Modal Versus Lexical Verbs in English (A Case Study) Bachelor’S Diploma Thesis

Home , English auxiliary verbs, English verbs, Lexical verb

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Jana Kadavá

Modal versus lexical verbs in English (A case study) Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, CSc.

2018

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..

Author’s signature

I would like to thank my supervisor doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, CSc. for her immeasurable patience and all the help and advice she gave me.

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 7

2. CLASSIFICATION OF VERBS ...... 9

2.1. Lexical verbs ...... 10

2.2. Auxiliary verbs ...... 11

2.2.1. Non-modal auxiliary verbs ...... 12

2.2.2. Modal auxiliary verbs ...... 13

3. THE VERB DARE ...... 18

3.1. Dictionary definitions of the verb dare ...... 18

3.2. Survey of literature ...... 19

4. CORPUS ANALYSIS ...... 23

4.1. British National Corpus ...... 23

4.1.1. Frequency of occurrence in BNC ...... 26

4.1.2. Text type distribution in BNC ...... 27

4.1.3. The use of dare in BNC ...... 28

4.2. Corpus of Contemporary American English ...... 38

4.2.1. Frequency of occurrence in COCA ...... 40

4.2.2. Text type distribution in COCA ...... 41

4.2.3. The use of dare in COCA ...... 43

5. COMPARISON OF THE USE OF DARE IN BNC AND COCA ...... 52

5.1. Frequency of occurrence ...... 52

5.2. Text type distribution ...... 53

5.3. The use of dare ...... 54

6. CONCLUSION ...... 58

7. REFERENCES ...... 62

8. RESUMÉ ...... 64

List of tables

Table 1: Frequency of particular patterns of dare in BNC ...... 26

Table 2: Text type distribution of dare in BNC ...... 28

Table 3: Frequency of particular patterns in COCA ...... 41

Table 4: Text type distribution of dare in COCA ...... 42

Table 5: Comparison of the frequency of occurrence in BNC and COCA ...... 52

Table 6: Text type distribution in BNC (normalized frequencies) ...... 53

Table 7: Text type distribution in COCA (normalized frequencies) ...... 54

1. INTRODUCTION

The main focus of this bachelor thesis will be the verb dare. The verb dare is a special kind of verb in English language because it can function either as a lexical verb or as a modal verb. In its lexical form dare is followed by the to-infinitive and modal form is followed by bare infinitive, i.e. without the infinitive marker to. Moreover, it is able to make blend construction that mixtures properties of both forms. While there are set rules about the behaviour of the verb in lexical form, modal form and in blend there is limited information in what kind of contexts and in what kind of meaning which form is used. There are several researches concerning the verb dare. For example, Quirk &

Duckworth examined the possible negative forms of dare in their essay Co-existing negative preterite forms of dare. Then Taeymans in her essay An investigation into the marginal modals dare and need in British present-day English created frequency analysis to see how the verb and its forms are established in British English. In 2011

Veselovská in her research Classification of the Verb "dare" in Modern English analyses the behaviour of the forms of dare and classifies the verb based on her results.

Only research by Duffley from 1994 Need and dare: The black sheep of the modal family deals with the semantics of the verb and in what type of contexts the individual forms occur. Results given by Duffley will be the main source for the analysis in this bachelor thesis. The thesis will attempt to bring together the theories and given information and apply them in the corpus analysis for verification.

The thesis is divided into two parts. At first, the thesis will provide theoretical background about the classification of verbs. It will be focused on the theory about lexical verbs and their characteristics. Then the thesis will deal with auxiliary verbs and their dividing into non-modal auxiliary verbs and modal auxiliary verbs (shortly

7 modals). The characteristics and meaning of individual modals will be briefly discussed.

The main sources for the theoretical part of the thesis are A comprehensive grammar of the English Language by Quirk et al., Huddleston & Pullum’s The Cambridge grammar of the English language, A communicative grammar of English by Leech & Svartvik and Alexander’s Longman English grammar. Afterwards, the thesis will deal only with the verb dare that is characterised as marginal modal auxiliary. In this part, the theories of the behaviour of dare will be provided together with the results of Duffley’s research on which the corpus analysis is based.

The second part of the bachelor thesis is the corpus analysis. The thesis will consult monolingual corpora British National Corpus (BNC) and Corpus of

Contemporary American English (COCA). Sample sentences will be taken from both corpora to analyse in which situations people tend to use the verb as a lexical, modal verb or the blend and then compare the use of the verb dare in British English and in

American English. The bachelor thesis will also determine which form of the verb is more frequent in both corpora and analyse the text type distribution of the verb dare in both varieties of English. The frequency of occurrence and text type distribution will also be compared in BNC and COCA.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to put together the given information about the verb dare and verify them by applying them on sample sentences taken from BNC and

COCA. Moreover, the frequency of occurrence and text type distribution of the verb dare will also be analysed. The second aim of the thesis is to compare the frequency of occurrence, text type distribution and mainly the usage of the individual forms of dare in British and American English.

2. CLASSIFICATION OF VERBS

For understanding what a verb means, it is important to know its definition.

Curme (1947) states definition of the verb as follows: “The verb is that part of speech by means of which we make an assertion or ask a question” (p. 22). He further explains that there are three classes of verbs – transitive, intransitive and linking (p. 22). Later,

Alexander (1988) provided this definition of the verb: “A verb is a word (run) or a phrase (run out of) which expresses the existence of state (love, seem) or the doing of an action (take, play)” (p. 159). Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) explain that “verb is used in two senses:

1 The verb is one of the elements in clause structure, like the subject and the object.

2 A verb is a member of a word class, like a noun and an adjective” (p. 24).

Greenbaum (1996) also states that “verbs (or main verbs or lexical verbs or full verbs) function as the head of a verb phrase, either alone or preceded by one or more auxiliaries” (p. 117).

Since there are great numbers of verbs in English language with different functions Quirk et al. (1985) divide verbs into “three major categories according to their function within the verb phrase” (p. 96). They differentiate “open class of full verbs (or lexical verbs) such as leave from the closed classes of primary verbs (be, have and do) and of modal auxiliary verbs (will, might, etc.)” (p.96). Quirk et al. further explain that

“of these three classes, the full verbs can act only as main verbs, the modal auxiliaries can act only as auxiliary verbs, and primary verbs can act either as main verbs or as auxiliary verbs” (p. 96). Huddleston & Pullum (2002) class primary verbs as “non- modal auxiliary verbs” (p. 92). According to Leech (1971), modal auxiliary verbs can also be called “modal auxiliaries” or “modals” for short (p. 66).

