HORNOIU DIANA - A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE INFLECTED AND THE PREPOSITIONAL
GENITIVE IN PRESENT-DAY ENGLISH
(pag. 97-110)
The aim of this study is two-fold. Firstly, it considers the factors that are instrumental in the choice of the inflected and the prepositional genitive in present-day English. Secondly, it aims to identify frequency-related trends regarding the use of the inflected genitive and prepositional genitive in AmE and BrE. The quantitative analysis is based on data collected from the Frown and FLOB corpora. The distribution of tokens according to semantic categories is similar in the two varieties examined. Animate modifier classes are more common with the inflected genitive, while inanimate classes are more common with the prepositional genitive. The article addresses two additional conditioning factors involved in the variation of the inflected and the prepositional genitive: the semantic relationship holding between the head and the modifier and the impact of the impact of the postmodifier.
HORNOIU DIANA - Hedging Opinion in Romanian Conversational Discourse: The Use Of Softeners
(pag. 167-175)
This corpus-based paper addresses the use of softeners in Romanian conversational discourse. It highlights two important interactional functions: (i) as devices for mitigating the imposition of face-threatening acts; (ii) as markers of shared knowledge. When they serve the latter function, softeners offer the addressee the opportunity to provide support, understanding, thus showing that both speaker and addressee are on the same wavelength
HORNOIU DIANA - The Category of Gender in Present-day English : Issues of Grammar and World View
(pag. 43-66)
This paper demonstrates that in Modern English gendered references depend on the context and register of discourse as well as the attitudes of speakers. Two interesting features, largely ignored by prescriptive grammar, can be identified in present-day non-dialectal spoken English. One is related to the influence the sex of the speaker has on the choice of the pronominal substitute. Thus, women are more likely to use masculine forms in a number of contexts where male speakers prefer their feminine counterparts, particularly in domains associated with gender-related behaviour (e.g. cars, tools, etc.). The other interesting feature is the use of the feminine pronoun she to refer to a hardto- identify referent or to an entire situation, a usage shared by male and female speakers alike. This usage has been identified in basically all major varieties of English.