RT Journal Article
T1 Another turn of the screw on the history of the Reaction Object Construction
A1 Bouso, Tamara
A1 Ruano, Pablo
K1 Reaction Object Construction
K1 Sentimental novel
K1 Diachronic Construction Grammar
K1 Corpus Stylistics
K1 Maxim of extravagance
K1 Direct Discourse Constructions
K1 Productivity
AB This article deals with the Reaction Object Construction (ROC), as in She smiled disbelief, where an intransitive verb (smile), by adding an emotional object (disbelief), acquires the extended sense “express X by V−ing” (i.e. “She expressed disbelief by smiling”). Earlier research has suggested a diachronic connection between the ROC and Direct Discourse Constructions (DDCs) of the type She smiled, “I don’t believe you” (Visser 1963–1973). More recently, Bouso (2018) has shown that the ROC is primarily a feature of 19th century narrative fiction. This paper aims to bring together these insights. On the basis of a self-compiled corpus and De Smet’s Corpus of English Novels, it investigates the productivity of the ROC in 19th and 20th century fiction, and the role of DDCs in its development. The results reveal a peak in the productivity of the ROC that coincides with the development of the sentimental novel, and a correlation between the development of the ROC on the one hand and of those DDCs that have been mistakenly hypothesised to be its single source constructions on the other. Extravagance is proposed as a triggering factor for the use of the ROC in the 19th century as an alternative to DDCs.
PB John Benjamins
SN 1569-9765
YR 2021
FD 2021-04-07
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/33278
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/33278
LA eng
NO Bouso, T.; Ruano San Segundo, P. (2021). Another turn of the screw on the history of the Reaction Object Construction. Functions of Language, Vol. 28, n. 2, pp. 208-231. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.20026.bou
DS Minerva
RD 30 abr 2026