This paper examines the functions of the words ‘a’ and ‘an’ in one specific text, a short story by Roald Dahl. More specifically, it looks at the relationships between the phrases in which ‘a/an’ is found and the unfolding narrative, as well as cases where ‘a/an’ is part of an extra-textual lexical unit. The main aim of the analysis is to give a very complete, text-specific account of ‘a/an’ and to use this analysis as a testing-ground to see whether traditional (including corpus-based) wide-scale grammatical and lexico-grammatical accounts of the use of ‘a/an’ adequately cater for the textual findings. An important feature of the article is that every single instance of the word ‘a/an’ in the short story is subject to analysis.
The functions of 'a' and 'an' in a short story by Roald Dahl
COFFEY, STEPHEN JAMES
2008-01-01
Abstract
This paper examines the functions of the words ‘a’ and ‘an’ in one specific text, a short story by Roald Dahl. More specifically, it looks at the relationships between the phrases in which ‘a/an’ is found and the unfolding narrative, as well as cases where ‘a/an’ is part of an extra-textual lexical unit. The main aim of the analysis is to give a very complete, text-specific account of ‘a/an’ and to use this analysis as a testing-ground to see whether traditional (including corpus-based) wide-scale grammatical and lexico-grammatical accounts of the use of ‘a/an’ adequately cater for the textual findings. An important feature of the article is that every single instance of the word ‘a/an’ in the short story is subject to analysis.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
