Another turn of the screw on the history of the reaction object construction
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.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.State of the art
- 2.1Characterisation and history of the ROC
- 2.2The function of the ROC
- 3.Data and methodology
- 4.Results and discussion
- 4.1Relation between the ROC and the sentimental novel
- 4.2The role of DDCs in the development of the ROC
- 5.Concluding remarks and future research
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
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Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Bouso, Tamara & Pablo Ruano San Segundo
2024.
The Reaction Object Construction in the Leech and Short’s model: A new strategy of discourse presentation in the nineteenth-century novel.
Studia Neophilologica ► pp. 1 ff.

Bouso, Tamara
2022.
Where Does Lexical Diversity Come From? Horizontal Interaction in the Network of the Late Modern English Reaction Object Construction.
English Studies 103:8
► pp. 1334 ff.

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