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Select findings for ‘The changing verb phrase in present-day British English’.
1. Modal Verbs: MUST, HAVE TO and HAVE GOT TO
Research questions
- Is there evidence that the core modals in Present-Day English are decreasing?
- If MUST is found to be decreasing can this be related to an increase in "rival" semi-modal forms?
- Is there support for the idea that core modals are becoming monosemous?
Summary
There is a statistically significant decline in the frequency of MUST and a statistically significant rise in the frequency of HAVE TO.
HAVE GOT TO has decreased over the thirty year period (this is not statistically significant).
| (Semi-) modal | LLC frequency | ICE-GB frequency | Change in frequency | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| raw | per 100,000 words | raw | per 100,000 words | % | chi-square score | |
| MUST | 427 | 92.01 | 172 | 40.82 | -55.64 | 36.29 s |
| HAVE GOT TO | 187 | 40.30 | 156 | 37.02 | -8.14 | 3.10 |
| HAVE TO | 188 | 40.51 | 225 | 53.40 | +31.82 | 31.94 s |
| TOTAL | 802 | 172.82 | 553 | 131.24 | -24.06 | 71.32 s |
When viewed as proportions of total MUST, root uses remain constant (around 39%) and epistemic uses show a slight increase; there is no evidence that MUST is becoming monosemous.
| Source corpus | Epistemic | Root | Performative | Ambiguous | Total | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| N | % | N | % | N | % | N | % | N | ||
| LLC | 43.96 | 47.78 | 36.63 | 39.81 | 9.48 | 10.30 | 1.94 | 2.11 | 92.01 | |
| ICE-GB | 21.12 | 51.74 | 16.14 | 39.53 | 2.37 | 5.81 | 1.19 | 2.91 | 40.82 | |
| TOTAL | 65.08 | 48.99 | 52.77 | 39.73 | 11.85 | 8.92 | 3.13 | 2.35 | 132.83 | |
Root
In root contexts, HAVE TO is more frequent than MUST even in the 1960s corpus (LLC). By the 1990s, HAVE TO is more than twice as frequent as MUST, suggesting that HAVE TO is taking over some of the uses of root MUST.
| (Semi-) modal | LLC frequency | ICE-GB frequency | Change in frequency | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| raw | per 100,000 words | raw | per 100,000 words | % | chi-square score | |
| MUST | 174 | 37.49 | 70 | 16.61 | -55.69 | 23.61 s |
| HAVE GOT TO | 184 | 39.65 | 151 | 35.84 | -9.61 | 0.12 |
| HAVE TO | 185 | 39.86 | 208 | 49.36 | +23.83 | 12.32 s |
| TOTAL | 543 | 117 | 429 | 101.81 | -12.98 | 36.05 s |
Epistemic
Epistemic uses of HAVE TO and HAVE GOT TO are rare throughout the thirty year period.
| (Semi-) modal | LLC frequency | ICE-GB frequency | Change in frequency | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| raw | per 100,000 words | raw | per 100,000 words | % | chi-square score | |
| MUST | 206 | 44.39 | 91 | 21.60 | -51.34 | 0.19 |
| HAVE GOT TO | 2 | 0.43 | 4 | 0.95 | +120.93 | 3.36 |
| HAVE TO | 2 | 0.43 | 3 | 0.71 | +65.12 | 1.83 |
| TOTAL | 210 | 45.25 | 98 | 23.26 | -48.60 | 5.03 |
These results were presented at ICEHL 15, Munich, and ISLE 1, Freiburg, in 2008.
2. The Progressive
Research questions
- Is there evidence that the progressive is increasing in present-day spoken English as is said to be the case for written English?
Summary
There is a statistically significant increase in the frequency of use of progressive measured as a proportion of progressivisable verb phrases over the period covered by the LLC (1958-1977) and ICE-GB (1990-92).