The next sections of this chapter will be dealing with a theory about lexical (full) verbs, primary verbs (or non-modal auxiliary verbs) and modal auxiliary verbs (shortly modal verbs or modals) separately.

2.1. Lexical verbs

This section will provide general information about lexical (also main or full) verbs. According to Leech & Svartvik (1994), full verbs can be “regular (such as call, like, try) or irregular (such as buy, drink, set)” (p. 300). Leech & Svartvik (1994) further explain: “regular means that we can state all the verb forms of an English verb once we know its base form. The base is the basic, uninflected form which is given as the entry form in dictionaries” (p. 300). Leech & Svartvik (1994) say that “the vast majority of

English verbs are regular. Furthermore, all new verbs that are coined or borrowed from other languages adopt this pattern” (p. 300).

About the irregular verbs Leech & Svartvik (1994) state:

There are over 200 main verbs that are irregular. Irregular verbs are like regular

verbs in having -s and -ing forms. With regular verbs we can predict that the past

tense and past participle forms are identical and formed with the -ed ending added

to the base. With irregular verbs, however, we cannot predict their past tense or

past participle from the base. (p. 287)

Greenbaum (1996) states that “verbs have five form-types. In all regular verbs and in many irregular verbs, two of the form-types have the same form. In some regular verbs (e.g. put) three form-types have the same form. The form-types are: base, -s, -ing participle, past and -ed participle” (p. 117). According to Quirk et al. (1985), however, in the case of the regular verbs past and -ed forms are the same (p. 98). Greenbaum

(1996) adds that “the highly irregular be has eight forms” (p. 117). The verb be, however, belongs to the category of non-modal auxiliary verbs.

2.2. Auxiliary verbs

According to Huddleston & Pullum (2002), “a general definition of auxiliary verb is that it denotes a closed class of verbs that are characteristically used as markers of tense, aspect, mood, and voice” (p. 102).

Swan (2005) further explains: “In English sentences, a lot of important meanings are expressed by the verb phrase – for example, questioning, negation, time […]. But many English verbs do not have many different forms […]. So to express all these meanings, auxiliary (or helping) verbs are added to other verbs” (p. 76). Moreover,

Alexander (1988) clarifies that “auxiliary verbs are used with full verbs to give other information about actions and states” (p. 159).

Leech & Svartvik (1994) state “that auxiliary verbs are “helping verbs”.

Auxiliaries do not make up a verb phrase on their own but help to make up a verb phrase in combination with a main verb (such as work): I’m working all day today.” (p.

240). Leech & Svartvik (1994) provide more examples of behaviour of auxiliary verbs:

An auxiliary verb can also occur without a main verb, but only where the main

verb is omitted because it is supplied by the earlier context: I can speak French as

well as she can. In English, auxiliary verbs are required in certain constructions,

especially questions and negative clauses: Do you want a cup of coffee? No, I

don’t think so, thank you. Auxiliary verbs differ from main verbs in that they can

be placed before not: I’m not working today (but: I don’t work every day). Unlike

main verbs, auxiliary verbs can be placed before the subject in questions: Can I

help you? (but: Do you want me to help you?) (p. 240).

Leech & Svartvik (1994) also add that “most auxiliary verbs have contracted negative forms, isn’t, can’t etc.” (p. 241).

Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) say that “auxiliaries have one important syntactic function in common: they become the operator when they occur as the first verb of a finite verb phrase” (p. 34). Greenbaum (1996) also adds that “all the auxiliaries are used as operators for negation, interrogation, emphasis, and abbreviation” (p. 154).

According to Huddleston & Pullum (2002) auxiliaries are divided into modal and non-modal auxiliary verbs (p. 92).

2.2.1. Non-modal auxiliary verbs

Non-modal auxiliary verbs can also be called primary verbs. The verbs be, have and do belong into this category. Quirk et al. (1985) explain that “of the three primary verbs, do is only a semantically empty syntactic component in sentence processes such as negation and interrogation, whereas be contributes to aspect and voice, and have contributes to aspect” (p. 120). Huddleston & Pullum (2002) also classify use as a non- modal auxiliary verb (p. 92).

On the function of primary verbs as operators Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) say that

“the main verb be and the main verb have are also operators when they are the only verb in the verb phrase. On the other hand, only the auxiliary do is an operator, not the main verb do” (p. 34).

On the distinction between primary verbs and modals Quirk et al. (1985) state:

Semantically, the primary verbs as auxiliaries share an association with the basic

grammatical verb categories of tense, aspect and voice. In this they are broadly

distinguished from the modal verbs, which are associated mainly with the

expression of modal meanings such as possibility, obligation and volition. (p. 129)

According to Greenbaum & Quirk (1990), “the verb be is a main verb but also has two auxiliary functions: as an aspect auxiliary for the progressive and as a passive auxiliary. Be is unique in having full set of both finite and nonfinite forms in auxiliary function; it is also unique among English verbs in having as many as eight different forms” (p. 36).

Have

Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) state that “have functions both as an auxiliary and as a main verb. As an auxiliary for perfect aspect, have combines with an -ed participle to form complex verb phrases. As a main verb, it normally takes a direct object. The -ed participle is not used as an auxiliary” (p. 37).

According to Greenbaum & Quirk (1990), “do like be and have can be both an auxiliary and a main verb. As an auxiliary, do has no nonfinite forms, but only present and past forms” (p. 38).

2.2.2. Modal auxiliary verbs

Swan (2005) state about the behaviour of modal auxiliary verbs that “they are used with other verbs to add various meanings, mostly to do with certainty and obligation” (p. 77). According to Alexander (1988), “modals have two major functions which can be defined as primary and secondary” (p. 207). He further explains the two functions:

a) primary function – in their primary function, modal verbs closely reflect the

meanings often given first in most dictionaries.

b) secondary function – in their secondary function, nine of the modal auxiliaries

(not shall) can be used to express the degree of certainty/uncertainty a speaker feels

about a possibility. (p. 207-208)

Moreover, Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) distinguish two kinds of meaning for modals:

a) intrinsic modality (which includes “permission”, “obligation”, and “volition”)

involves some intrinsic human control over events;

b) extrinsic modality (which includes “possibility”, “necessity”, and “prediction”)

involves human judgement of what is or is not likely to happen. (p. 60)

They further state that “each of the modals has both intrinsic and extrinsic uses. In some instances there is an overlap of the two uses” (p. 60).

Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) also give several characteristics distinctive for modal auxiliary verbs:

a) They are followed by the bare infinitive (ie the base form of the verb alone

without a preceding to.

b) They cannot occur in nonfinite functions, ie as infinitives or participles: may ~ *to

may, *maying, *mayed. In consequence they can occur only as the first verb in the

verb phrase.

c) They have no -s forms for the 3rd person singular of the present tense.

d) Their past forms can be used to refer to present and future time (often with a

tentative meaning). (p. 35-36)

Furthermore, Leech & Svartvik (1994) add that modals also do not have “-ed participles” (p. 243). They further state that “can, may, shall, will have the special past forms could, might, should, would. The other modal auxiliaries (must, dare, need, ought to, used to) do not have such forms” (p. 243).

According to Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) modal auxiliary verbs can also be divided into “central modal auxiliaries, marginal modal auxiliaries, modal idioms and semi-auxiliaries” (p. 39-40).

Central modal auxiliaries

Central modal auxiliaries are the verbs can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would and must.

According to Greenbaum & Quirk (1990), the verbs can/could express

“possibility, ability or permission” (p. 60). They state that in the sense of permission

“can/could is less formal than may, which has been favoured by prescriptive tradition”

(p. 61). Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) say that may/might express “possibility and permission” (p. 61).

About the modal auxiliary verb shall Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) state that “shall is in present-day English a rather rare auxiliary and only two uses, both with a 1st person subject, are generally current: prediction […] and volition” (p. 64-65).

According to Greenbaum & Quirk (1990), the verb should has the meanings of

“tentative inference and obligation” (p. 63). Tentative inference means that “the speaker does not know if his statement is true, but tentatively concludes that it is true”

(Greenbaum & Quirk, 1990, p. 63). Leech (1971) explains that “should can be used as an alternative to ought to in both senses” (p. 95).

Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) explain that the verbs will/would have two meanings:

“prediction and volition” (p. 64). Furthermore, they state that volition can have three other meanings: “intention, willingness and insistence (p. 64).

The last of the central modal auxiliaries it the verb must. According to

Greenbaum & Quirk (1990), must has two meanings: “(logical) necessity and obligation or compulsion” (p. 61-62). Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) state that must is also sometimes substituted by have to: “since must has no past tense form and no nonfinite forms, have to is used in many contexts where must is impossible” (p. 62).

Marginal modal auxiliaries

This category is consisted of the verbs used to, ought to, need and dare. Since the verb dare is the main focus of this thesis, it will be discussed in separate chapter afterwards.

According to Quirk et al. (1985), “used to denotes a habit or a state that existed in the past, and is therefore semantically not so much a modal auxiliary as an auxiliary of tense and aspect. In formal terms, however, it fits the marginal modal category” (p.

140). They further show that “it always takes the to-infinitive and only occurs in the past tense […]. Used to occurs both as an operator and with do-support” (p. 140).

Quirk et al. (1985) state that “ought to has contracted negative form oughtn’t to”

(p. 139). They also mention that “it normally has the to-infinitive (although occasionally in familiar style the bare infinitive occurs in non-assertive contexts)” (p. 139). As was stated earlier, ought to has the same meaning as the central modal auxiliary should.

According to Leech (1971), “need as an auxiliary verb may be considered the negative and interrogative counterpart of must in both sense of compulsion and that of

16 logical necessity” (p. 85). However, Greenbaum & Quirk state that “it is possible […] to replace auxiliary need by need to or have to accompanied by do-support” (p. 62).

Modal idioms and semi-auxiliaries

Greenbaum & Quirk (1990) state that these two categories are “intermediate between auxiliaries and main verbs. They express modal or aspectual meaning” (p. 41).

They further explain these two categories:

a) The modal idioms are a combination of auxiliary and infinitive or adverb. None of

them have nonfinite forms and they are therefore always the first verb in the verb

phrase. The most common modal idioms are had better, would rather, have got to,

and be to. (p. 41)

b) The semi-auxiliaries are a set of verb idioms which are introduced by one of the

primary verbs have and be. They have nonfinite forms and can therefore occur in

combination with preceding auxiliaries. Indeed, two or more semi-auxiliaries can

occur in sequence. Common semi-auxiliaries include for example be able to, be due

to, be going to, have to, etc. (p. 41)

3. THE VERB DARE

3.1. Dictionary definitions of the verb dare

To effectively analyse dare it is essential to understand the verb and its meaning.

The definitions of the verb dare and general information about its usage were found in the online dictionaries Oxford English Dictionary for British English and Merriam-

Webster Dictionary for American English.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) classifies the verb dare as intransitive and as transitive. As an intransitive verb it has two meanings. The first is “to have boldness or courage (to do something); to be bold” and it is followed by infinitive without to or the infinitive is not expressed or, also, with to-infinitive. The second meaning

(elliptical) is “to dare to go, to venture”. The transitive verb has three additional meanings and that is “to dare to undertake or do; to venture upon, have courage for, face”, second use of dare is in the sense of “to dare or venture to meet or expose oneself to, to run the risk of meeting; to meet defiantly, defy (a thing). The last meaning is “to challenge or defy (a person)” and “to dare a person to do something”. Additionally,

OED mentions the phrase dare say which has two meanings: “to be bold as to say

(because one is prepared to affirm it); to venture to assert or affirm” or the sense of “to venture to say (because one thinks it likely), to assume as probable”. OED does not mention modal function of the verb.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary also classifies the verb dare as intransitive and as transitive. For intransitive meaning it says: “to have sufficient courage”. And as a transitive verb it has two meanings. The first is “to challenge to perform an action especially as a proof of courage” or additionally “to confront boldly”. The second is the meaning of “to have the courage to contend against, venture, or try”. In addition,

Merriam-Webster Dictionary refers to the usage of dare as an auxiliary verb with the meaning “to be sufficiently courageous to”.

3.2. Survey of literature

As was mentioned earlier the verb dare belongs into the category of marginal modal auxiliaries (together with verbs need, used to and ought to). That means that dare can behave either as a full verb with to-infinitive and with inflected forms or as a modal verb with bare infinitive and without inflected forms. However, Greenbaum & Quirk

(1990) point out that “blends of the two constructions (modal auxiliary and main verb) are widely acceptable for dare: They do not dare ask for me. Do they dare ask for more?” (p. 40). This means that even the modal form of dare can take the do-support and also have nonfinite forms (e.g. daring or dared) even though this is not the behaviour of the modal verbs. Furthermore, according to Quirk et al. (1985), “the past tense form dared without do-support may be regarded as another example of a blend, since the -ed past inflection is not characteristic of modal verbs” (p. 138). On the other hand, Taeymans (2004) in her research claims that “dare in auxiliary use does have a modal past form “dared”, unlike the other central modals” (p. 100). According to this statement past form dared can be regarded as modal and not as blend construction.

