English Language Teaching; Vol. 9, No. 10; 2016 ISSN 1916-4742 E-ISSN 1916-4750 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education Reflections on the Grammatical Category of before, after and since Introducing Non-finite -ing Clauses: A Corpus Approach Qingshun He1 1 Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China Correspondence: Qingshun He, North 2, Baiyun Avenue, Baiyun District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong 510420, China. Tel: 86-158-0002-9026. E-mail: [email protected] Received: August 11, 2016 Accepted: September 11, 2016 Online Published: September 13, 2016 doi: 10.5539/elt.v9n10p111 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n10p111 Abstract English language learners may be confused in identifying the grammatical category of such conjunctive expressions as before, after and since introducing non-finite -ing clauses. In this article, we will conduct a corpus-based investigation of hypotactic conjunctions and conjunctive prepositions following the principle of unidirectional transfer in grammatical metaphor proposed by He and Yang (2014) within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The research concludes that hypotactic conjunctions tend to transfer to zero conjunctions and before, after and since introducing non-finite -ing clauses should be included into the grammatical category of conjunctive prepositions. Keywords: before, after and since, grammatical category, unidirectional transfer, hypotactic conjunction, conjunctive preposition 1. Introduction Learners of English as a foreign language would have been being confused by the structures of the following four sentences or the grammatical category of the conjunctive expressions introducing -ing elements in (1). (1) a. When leaving your cabin, head for activities in the lounges. (COHA_1992_MAG) b. Before leaving New Zealand, you visit Jackson and Walsh’s home on Karaka Bay. (COHA_2001_MAG) c. After leaving Seattle, the plane had landed in Los Angeles. (COHA_2005_FIC) d. Since leaving the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Arthur had played defense lawyer infrequently. (COHA_2003_FIC) All the sentences contain a non-finite element leaving introduced by a conjunctive expression. However, grammarians (e.g. Quirk et al., 1985; Huddleston & Pullum, 2002) include the conjunctive expression when in (1a) into the grammatical category of hypotactic conjunctions, while before, after and since into prepositions. The only explanation may be that leaving in (1a) is a present participle and those in (1b-c), gerunds. A problem arises from this cause-and-effect reasoning: Does the grammatical category of the -ing expression determine that of the conjunctive expression or vice versa? Generally, in any a grammatical construction it is the head element that determines its satellite elements. For example, the head of a nominal group is the noun and the head of a prepositional phrase is the preposition. In other words, in a prepositional phrase, it is the preposition that determines the grammatical category of the element that follows. A preposition needs a nominal group to function as its complement. A gerund is no longer a verbal group; it belongs to the category of nominal groups. In this sense, a gerund can be used as the complement of both verbs (e.g. I enjoy reading after class) and prepositions (e.g. I am interested in reading after class). According to this analysis, it is the conjunctive expressions that determine the grammatical category of leaving following them in (1b-c). The question is, since the grammatical category of before, after and since determines that of the following element, then why when in (1a) is considered as a conjunction while the other three in (1b-c), prepositions? To answer this question we will conduct a corpus-based study on the grammatical category of before, after and since from the perspective of unidirectional transfer in grammatical metaphor within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics developed by Halliday (1985, 1994) and Halliday and Matthiessen (2004, 2014). For this 111 elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 10; 2016 purpose, we will briefly introduce the principle of unidirectionality in Section 2 and present the research method in Second 3. The diachronic distribution of conjunctive prepositions and that of zero conjunctions will be investigated in Sections 4 and 5 respectively. Section 6 identifies the grammatical category of the conjunctive expressions before, after and since. 