The expression /on the one hand…on the other hand/ (OH1 OH2) is a fixed linguistic pattern which is used to emphasize the comparison between two possibly complex propositions (henceforth X and Y). The static syntactic form of the pattern and the specific semantic comparison it evokes are strong indicators that it is a construction of the type discussed in the analytical method Construction Grammar (henceforth CxG). Thus, the aim of this essay is to argue that the pattern OH1X OH2Y is a CxG construction with specific syntactic and semantic constraints, and at the same time to give a descriptive account of the features of the construction. The British National Corpus was used to get examples containing the pattern. The syntactic and semantic features of these examples were analysed and the results were compared with how the traditional descriptive grammarians account for the pattern.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-8124 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Holmberg, Mattias |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Engelska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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