Quirk et al. (1985) also mention that blends are more used in American English (AmE) rather than in British English (BrE). They suggest two reasons for that: blends can be more accepted in AmE or dare is such uncommon verb in AmE that American speakers just accept the blends without thinking about it (p.139).

Alexander (1988) says that “dare can work as a modal verb or as a full verb with little or no difference in meaning” (p. 236). Curme (1947) explains that “it is always a regular verb throughout in the sense of challenge: He dares, dared, me to do it.

Elsewhere there is a fluctuation between the regular inflection of its tenses and the inflection of past-present verbs” (p. 60). Quirk et al. (1985) explain that “the modal construction is restricted to nonassertive contexts, ie mainly negative and interrogative sentences” (p.138). They further add that not only these sentences belong to non- assertive contexts but also “clauses containing semi-negative words such as hardly and only” (p. 138). In his research Duffley (1994) extends the non-assertive contexts to

“shifted negation, comparative, after superlatives, if-clauses and clauses after whether”

(p. 221). Leech & Svartvik (1994) also state that “dare and need as auxiliaries are less common in AmE [American English] than in BrE [British English]. The main verb construction can always be used, and is in fact the more common in all varieties” (p.

245). Moreover, Quirk et al. (1985) say that “as a modal, dare exhibits abnormal time reference in that it can be used, without inflection, for past as well as present time” (p.

138).

Alexander (1988) mentions that “dare as a modal is not nearly as common as need and used to as modals. Its function is generally filled by verb phrases like (not) be afraid to or (not) have courage to” (p. 236). About the meaning of dare he states that the verb dare can express “courage or lack of courage. It is used as full transitive verb by children when challenging each other to do something dangerous or it is used as a modal auxiliary verb to reprimand and express outrage or strong disapproval. It is especially common after how” (p. 237).

Duffley in his research examines the semantics of dare and the differences in uses either as lexical or as modal together with blend constructions from the point of view of meaning of the verb and the context. Duffley (1994) claims that “modal use of dare evokes the notion of something being impossible to do without extremely dire consequences or risks. […] what is evoked is not the action or state of daring in itself

20 but the conditions making daring possible” (p. 222). He further states that modal dare

“focuses on conditions for daring to exist” (p. 224) and takes into account “the gravity of the risks involved in performing some action” (p. 224). The modal dare therefore does not include the state of action but rather contemplating the conditions if the action is possible and also realizing risks and consequences of that action. On the usage of lexical dare Duffley (1994) argues that it “evokes either the action of going ahead and doing something in the face of certain risks […] or, more rarely, the state of possessing sufficient courage for some action” (p. 224). It therefore includes doing the action of daring itself or having the courage to do it and considers only the reality and not conditions like the modal dare. About the usage of blend constructions Duffley (1994) says that “blend constructions evoke both the possibility/conceivability and the reality of daring at the same time” (p. 237). This means that blend constructions are mixing the meanings of both modal use and lexical use of dare. This research by Duffley helped to determine the distinctions in use between the lexical and modal forms of dare.

There are other researches concerning the verb dare. However, their main focus is not the context in which the individual forms appear and also the focus is not the meaning of the verb. For example, Quirk & Duckworth in their Co-existing negative preterite forms of dare they examine possible negative forms of dare and their results suggest that lexical form is becoming more frequent than modal which is getting more formal. Another research Classification of the Verb "dare" in Modern English by

Veselovská examines dare in various sentence structures and divides the verb into three classes – modal dare, lexical dare with bare infinitive and lexical dare with to- infinitive. Veselovská claims that once dare is classified it follows the properties of its class and does not have unpredictable behaviour. Research An investigation into the marginal modals dare and need in British present-day English by Taeymans deals with

21 frequency analysis of the verbs dare and need in British English. Taeymans analyses the frequency of individual forms of dare and argues that modal dare is firmly establish in

British English most likely because of frozen idiomatic structures how dare you and dare say.

Alexander (1988) also talks about the existence and meaning of the verb daresay:

“The verbs dare and say can combine into a single verb, daresay, (sometimes spelt as two separate words, dare say) which can be used in the first person singular or plural

(present tense only) to mean I suppose or It’s possible […] or in the sense “accept what you say” (p. 237). The original meaning of dare is therefore changed with this construction. Furthermore, Taeymans (2004) argues that “ I dare say is clearly modal in structure, it enjoys idiomatic status due to repetition, and is frequent enough to qualify as being marginally grammatical, or even lexicalized, meaning I assume/presume that; I think it likely that” (p. 109). She further indicates that the phrase How dare you + bare infinitive is alike because it is also very frequent and can be perceived as idiomatic with the meaning of irritation of the speaker with something (p. 109).

4. CORPUS ANALYSIS

This part of the thesis will be dealing with the corpus analysis of the behaviour of the verb dare in English. At first, the frequency of occurrence of the different patterns of dare will be examined. The thesis will also analyse the text type distribution to find out what form of the verb is more frequent in which text type. Lastly, the behaviour of dare will be analysed in terms of contexts and meaning in selected sample sentences to find out when the individual forms of dare tend to be used. The context of individual example sentences will be described to explain why the individual forms of dare were chosen.

The purpose of this analysis is to verify the information and theories about the usage of dare as a full verb or as a modal given in the previous chapter in terms of meaning and context of the sample sentences. This analysis is mostly based on the results of the research by Duffley. The analysis will examine these sample sentences to see why lexical, modal or blend was used. The second important part of the analysis is to compare the frequency, text type distribution and mainly usage of dare in both varieties.

The samples for analysis will be taken from the corpora British National Corpus for analysing dare in British English and Corpus of Contemporary American English for analysing dare in American English. Both corpora were chosen because they contain large quantities of data suitable for the analysis, they are available online and represent both varieties of English that will be examined in this thesis.

4.1. British National Corpus

British National Corpus (BNC) is consisted of 96,048,950 words. BNC has the collection of written and spoken texts of different genres to cover as much as possible in

British English. It is a monolingual corpus because it deals with modern British English and no other languages. BNC is also a synchronic corpus because it is not concerned with historical development of English. BNC was compiled in 1994 and no new texts were added since then. However, it is still a reliable source for searching and analysing patterns in modern English (Taken from About the British National Corpus).

