研究科文献文化学専攻 / (主査)教授 家入 葉子, 教授 佐々木 徹, 准教授 廣田 篤彦 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Letters / Kyoto University / DGAM

Orientador: Sonia Maria Lazzarini Cyrino / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T16:06:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TescariNeto_Aquiles_M.pdf: 1050741 bytes, checksum: ce0a61b21caa2d194b6fc32fc095c6e2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: O estudo da modalização na literatura lingüística tem excluído do grupo dos advérbios modalizadores os que indicam aspecto habitual (como ¿normalmente¿ e ¿geralmente¿, em português; ¿usually¿ e ¿generally¿, em inglês; ¿tongchang¿, em chinês; ¿sinithos¿, em grego; etc.). Esta dissertação propõe, ao assumir a Teoria dos Especificadores Funcionais, uma abordagem formal de sintaxe adverbial (Cinque, 1999, 2004), que advérbios habituais constituem, nas línguas do mundo, um subgrupo de modalizadores de descomprometimento do falante, como os epistêmicos (¿provavelmente¿), os irrealis (¿talvez¿) e os aléticos de possibilidade (¿possivelmente¿), considerados os representantes dos AdvPs modais. AdvPs habituais, a exemplo dos outros AdvPs modalizadores, tornam a proposição indeterminada em relação a seu estatuto factual (definição de modalidade proposta em Narrog (2005)). Com base na agramaticalidade de sentenças envolvendo, no espaço IP, advérbios habituais e advérbios modalizadores tradicionais, propomos que os advérbios de aspecto habitual são modalizadores inerentes, por reagirem à presença dos outros modalizadores. Para tanto, formulamos a Condição (¿tau¿), que bloquearia as sentenças com itens funcionais de mesmo traço em um XP funcional (CP, IP ou DP estendidos). Evidência adicional para o reconhecimento dos advérbios habituais como modalizadores vem do comportamento também modalizador do núcleo de aspecto habitual, em línguas que o expressam morfofonologicamente, como o grego, o coreano e o basco. Nesse sentido, não apenas os adverbiais aspectuais habituais são modalizadores; o aspecto habitual como um todo instanciaria modalização / Abstract: The study of modality available in general Linguistics literature has excluded from the group of modal adverbs those which indicate habitual aspect, such as ¿normalmente¿ and ¿geralmente¿, in Portuguese; ¿usually¿ and ¿generally¿, in English; ¿tongchang¿, in Chinese; ¿sinithos¿ in Modern Greek, etc. By acknowledging the Funtional-Specifiers Theory, a formal approach to adverbial Syntax (Cinque, 1999, 2004), this thesis proposes the idea that habitual aspect adverbs are indeed modal ones, such as the epistemic (¿probably¿), irrealis (¿perhaps¿) and alethic of possibility (¿possibly¿) adverbs, usually considered as the representatives of modal AdvP classes. Habitual adverbs, as the traditional modal adverbs, make the proposition undetermined with respect to its factual status (Narrog (2005)¿s definition of modality). Based on the ungrammaticality of sentences which have habitual adverbs and traditional modal ones in the extended-IP space, we will propose that habitual aspect AdvPs are inherent modals: they cannot co-occur with another modal adverb, as a consequence of ¿_ (tau) Condition¿, which we have formulated to account for the ungrammatical sentences which have more than one functional item (Spec or Head) in the same functional XP domain (extended CP, IP or DP). Additional evidence for the modal status of habitual aspect adverbs comes from the moda behavior of the habitual aspect head in some languages which express morphophonologically the habitual aspect, such as Modern Greek, Korean and Basque. In this sense, Habitual Aspect as a whole, no only habitual aspect adverbs, would express modality in the languages of the world / Mestrado / Linguistica / Mestre em Linguística