2. An Overview of Unidirectionality In their study of subjectification of language, both Traugott (1982, 1989) and Langacker (1990) propose that subjectification is a unidirectional process. “Meaning change is essentially a unidirectional process of subjectification which typically proceeds along the following pathway: propositional (> textual) > expressive” (Traugott, 1982, p. 256). The evolution of any grammatical marks is unidirectional but “not in the reverse direction” (Fanego, 2010, p. 201). Based on this notion, He and Yang (2014) propose the conception of unidirectional transfer in grammatical metaphor. In their thinking, any meaning is originally realized as a congruent language form, and the congruent form can be transferred to various metaphorical forms but a metaphorical form cannot be transferred back to its original congruent form. For example: (2) a. She is satisfied with him because he has arrived on time. b. His arrival on time resulted in her satisfaction. The two clauses She is satisfied with him and he has arrived on time in (2a) are rank-shifted to the two nominal groups his arrival and her satisfaction in (2b), and the conjunctions because is correspondingly transferred to the verbal group result in. In this process, the clause complex in (2a) is transferred to a simple clause in (2b) and so (2b) is the grammatical metaphor of (2a). Double functionality is the criterion of identifying grammatical metaphor (He, 2013; He & Yang, 2014). The three transferred elements in (2b) are all of double functionality: his arrival and her satisfaction function as participants in the simple clause and they each construe a figure at the same time. Similarly, the verbal group resulted in functions as the process in the simple clause and the relator binding the two figures. Although we can say that (2b) can be decoupled to (2a), we cannot say that (2a) is the grammatical metaphor of (2b). This is because none of the elements in (2a) is of double functionality. According to the principle of unidirectionality of transfer in grammatical metaphor and the criterion of double functionality for identifying grammatical metaphor, He et al. (2015) identify five types of textual grammatical metaphor from the perspective of relator, i.e., zero conjunctive adverbial groups, conjunctionalization of conjunctive adverbial groups, prepositionalization of conjunctions, verbalization of conjunctions and nominalization of conjunctive verbal groups. See examples (3) to (5): (3) a. No doubt she would be. However, she isn’t my daughter. (COHA_2006_FIC) b. No doubt she would be. She isn’t my daughter c. No doubt she would be, but she isn’t my daughter (4) a. When I arrived, the church was safe and sound. (COHA_2007_FIC) b. On my arrival, the church was safe and sound. (5) a. Because she didn’t know the rules she died. (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014, p. 673) b. Her ignorance of the rules caused her to die. c. The cause of her death was her ignorance of the rules. The (a) sentences in examples (3) to (5) are congruent realizations, and the (b) and (c) sentences are metaphorical realizations. In (3), The transcaterization from (3a) to (3b) is a unidirectional transfer from conjunctive adverbial group however to zero conjunctive expression, and that from (3a) to (3c), a unidirectional transfer from conjunctive adverbial group to paratactic conjunction. The relator is realized congruently by the hypotactic conjunction when in (4a) and metaphorically by the conjunctive preposition on in (4b). The hypotactic conjunction because in (5a) is verbalized to the verbal group of reason caused in (5b), which is further nominalized to the cause in (5c). Verbalizations and nominalizations are logical metaphor and experiential metaphor respectively in the domain of ideational metafunction and at the same time they function as the relator of the two rank-shifted figures in the domain of textual metafunction. It should be noted that all the five types of textual metaphor abide by the principle of unidirectional transfer in grammatical metaphor. From the diachronic perspective, the frequency of congruent forms is decreasing compared with the relative increase of the frequency of metaphorical forms. In this sense, if before, after and since are prepositions when they introduce non-finite -ing secondary causes, they tend to increase in number compared with the relative decrease of hypotactic conjunctions. 