Methodology of the research in BNC

The corpus analysis tool the SketchEngine was used to search in BNC. There are several ways how to find the lexical and modal versions of dare but creating the precise

Corpus Query Language (CQL) guarantees better results and also allows seeing the context of the individual versions of the verb more clearly. First, the verb dare was searched by using the lemma box and selecting the part of speech verb to exclude the nouns and adjectives. The forms of the verb can be found by looking at the node tags under the frequency option. Afterwards, particular searching was done by using CQL to find the patterns easily and effectively. Since the verb dare can behave like a lexical verb with to-infinitive following, CQL for this form is:

[lemma="dare"] [tag="TO0"] [tag="V.I"]

CQL for searching for the modal form of dare followed by bare infinitive is:

[lemma="dare"] [tag="V.I"]

Individual square brackets represent one item. Lemma secures that all forms of the verb dare will be found. TO0 part of speech tag (POS tag) is searching for the infinitive marker to and POS tag V.I is looking for the infinitive form of all the verbs that follow dare (lexical verb together with primary verbs be, do and have).

However, it has to be taken into consideration that there is still a possibility that dare can be followed by proper nouns, personal pronouns (as objects or subjects in the

24 case of inversions) or adverbs and after that the to-infinitive or bare infinitive. CQL for these patterns is rather complicated but still comprehensible. In the case of lexical dare the CQL search pattern is:

[lemma="dare"] [tag="PNP" | tag="NP0" | tag="AV0"] [tag="TO0"] [tag="V.I"]

The CQL search pattern for modal dare with personal pronouns, proper nouns or adverbs following is:

[lemma="dare"] [tag="PNP" | tag="NP0" | tag="AV0"] [tag="V.I"]

The explanation of particular POS tags is that PNP stands for personal pronouns, NP0 for proper nouns and POS tag AV0 represents the adverbs. The operator | secures that the POS tags will be searched for at the same time at the same position so that no individual searches for POS tags separately have to be done.

All of the CQL shown above do not look for the negative forms of dare: dare not and the contracted form daren’t. That is because both of these negative forms are considered as two words. This means that the negative forms have to be searched for separately. CQL is:

[lemma="dare"] [word="n't" | word="not" ]

Blend constructions of dare can be found by using the function of context or by looking at the particular node forms. The options how to find blend constructions are: do-support (context with lemma do), -s form (context with he, she, it) and -ing form

(node forms). The lexical form of dare in blend construction (with to-infinitive) does not take the do-support and -s form in the 3rd person singular that can be found the same way as with modal dare. In the case of do-support do must be excluded from the context and then individual concordance lines have to be checked. However, this type of blend construction is highly uncommon.

4.1.1. Frequency of occurrence in BNC

The first part of the analysis is to find out how many times the verb dare occurs in

British English, particularly in BNC. Furthermore, how many times the individual forms of the verb (lexical and modal) appear in British English by looking at the node tags and by using the CQL for particular forms. The patterns of the verb with personal pronouns (further PP), proper nouns (NP) and adverbs (ADV) are also taken into consideration. They are all included together because the numbers for particular patterns are not that significant. Since CQL did not include the negative forms in the results, dare not and daren’t are shown separately to see how frequent the contracted form is.

Blend constructions are not considered because the results are not precise, i.e. the exact numbers cannot be obtained.

The verb dare occurs in BNC 3,285 times. Considering the overall size of the corpus dare is not very common. This could be because the verb is usually substituted by different verb phrases (be afraid to or have courage to). By looking at the frequency of node tags, the lexical dare is in the corpus 2,181 times whereas modal dare has 1,104 results. This confirms the hypothesis that lexical dare is much more common than the modal form.

The results obtained from more detailed CQL search are shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Frequency of particular patterns of dare in BNC

Patterns of dare Frequency Dare + to-infinitive 762 Dare + bare infinitive 776 Dare + PP/NP/ADV + to-infinitive 48 Dare + PP/NP/ADV + bare infinitive 338 Dare not + daren’t 472

The table shows the exact numbers of occurrence of particular patterns of the verb dare. According to the results, lexical dare is used less than modal dare but the difference is not significant. This could happen because of the frequent use of the phrase

I dare say as was already mentioned in the theoretical part. Modal dare followed by

PP/NP/ADV has more hits than the lexical verb. The reason for this is that modal dare, unlike the lexical, does not need do-support and it therefore allows subject-verb inversion, e.g. in the types of sentences like How dare you… The negative form dare not appears in corpus 288 times and its contracted form daren’t 184 times. This also confirms that dare not is more common. However, the difference is not as big as could be expected.

4.1.2. Text type distribution in BNC

Another part of the analysis is to examine the text type distribution of the verb dare in BNC. There are five different text types in the corpus:

• Spoken context-governed – includes excerpts from TV or radio broadcasts,

meetings, lectures or interviews

• Spoken demographic – contains samples from conversations

• Written-to-be-spoken – contains scripts for television broadcasts

• Written books and periodicals – include extracts from fictional books as well as

periodicals from social science, leisure, applied sciences, commerce, finance,

arts, etc.

• Written miscellaneous – contains miscellaneous texts. (SketchEngine, 2017)

The text type distribution of the verb dare in BNC is shown in Table 2. The individual forms of dare are not considered in this table.

Table 2: Text type distribution of dare in BNC

Text type Frequency Spoken context-governed 121 Spoken demographic 196 Written-to-be-spoken 21 Written books and periodicals 2,874 Written miscellaneous 73

The verb dare is mostly used in Written books and periodicals. After that follows

Spoken demographic, Spoken context-governed, Written miscellaneous and lastly

Written-to-be-spoken. The reason for dare appearing mostly in Written books and periodicals can be the fact that dare is basically rare and it can have certain stylistic functions in the texts (to make them more remarkable).

The above distribution of uses of dare either as lexical or as modal in the text types is logically reflected when the CQL searches are examined. However, modal dare is more used in spoken text types than the lexical form. The reason for this can be the fact that it can save time not to include the infinitive to into the utterance and there is also higher tendency to use blend constructions of modal dare in spoken registers.

Negative forms dare not and daren’t appear in the corpus 472 times in total. Most of those samples come from Written books and periodicals. However, dare not is much more frequent in Written books and periodicals than in spoken register where it occurs only seven times. In contrast, the contracted form appears in spoken text types 82 times but it also occurs in Written books and periodicals 96 times.

4.1.3. The use of dare in BNC

Dare as a lexical verb

At first, the corpus analysis will be focused on the lexical form of the verb dare.

According to Alexander (1988), dare as a lexical verb means “to be brave enough” or

“to have courage to do it” (p. 237). This meaning can be seen in the example sentences below.

(1) Nobody had ever dared to do anything like that before. (BNC: HGK)

(2) They drove in silence, and when she dared to glance across at him she found an

expression on his face that she could not read at all. (BNC: H9H)

(3) She had dared to believe they might be moving towards something together.