| Year | progressive | error | not progressive | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1958 | 42 (2.39%) | ±0.72% | 1,713 | 1,755 |
| 1959 | 41 (5.27%) | ±1.57% | 737 | 778 |
| 1960 | 112 (4.93%) | ±0.89% | 2,159 | 2,271 |
| 1961 | 187 (4.01%) | ±0.56% | 4,471 | 4,658 |
| 1963 | 20 (3.90%) | ±1.68% | 493 | 513 |
| 1964 | 82 (3.63%) | ±0.77% | 2,176 | 2,258 |
| 1965 | 108 (3.93%) | ±0.73% | 2,643 | 2,751 |
| 1966 | 123 (3.76%) | ±0.65% | 3,145 | 3,268 |
| 1967 | 89 (3.83%) | ±0.78% | 2,235 | 2,324 |
| 1969 | 99 (3.19%) | ±0.62% | 3,001 | 3,100 |
| 1970 | 80 (5.03%) | ±1.08% | 1,509 | 1,589 |
| 1971 | 220 (3.83%) | ±0.50% | 5,523 | 5,743 |
| 1972 | 87 (2.85%) | ±0.59% | 2,965 | 3,052 |
| 1973 | 37 (5.21%) | ±1.63% | 673 | 710 |
| 1974 | 279 (3.90%) | ±0.45% | 6,874 | 7,153 |
| 1975 | 561 (4.01%) | ±0.32% | 13,440 | 14,001 |
| 1976 | 196 (3.61%) | ±0.50% | 5,230 | 5,426 |
| 1977 | 36 (3.93%) | ±1.26% | 881 | 917 |
| 1990 | 261 (4.79%) | ±0.57% | 5,193 | 5,454 |
| 1991 | 2,193 (5.59%) | ±0.23% | 37,009 | 39,202 |
| 1992 | 698 (6.21%) | ±0.45% | 10,541 | 11,239 |
This can be viewed more clearly in the graph below.
Figure 1. Charting the rise in spoken progressive use in English using DCPSE.
These results were presented at the symposium on Current Change in the English Verb Phrase at ICLCE3, London, July 2009.
3. The Perfect
Research questions
- Is there evidence of recent change in the overall frequency of the perfect construction in spoken British English?
- Is the same pattern of change seen for the different tense forms of the perfect (present, past, and non-finite)?
Summary
Overall, there is a statistically significant decline in the frequency of the perfect construction from LLC (1960s-1970s) to ICE-GB (1990s).
The different tense forms of the perfect show different patterns of change:
- The present perfect (the most frequent form) shows no significant change in frequency.
- However, the past perfect and infinitive perfect both show statistically significant declines in frequency.
| Tense category | LLC | ICE-GB | Change in frequency | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| raw | pmw | raw | pmw | % | A: χ² (words) | B: χ² (perfect) | |
| present | 3,572 | 8,020.17 | 3,343 | 8,277.17 | +3.20% | 1.72 | 21.71 s |
| past | 835 | 1,874.82 | 484 | 1,198.37 | -36.08% | 62.40 s | 41.74 s |
| infinitive | 652 | 1,463.93 | 413 | 1,022.58 | -30.15% | 32.90 s | 19.71 s |
| -ing participle | 78 | 175.13 | 58 | 143.61 | -18.00% | 1.31 | 0.46 |
| Total | 5,137 | 11,534.05 | 4,298 | 10,641.72 | -7.74% | 15.18 s | |
The table shows two distinct series of chi-square tests. Column A compares the distribution of each term with the total number of words. Column B compares each term relative to the trend of the overall set of perfect auxiliaries. For example, Column A shows that the slight percentage increase of the present perfect is not considered significant compared with the number of words, while Column B shows that it does differ significantly from the overall pattern.
The normalised (pmw) percentage change over time from LLC to ICE-GB subcorpora can be plotted in the form of a bar chart, shown in Figure 2 below. The error bars represent p<0.05 confidence intervals.
Figure 2. Changes in pmw frequencies (Table 1 '%' column) with error bars for p
The Perfect Infinitive
A more detailed investigation was made of the perfect infinitive. A great majority of examples of the perfect infinitive in the corpus (88%) occur following a modal auxiliary, while the remainder occur in contexts following the infinitival marker to. Modal auxiliaries have themselves declined in frequency in our data. This led us to pose a further question.
Research question:
- Can the declining frequency of the perfect infinitive simply be attributed to the declining frequency of the modal auxiliary as a potential context of occurrence?
Summary of findings:
- When potential modal contexts and to-contexts are taken as the baseline, it is shown that the proportions of perfect infinitives fall within both types of context. Therefore the perfect infinitive shows trends of decline that are independent of the decline in modal auxiliaries.
| modal | perfect infinitive | no perfect infinitive | Total | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LLC | 561 (7.37%) | 7,050 | 7,611 | % change = −21.90 (c.i. ±11.20%) |
| ICE-GB | 371 (5.76%) | 6,074 | 6,445 | |
| Total | 932 (6.63%) | 13,124 | 14,056 | 2×2 χ² = 14.69 s |
| to | perfect infinitive | no perfect infinitive | Total | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LLC | 87 (1.33%) | 6,447 | 6,534 | % change = −51.83 (c.i. ±25.86%) |
| ICE-GB | 40 (0.64%) | 6,197 | 6,237 | |
| Total | 127 (0.99%) | 12,644 | 12,771 | 2×2 χ² = 15.44 s |