Hans Lindquist

On the face of it. How recurrent phrases organize text.

This study concerns the text-organizing functions of the recurrent phrases on the face of it, on its face and in (the) face of. It is argued that the development of the pragmatic meanings is related to grammaticalization theory. It is demonstrated that the two former phrases often occur in constructions where they are followed by a hedge and a refutation (on the face of it … this seems … But…). In (the) face of mainly organizes text through its connection with negative evaluations (e.g. in the face of opposition). The new Time and COCA corpora compiled by Mark Davies are shown to be useful complements to the BNC. These corpora show that on its face is typical of American English, and that the article-less variant in face of is rare, and possibly decreasing in use.

Lexical grammar and progressive pedagogy: What corpus-driven linguistics can do

Recension av: Ute Romer: Progressives, patterns, pedagogy. A corpus-driven approach to English progressive forms, functions and didactics. Amsterdam : Benjamin, 2005. ISBN 90-272-2289-4