(BNC: JXT)

(4) A few economists dared to imagine an eventual move to a full market economy,

but hardly anyone thought this would happen quickly. (BNC: ABF)

All of the example sentences above come from the written text types. In sentence

(1) there is this sense of courage expressed by the phrase that nobody had ever done it and that person is the only one who was brave enough to do it. The same thing can be observed in the sentence (4) because only a few economists have the courage to imagine that possibility. The sentences (2) and (3) also show the courage but there is this notion that they were actually afraid to do something like that and eventually did it. Dare in these sample sentences can be substituted with the phrase have the courage.

As was seen in example sentence (1) the lexical form can appear in negative sentences even though the modal dare is more common in negative. Other examples of lexical dare in non-assertive contexts can be seen in the sentences below. The sentences are taken from the written texts.

(5) The rich do not dare to be alone at night in their grand houses. (BNC: HGJ)

(6) I don't dare to visit the methadone clinic tomorrow. It's too dangerous. I'd rather

be sick. (BNC: HGL)

(7) Do you dare to help those who robbed us? (BNC: G3G)

(8) I hardly dare to think that such people exist! (BNC: HR8)

Even though these example sentences are in the non-assertive contexts they include the lexical form of the verb. The reason may be the actual meaning of dare in these sentences. It is again the bravery or more precisely, in the case of negative, fear.

This can be observed in sentences (5) and (6). In (5) the rich are afraid to be alone and in (6) the speaker does not have the courage to go to the clinic. The speaker in the sentence (8) is also afraid to think about something like that and he or she also emphasises the realization of the action. Moreover, he or she cannot believe that these people exist. Sample sentence (7) is interrogative and the speaker is simply asking if he or she has the courage to do that.

There are also 26 examples of the lexical form dare to say in BNC. This means that it is quite rare and people are more likely to use the modal version that is idiomatic.

Nevertheless, the lexical form again keeps the meaning of “have the courage” as can be seen in example sentences below (sentence (12) is taken from the spoken register).

(9) There are those who even dare to say that we should intervene militarily and

hope that some form of peace will come about as a result. (BNC: HHX)

(10) `It's all right, Shannon, you won't burn in hell just because you dare to say the

words.' (BNC: HA9)

(11) …we had a matron who was extremely strict and I don't think we would've

dared to say anything to her at all. (BNC: H4C)

(12) It may not be a popular view, but I would dare to say that prisons are our most

important, and also our most deficient, social service. (BNC: A69)

Sentence (12) can be interpreted in both ways – in lexical or in modal meaning.

By saying I would dare to say the speaker is toning down his/her statement because he or she knows that it is not popular. He or she could have used modal dare say with its meaning I assume. However, by using the lexical, the speaker stands by the statement.

The speaker is not afraid to say it, he or she just softened it. The lexical form in the rest of the example sentences was chosen because they include the boldness to perform the action of saying.

The example sentences below represent the verb with the meaning of courage but there is also, on the side of the speaker’s feelings, an indication of disgust, outrage or annoyance that it happened and that the agents were even impudent enough to perform the actions. This usage can be seen in example sentences below.

(13) And you dare to come here and try to make reparation - reparation, you call it!

- for ruining my life?' (BNC: HGV)

(14) It is sickening that the Government would never dare to treat taxpayers in that

way over their entitlements to past reliefs or past allowances. (BNC: HHW)

(15) And how they dare to care about the unemployed when they would price people

out of work, strike people out of work and tax people out of work? (BNC: J9L)

Sentence (15) has the pattern with how that is more frequent with modal dare in this type of the meaning but the focus here is on the realization of daring so that is why the lexical form was selected.

Dare expressing the courage and bravery is not the only meaning of the verb. The lexical form is also used when one challenges other to do something when one wants the other to prove he or she is not afraid of it. Dare in the sense of challenge was not

31 very common in BNC. This meaning can be observed in these sample sentences from

BNC, all taken from written texts:

(16) I dare you to ask me. (BNC: G07)

(17) He dared her to disbelieve him. (BNC: GV2)

(18) He glared at her over his beer, daring her to agree with his last assertion.

(BNC: CEB)

The sense of challenge is clearest in the example sentence (16) where the speaker is challenging the other and therefore suggesting that the other might be afraid to ask the question. It is similar in (17) and (18) but there is not the notion of fear as strong as in sentence (16).

There is another use of the full verb in BNC, although very rare, and that is threat:

(19) "Don't ever dare to come into the garden again," he ordered, with the same

violence in his voice. (BNC: H7A)

(20) Don't you dare to be insolent to me again. (BNC: B24)

In both of these sentences the speaker is discouraging them from doing it again. It can be expressed as courage (Don’t you have the courage to …) but there is also an indication of threat that something is going to happen to them if they do it again.

The interpretation of context for lexical dare according to Duffley can be seen in the example sentences below. He argues that lexical form only includes the realization of the action of daring in the face of risks or consequences. However, this closely relates to the “courage meaning”.

(21) I mean I might think of doing something like that, but I'd never actually dare to

do it… (BNC: FAY)

(22) For the next half hour the rehearsals took on a sudden lift and everyone began

to dare to try things out without feeling foolish. (BNC: CAB)

(23) Anthony sometimes dared to do the things that Nigel only thought of. (BNC:

AC3)

(24) A ten foot wide brown slick oozed continually into the blue grey waters, in

which no fish can survive, and no person would dare to swim. (BNC: G4U)

(25) Few members dared to dissent in public. (BNC: C9S)

The actual performing of the action of daring can be clearly seen in example sentences (22), (23) and (25). Here, the focus is on the realization. People in (22) dared to try things even though they might have been perceived as foolish; they did it in the face of this risk. In sample sentence (23) Anthony dares to do things without thinking about it. He simply performs the action unlike Nigel who does not have enough courage. In (25) those few members have sufficient courage to perform the action of daring unlike the other members. However, sentences (21) and (24) do not entirely correspond with Duffley’s statement because the speakers clearly think those actions are impossible. They thought about the risks involved in doing the action and still, the lexical form is used. In sentence (21) it may be because it can be interpreted as I’d never actually had the courage to do it. Thus the focus here is on possessing the courage. The same thing happens in (24) where nobody would do it because of the risks that are too high but at the same time it suggests the actual action of swimming. This indicates that the blend construction could have been used in (21) and (24). On the other hand, it can be argued that the lexical form is used because the focus is more on the action or having enough courage rather than on the impossibility of daring.

Since lexical dare has usually the meaning of “be brave enough to” or “have courage to” it can be argued that the lexical is used in instances where dare can be substituted with these phrases.