112 elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 10; 2016 3. Methodology 3.1 Corpora In this research we will use the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). We choose this corpus because it not only has a large vocabulary (406 million words) but also is the largest structured corpus of historical English covering a span of time from 1810 to 2009. This allows “for research on a wide range of phenomena that are difficult or impossible to study with the small first-generation historical corpora of English” (Davies, 2014, p. 401). As for the research of the grammatical category of before, after and since, this corpus helps in examining the change of frequency during the 200 years of language evolution. In addition, COHA is available online (http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/) and it provides convenient search tools which are helpful to count up the occurrences of before, after and since and other conjunctive expressions as well. 3.2 Data Collection We write search queries or regular expressions according to the query syntaxes to retrieve constructions consisting of a hypotactic conjunction or a conjunctive preposition and an -ing form directly following a punctuation mark by inputting the following regular expression. RE 1. [y*] [cs*]|[i*] [v?g*] To guarantee the validity and availability of the collected data and for the convenience of analysis, we will only retrieve the occurrences of several typical conjunctive expressions as examples. To achieve data effectiveness, we will further restrict the search queries and only retrieve constructions directly following the punctuation marks comma or period. Using this regular expression, we retrieved 158278 instances from the corpus, including 22114 hypotactic conjunctions and 136164 conjunctive prepositions. See Table 1 and Figure 1: Table 1. Distributions of hypotactic conjunctions and conjunctive prepositions introducing -ing clauses with before, after and since as conjunctive prepositions Crude Frequency Per 100 Million Words Conjunction Preposition Total Conjunction Preposition Total 1810s 107 741 848 9059 62733 71792 1820s 670 6090 6760 9672 87915 97587 1830s 1488 10971 12459 10803 79647 90450 1840s 1628 10037 11665 10144 62542 72686 1850s 1782 10640 12422 10819 64596 75415 1860s 1446 8659 10105 8479 50771 59250 1870s 1359 8400 9759 7321 45253 52574 1880s 1266 7640 8906 6232 37606 43838 1890s 1223 6971 8194 5937 33838 39775 1900s 1117 6786 7903 5055 30709 35764 1910s 1085 6505 7590 4780 28656 33436 1920s 1011 6990 8001 3941 27247 31188 1930s 916 6228 7144 3723 25314 29037 1940s 839 5697 6536 3446 23398 26844 1950s 783 5792 6575 3190 23598 26788 1960s 937 5513 6450 3908 22993 26901 1970s 988 5469 6457 4149 22964 27113 1980s 962 5077 6039 3800 20055 23855 1990s 1219 5893 7112 4363 21090 25453 2000s 1288 6065 7353 4356 20512 24868 Total 22114 136164 158278 123177 791437 914614 113 elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 10; 2016 Figure 1. Distributions of hypotactic conjunctions and conjunctive prepositions introducing -ing clauses with before, after and since as conjunctive prepositions (standard frequency) Table 1 and Figure 1 show that the diachronic distributions of both hypotactic conjunctions and conjunctive prepositions introducing non-finite -ing clauses are decreasing at nearly the same speed (p = 0.000; R = 0.948). This trend is not in agreement with the principle of unidirectional transfer in grammatical metaphor since conjunctive prepositions are textual metaphor of hypotactic conjunctions. 4. Distribution Trend of Conjunctive Prepositions Following the principle of unidirectional transfer in grammatical metaphor, conjunctive prepositions should be increasing compared with the relative decrease of hypotactic conjunctions. The reason for the disagreement to the hypothesized distribution pattern may be that before, after and since can be used as either conjunctions or prepositions. According to Quirk et al. (1985), when introducing finite clauses, before, after and since are all hypotactic conjunctions, but when introducing non-finite -ing clauses, they are prepositions. The corpus also tagged these words introducing non-finite -ing clauses as prepositions. For example, using regular expression [y*] [cs*] [v?g*] we can retrieve sentences in (6), and using regular expression [y*] [i*] [v?g*] we can retrieve sentences in (7) and (8): (6) a. If using gas grill, heat one side to high, the other to low. (COHA_2007_MAG) b. When looking across the data, several interesting points emerged. (COHA_2004_NF) c. I