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The rise in the productivity of the o'clock construction
Erazímová, Lucie ; Sláma, Jakub (advisor) ; Šaldová, Pavlína (referee)
The BA thesis zeroes in on the [non-numeral] o'clock construction, exemplified by instances such as beer o'clock or stupid o'clock, relying on the framework of Usage-based Construction Grammar. The central aim of the thesis is to reconstruct the semantic and syntactic development of the construction in recent years and to analyse the rise in the productivity. The theoretical part introduces the framework of Usage-based Construction Grammar and the terminology relevant for the analysis, such as type and token frequency, entrenchment, and productivity. The third chapter describes the distinct but related senses of o'clock according to English dictionaries and lays foundation for later attempts to construe a more precise explanation of the nature and the meaning of the [non-numeral] o'clock construction. The analysis of 329 examples, collected from COHA, COCA, BNC, and Twitter, focuses on the type-based, semantic, and grammatical productivity of items in the free slot of the [non- numeral] o'clock construction. Additional focus is given to the external syntax of the construction. The qualitative analysis outlines basic observations about the collective interaction between the semantic and grammatical properties of free-slot types and the external syntax, and further discusses their relevance to the...
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