Dare as a modal

This part of the analysis will be dealing with the use of the modal form of the verb dare in BNC. The most frequent modal structure is dare say. Its use can be seen in this example sentences:

(26) I dare say she will be sick again tomorrow. (BNC: H85)

(27) I dare say you meant well. (BNC: HTR)

This structure is mostly used with first person singular. The phrase is very common and also idiomatic. It can be substituted with the verb phrases like I assume/I suppose. This can be clearly used for the example sentences above, e.g. in (27) I suppose you meant well.

Modal dare should be used when it expresses reprimand, outrage or disapproval.

This can be observed in the sample sentences below.

(28) How dare you upset her and bully her that way? (BNC: JXT)

(29) How dare you come barging into my room without knocking? (BNC: JXU)

(30) I don't know how she dare show her face. (BNC: CAF)

(31) You dare call Modern Times rubbish? (BNC: HA0)

The expression How dare you + bare infinitive is very common and can be perceived as idiomatic. Sentences (28) and (30) express strong disapproval with the actions and sentence (29) anger that it happened and also reprimand since they did not knock at the door. The modal form may be used here because dare can be substituted by other modal verb and that is could – How could you upset her? This also suggests that

34 by using the modal the speakers think that the actions were regarded by the speakers as highly impossible. Moreover, Duffley argues that lexical form in this case “would sound too literal” (p. 228). This meaning does not have to be necessarily connected to how as can be seen in (31) where is also disapproval and outrage on the side of the speaker.

The theory claims that modal dare is used specifically in non-assertive context.

However, the lexical form appears in non-assertive contexts too as was seen above. On the other hand, modals in those contexts are much more frequent. The example sentences below show the use of modal dare in non-assertive contexts:

(32) I hardly dare go into a room without permission… (BNC: FS1)

(33) He daren't go back or they would see him. (BNC: A7J)

(34) I have to be home, I am so late, I dare not stop. (BNC: AD1)

(35) He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering if he dare ask for

water to help wash the cake down. (BNC: ACW)

(36) …they were trying to weigh up whether they dare go across the stepping

stones… (BNC: G4G)

(37) Dare he risk inviting them and asking Mister Tom's permission? (BNC: CAB)

(38) `Christmas was better than I dared expect,' she concluded. (BNC: H46)

As for the meaning, it can be interpreted by Duffley’s point of view – contemplating the possibility of daring, risks and consequences. The speaker in (32) emphasises the impossibility of going into the room without asking. Sentence (33) suggests that it is unthinkable to go back because of the risk of being seen. The same context is included in (34) where there is high risk of coming home late so the speaker cannot stop. The speaker in (35) doubts whether it is possible to ask her. In (36) there is explicitly expressed the contemplating the risks of that action and whether they would

35 actually do it. The person in example sentence (37) questions if it is possible or reasonable to risk inviting them and asking Mister Tom. At last, (38) suggests that it was impossible to expect more of Christmas. It can be said that non-assertive contexts correlate with the notion of contemplating the risks and consequences of daring.

This usage of the modal dare is not restricted only to non-assertive contexts as can be observed in the sample sentences below:

(39) Nobody in the markets seems to believe that the Chancellor dare put up

interest rates this side of the general election. (BNC: HHX)

(40) Timid observers will marvel at the bravery of the men who dare descend into

these black pits for enjoyment and adventure… (BNC: ASU)

(41) It is testament to her power of control that few people dare talk openly about

her. (BNC: CEK)

In (39) everybody thinks that it is highly unlikely that the Chancellor would do it under these circumstances. They are questioning the action. It is evoked by saying few people in the sentence (41) that the action is risky because the woman is powerful and most of the people realize the consequences of talking openly about her. The modal in

(40) is used because performing the action can be dangerous. On the other hand, lexical form can probably be used here as well since it might suggest the actual realization of the action of daring and that those men are brave enough to perform it. However, by using the modal the emphasis is put on the impossibility.

Blend constructions of dare

Making blend construction is a special behaviour of the verb dare so it will be observed in detail in this part of the analysis. It is obvious from the results that blend construction is used merely with bare infinitive. However, there are two instances in

BNC when the blend appears with to-infinitive. These sample sentences come from written text types.

(42) They said that Reza Aah was a man to whom mo one dared to lie. With his

sons, no one dare to tell the truth. (BNC: G3R)

(43) I also received them on behalf of the new church that she dare to be intimate in

worship of her Lord. (BNC: C8L)

This type of blend construction is highly unusual. The reason for the use of modal dare with to-infinitive can be that it lays more emphasis on the action of daring rather than on the consequences. For example, in (42) no one is so brave to tell the truth – to actually perform the action. The same can be observed in (43): the emphasis is on the action that she ventures something like that.

As was mentioned before, blend construction is more common with bare infinitive. The example sentences from BNC below show how the blend constructions behave.

(44) …the terrorists have killed the project; nobody dares dig any further. (BNC:

ABD)

(45) My daughter dares defy me. (BNC: APW)

(46) I do not dare open the blinds. (BNC: HGL)

(47) I gave him the money and they told me to walk on and not look back because

they would be following me. I didn't dare look back. (BNC: K97)

It is quite complicated to determine why the blend construction is used instead of the modal dare. However, by considering Duffley’s research, the reasons are more apparent because, according to him, the blend is mixing the contexts of both lexical and modal forms. This means that the conditions, risks or consequences are contemplated

37 and at the same time there is reality of performing of daring or having the courage to dare. In sentence (44) the emphasis is put on the risks that are too high because of the danger of terrorists and at the same time the action is involved because the digging happened before. In (45) the speaker can be outraged that his own daughter defies him – she does it and he thought that something like that was impossible. The speaker in example (46) is too afraid to open the blinds because he or she realizes what can possibly happen. The person in (47) is warned not to look back so he or she knew about the risks and at the same time he or she did not have sufficient courage to look back.

Modal dare with do-support in negative is highly frequent in the phrase shown below:

(48) Don't you dare ever speak to us. (BNC: H7A)

(49) Don't you dare lay a hand on Silvia! (BNC: JXT)

(50) Don't you dare hurt them! (BNC: HTN)

It is obvious from the context that in this instance dare is used as a threat or warning. In all of the example sentences above it is clear that the speaker is angry and forbids them to do it and in (50) to do it again otherwise something will happen to them.

Since the phrase don’t you dare appears a lot in the corpus, it can be said that it is idiomatic.

4.2. Corpus of Contemporary American English

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) contains approximately

560,000,000 words that are divided into spoken and written texts. COCA was created by Mark Davies and it is consisted of texts in American English from period 1990-2017.

Since it deals with American English only, it is monolingual corpus as well as BNC

(Davies, 2017).

Methodology of the research in COCA

COCA was searched by the corpus analysis tool BYU-interface. Since BYU does not work with CQL like the tool SketchEngine the research had to be done differently.