lost weight and became my usual skinny self, although wearing black turtleneck sweaters and white lipstick. (COHA_2000_FIC) (7) a. After reading this article, I know that I am not alone in this fight. (COHA_2006_NEWS) b. Before leaving, he sized himself up in his bedroom mirror. (COHA_2007_FIC) c. Since arriving in the heat of the Keys, he had followed that regimen. (COHA_2000_FIC) (8) a. In doing so, he encountered the inner darkness. (COHA_2002_FIC) b. Without saying another word, he got up and left with my story in his hands. (COHA_2008_FIC) c. Upon reaching the saddle of Dormer Pass, we dismount and let the horses graze. (COHA_2003_MAG) All the conjunctive expressions in (6) can only be used as hypotactic conjunctions, and all those in (8) can only be used as prepositions. Those conjunctive expressions in (7), however, can be used as either hypotactic conjunctions or prepositions. This is because all the non-finite clauses in (6) and (7) have their finite equivalents, but those in (8) do not have. Seen from this perspective, there is not structural difference between those non-finite clauses in (6) and (7), and the non-finite -ing elements following before, after and since in (7) could be considered as present participles. On the other hand, all the conjunctive expressions in (7) and (8) can introduce a nominal group as their complement, forming a prepositional phrase. Seen from this perspective, before, after and since in (7) could be considered as prepositions, and the non-finite -ing elements following them are gerunds. For example, besides those in (7), we can have sentences in (9): (9) a. After lunch, the class has to find their own worms in the mud outside (COHA_2006_FIC) b. Before the war, he had been professor of orthopedic surgery at St. Louise’s Hospital in Munich. (COHA_2000_FIC) 114 elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 10; 2016 c. Since the accident, nostalgic people give me the jitters. (COHA_2000_FIC) According to this explanation, we can hypothesize that the reason why conjunctive prepositions are not increasing with the relative decrease of hypotactic conjunctions is that the three words before, after and since are coded as prepositions and their relative decrease in frequency has exerted influence on the relative decreasing speed of hypotactic conjunctions. In other words, if we categorize the three conjunctive expressions into hypotactic conjunctions, the decreasing trend of hypotactic conjunctions will speeding up compared with the relative increase of conjunctive prepositions. See Table 2 and Figure 2: Table 2. Distributions of hypotactic conjunctions and conjunctive prepositions introducing -ing clauses with before, after and since as hypotactic conjunctions Crude Frequency Per 100 Million Words Conjunction Preposition Total Conjunction Preposition Total 1810s 169 679 848 14308 57484 71792 1820s 1549 5211 6760 22361 75226 97587 1830s 3338 9121 12459 24234 66216 90450 1840s 3445 8220 11665 21466 51220 72686 1850s 3829 8593 12422 23246 52169 75415 1860s 3204 6901 10105 18787 40463 59250 1870s 3345 6414 9759 18020 34554 52574 1880s 2981 5925 8906 14674 29164 43838 1890s 2865 5329 8194 13908 25867 39775 1900s 2762 5141 7903 12499 23265 35764 1910s 2662 4928 7590 11727 21709 33436 1920s 2699 5302 8001 10521 20667 31188 1930s 2357 4787 7144 9580 19457 29037 1940s 2158 4378 6536 8863 17981 26844 1950s 2146 4429 6575 8743 18045 26788 1960s 2296 4154 6450 9576 17325 26901 1970s 2456 4001 6457 10313 16800 27113 1980s 2361 3678 6039 9326 14529 23855 1990s 2901 4211 7112 10383 15070 25453 2000s 3297 4056 7353 11151 13717 24868 Total 52820 105458 158278 283686 630928 914614 Figure 2. Distributions of hypotactic conjunctions and conjunctive prepositions introducing -ing clauses with before, after and since as hypotactic conjunctions (standard frequency) 115 elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 10; 2016 Table 2 and Figure 2 show that after including before, after and since into the category of hypotactic conjunctions there appears only slight difference between the distribution trends of the two types of conjunctive expressions. Instead of decreasing faster, the decrease of hypotactic conjunctions is a bit slower than that shown in Figure 1. This is opposite to our hypothesis that the frequency of hypotactic conjunctions is decreasing compared with the relative increase of conjunctive prepositions. We have two possible reasons for this result. One is that hypotactic conjunctions introducing non-finite -ing clauses have the potential to transfer to zero conjunctive expressions and conjunctive prepositions as well. The other is that conjunctive prepositions are not at all textual metaphor of hypotactic conjunctions. These two hypotheses will be investigated and discussed in sections 5 and 6 respectively. 5. Distribution Trend of Zero Conjunctions As for the zero conjunctions, we will only retrieve the -ing clauses directly following a period. To compare, we will retrieve constructions consisting of a hypotactic conjunction and an -ing element directly following a period as hypotactic conjunctions. For the validity of data and convenience of analysis, we still include before, after and since into the category of hypotactic conjunctions. We retrieved from COHA 165052 non-finite -ing clauses, including 18279 introduced by hypotactic conjunctions and 146773, by zero conjunctive expressions. See Table 3 and Figure 3: Table 3. Distributions of hypotactic conjunctions and zero conjunctions introducing -ing clauses Crude Frequency Per 100 Million Words Conjunction Zero Total Conjunction Zero Total 1810s 30 178 208 2540 15069 17609 1820s 414 1247 1661 5976 18002 23978 1830s 731 3515 4246 5307 25518 30825 1840s 828 4502 5330 5160 28053 33213 1850s 945 4948 5893 5737 30039 35776 1860s 764 4995 5759 4480 29288 33768 1870s 953 6884 7837 5134 37086 42220 1880s 824 5932 6756 4056 29199 33255 1890s 845 5612 6457 4102 27242 31344 1900s 905 6191 7096 4096 28017 32113 1910s 895 6786 7681 3943 29893 33836 1920s 993 8960 9953 3871 34927 38798 1930s 912 9209 10121 3707 37431 41138 1940s 859 8592 9451 3528 35288 38816 1950s 891 9192 10083 3630 37450 41080 1960s 1032 9900 10932 4304 41289 45593 1970s 1150 10267 11417 4829 43111 47940 1980s 1126 11016 12142 4448 43514 47962 1990s 1464 12630 14094 5240 45202 50442 2000s 1718 16217 17935 5810 54848 60658 Total 18279 146773 165052 89898 670466 760364 116 elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 10; 2016 Figure 3. Distributions of hypotactic conjunctions and zero conjunctions introducing -ing clauses (standard frequency) It can be seen from Table 3 and Figure 3 that hypotactic conjunctions do not show an obvious trend of increase or decrease, and zero conjunctive expressions show a trend of gradual increase and begin to exceed hypotactic conjunctions since 1910s. This means compared with the fluctuating distribution of hypotactic conjunctions, zero conjunctive expressions show a general trend of increase. 6. Grammatical Category of before, after and since According to the above corpus-based investigation, hypotactic conjunctions have two potentials of transfer. One is to transfer to conjunctive prepositions and the other, to zero conjunctive expressions. The result shows that although the diachronic distribution of hypotactic conjunctions is not negatively correlated to that of zero conjunctive expressions, the latter is obviously increasing compared with the relative decrease of the former. Conjunctive prepositions, however, shows a nearly opposite trend. That is to say, hypotactic conjunctions will not transfer to conjunctive prepositions. Since conjunctive prepositions are not directly transferred to from hypotactic conjunctions, what grammatical category should the conjunctive expressions before, after and since included into? In this section, we will analyze this trend of distribution and further identify the grammatical category of before, after and since. We can propose the following two opposite hypotheses. One is that if before, after and since are considered as conjunctive prepositions, according to the above analysis on Figures 1 and 2, conjunctive prepositions should be decreasing compared with hypotactic conjunctions. The other is that if before, after and since are considered as hypotactic conjunctions, according to the analysis on Figure 3, the hypotactic conjunctions when, although and if tend to be transferred to zero conjunctive expressions, with the meaning of relator not being changed, but before, after and since have no corresponding zero equivalents because without these conjunctive expressions the meaning of relator will disappear. For example: (10) a. When speaking of oneself, the only language available is the language of the present self. (COHA_2007_NF) b. If gagging causes her to regurgitate food, the doctor should also check for reflux. (COHA_2009_MAG) c. Although citing health dangers, the panel said that risks were not significant enough to keep the implants off the market. (COHA_2003_MAG) (11) a. After studying it, he threw it down and shook his head. (COHA_2000_FIC) b. Since arriving at Atherton University, her dreams had become increasingly bizarre. (COHA_2004_FIC) c. Before going to the opera in the evening, visitors can swim or sail. (COHA_2000_MAG) In the example sentences in (10), the hypotactic conjunctions can all be transferred to zero conjunctive expressions, with the logico-semantic relations still being there. In (11), however, the logico-semantic relations will disappear if the conjunctive expressions are omitted. Relator is out of rank scale (Yang, 2007), and the conjunctions realizing relator are not the constituents of clauses. Conjunctive prepositions realizing relator also function as minor processes in prepositional phrases. In a prepositional phrase the preposition is the Head. In this sense, a conjunctive preposition realizing relator cannot be omitted. None of the conjunctive expressions in (11) can be omitted, and thereby they should be included in the category of conjunctive prepositions. 117 elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 10; 2016 To testify this reasoning, we will compare the diachronic distribution of before, after and since and that of the three typical hypotactic conjunctions, when, although and if introducing non-finite -ing clauses. For the validity of data, we will only retrieve constructions consisting of one of these six words and an -ing element directly following a period. Using relevant regular expressions, we retrieved 15193 non-finite -ing clauses introduced by these six conjunctive expressions, including 1673 introduced by when, although and if and 13520, by before, after and since. See Table 4 and Figure 4: Table 4. Distributions of conjunctive expressions although, if, when and before, after and since introducing -ing clauses Crude Frequency Per 100 Million Words Conjunction Preposition Total Conjunction Preposition Total 1810s 2 23 25 169 1947 2116 1820s 16 340 356 231 4908 5139 1830s 32 586 618 232 4254 4486 1840s 44 661 705 274 4119 4393 1850s 62 731 793 376 4438 4814 1860s 44 579 623 258 3395 3653 1870s 59 718 777 318 3868 4186 1880s 51 619 670 251 3047 3298 1890s 43 634 677 209 3078 3287 1900s 77 673 750 348 3046 3394 1910s 72 669 741 317 2947 3264 1920s 89 729 818 347 2842 3189 1930s 99 670 769 402 2723 3125 1940s 71 626 697 292 2571 2863 1950s 86 647 733 350 2636 2986 1960s 107 731 838 446 3049 3495 1970s 107 830 937 449 3485 3934 1980s 116 825 941 458 3259 3717 1990s 232 1014 1246 830 3629 4459 2000s 264 1215 1479 893 4109 5002 Total 1673 13520 15193 7450 67350 74800 Figure 4. Distributions of conjunctive expressions although, if, when and before, after, since introducing -ing clauses (standard frequency) It can be seen from Table 4 that the proportion of when, although and if to that of before, after and since is 11:89, 118 elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 10; 2016 which is obviously skew. This means that compared with conjunctive prepositions before, after and since, hypotactic conjunctions when, although and if do not tend to introduce non-finite -ing clauses. Figure 4 shows that after being converted into standard frequencies of per 100 million words, the diachronic distribution of when, although and if experiences a trend of change from slow increase to rapid increase and this increase abides by the Piotrowski law (R = 0.671), while that of before, after and since is basically leveling off, showing no obvious increase or decrease. Relative to when, although and if, before, after and since keep a trend of decrease. Bivariate correlation test shows that the distributions of the two groups of conjunctive expressions are not significantly correlated at either 0.05 or 0.01 level (p = 0.397 > 0.05), indicating that the increase of when, although and if is not compensated by the decrease of before, after and since. This effectively verifies our first hypothesis, i.e., before, after and since should still be included into the category of conjunctive prepositions. 7. Conclusion In this article, we investigated the diachronic distributions of hypotactic conjunctions and conjunctive prepositions from the perspective of unidirectional transfer in grammatical metaphor within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. The corpus-based research shows that hypotactic conjunctions do not tend to transfer to conjunctive prepositions. There are two reasons. One is that hypotactic conjunctions tend to transfer to zero conjunctions. 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