Various search strings with words and part of speech tags were put into the search box to find the desired patterns. The search string for finding all the forms of dare is:

[dare].[v*]. If only looking for the modal form of the verb, the search string looks like this: [dare].[vm*]. For detailed results of particular patterns, the search string for the lexical dare is extended into this form:

[dare].[v*] to [v?i*]

Modal dare with bare infinitive following can be searched for with this search string:

[dare].[v*] [v?i*]

Dare in the square brackets represents lemma search, i.e. [dare] searches for all forms of the verb. Lemma is connected by a dot with part of speech tag for the verb. This means that only dare as the verb is looked for. In the case of POS tag [vm*] search string finds modal forms of the verb. [v?i*] searches for infinitive form of the verbs that follows dare. This POS tag already includes infinitive forms of primary verbs be, have and do.

In order to find the patterns with personal pronouns (PP), proper nouns (NP) and adverbs (ADV) the individual searches for particular patterns have to be done separately. The search strings for lexical dare are:

[dare].[v*] [pp*] to [v?i*]

[dare].[v*] [np*] to [v?i*]

[dare].[v*] [r*] to [v?i*]

The search strings for modal dare are:

[dare].[v*] [pp*] [v?i*]

[dare].[v*] [np*] [v?i*]

[dare].[v*] [r*] [v?i*]

POS tag [pp*] represents personal pronouns, [np*] includes proper nouns and [r*] looks for adverbs.

BYU-interface also counts the negative forms as two words so the above search strings are not able to find the negative forms. The search strings for negative forms then are:

[dare].[v*] not

[dare].[v*] n't

Blend constructions of dare have to be looked up individually by using the collocates function. It is similar to the context function in BNC. The collocates box is filled in either with do, he, she or it on left side of the node word and then the concordance lines have to be searched individually.

4.2.1. Frequency of occurrence in COCA

At first, the overall frequency of the verb dare is examined. Afterwards, the frequency of occurrence of individual patterns of the verb is analysed. The negative forms are observed separately because they are not included in the search strings for individual patterns of dare. The blend construction is not considered because the precise numbers of occurrence cannot be obtained.

Dare occurs in the corpus 12,749 times. When only the modal verb is looked up, just 844 hits out of total frequency are the modal forms of dare. The reason may be

40 wrong tagging in the corpus. Nevertheless, if the total size of the corpus is considered, dare is rather rare in American English.

The results from the detailed search of individual patterns of dare are shown in Table 3.

Table 3: Frequency of particular patterns in COCA

Forms of dare Frequency Dare + to-infinitive 3,248 Dare + bare infinitive 2,685 Dare + PP/NP/ADV + to-infinitive 518 Dare + PP/NP/ADV + bare infinitive 1,018 Dare not + daren’t 843

The table shows the exact numbers of particular patterns of the verb in

COCA. According to these results pattern with to-infinitive following dare is more frequent than dare + bare infinitive but the difference is not great. The frequency of this pattern also proves that the tagging of modal dare may have been wrong.

Dare + PP/NP/ADV + bare infinitive is again more frequent than with to-infinitive. The reason is that modal dare enables subject-verb inversion. When these patterns are added to the simple ones, there is almost no difference: dare + to-infinitive appears totally

3,766 times and dare + bare infinitive 3,703 times. Even the difference is small the lexical form is used more in the corpus. The negative form dare not occurs in the corpus

817 times and its contracted form daren’t 26 times. This makes the use of the contracted form very rare.

4.2.2. Text type distribution in COCA

The text type distribution of dare in COCA is also analysed. There are five different categories of text types in the corpus:

• Academic journals – include nearly 100 different peer-reviewed journals

• Fiction – contains short stories and plays from literary magazines, children’s

magazines, popular magazines, first chapters of first edition books and movie

scripts

• Newspapers – include ten newspapers from across the US, e.g. New York Times,

San Francisco Chronicle or USA today

• Popular magazines – contain nearly 100 different magazines with a good mix

between specific domains (financial, sports, religion or women)

• Spoken – includes transcripts of unscripted conversation from more than 150

different TV and radio programs, e.g. Good Morning America or Newshour.

(Davies, 2017)

Text type distribution of the verb dare in COCA is shown in Table 4. The table does not consider the individual forms of the verb.

Table 4: Text type distribution of dare in COCA

Text type Frequency Academic journals 1,077 Fiction 6,162 Newspapers 1,592 Popular magazines 2,299 Spoken 1,619

The table indicates that the verb dare is in American English mostly used in

Fiction text type. Dare is also rather frequent in Popular magazines. On the other hand, dare is rather unusual in Academic journals. This could be because of its meaning. The verb is then almost equally divided among Newspapers and Spoken text types. This means that dare is very rare in spoken discourse and is more popular in texts.

The same distribution among the text types is logically reflected when the individual patterns are observed. However, the pattern for modal dare + bare infinitive is more used in Fiction and Spoken register. The pattern for lexical dare + to-infinitive is slightly more used in Academic journals, Newspapers and Popular magazines.

Negative forms of dare occur in the corpus 843 times. Modal dare not is definitely more frequent than daren’t and it is mostly used in the Fiction text type (472 hits). On the other hand, it is seldom used in the Spoken text type where it is observed only 38 times. Contracted daren’t is very rare with its 26 hits but it is mostly used in

Fiction (17 hits) and only one sample comes from the Spoken text type. Using the contracted form in the spoken register is therefore highly unusual in American English.

4.2.3. The use of dare in COCA

Since the number of results of individual patterns of dare was much higher than in

BNC, the samples of random 500 concordance lines for each pattern were created for the purpose of the analysis.

Dare as a lexical verb

At first, the use of the lexical form of the verb in COCA will be examined. For the illustration of usage of the verb dare in the corpus with the meaning of “have courage to” or “be brave enough to” as stated in dictionaries there are sample sentences below:

(51) She dares to peek over the top of the tombstone to see who it is. (COCA)

(52) On one particularly humid Friday afternoon, Sarah dared to voice the same

question that had been nagging Sylvia. (COCA)

(53) Evan dares to reach out and tuck in the label of her T-shirt, which is sticking

up. (COCA)

(54) He dared to open his eyes and found that the Stone had brought him to an

outer palace garden. (COCA)

In all of the example sentences the verb can be substituted by the phrases have courage to or be brave enough to so that is why the lexical form is used. For example, in (51) She has the courage to peek over the tombstone… Moreover, the samples also correspond to the results of Duffley’s research. They clearly include the actual performing of daring. For example, in the sentence (51) there is the action of peeking.

In (52) Sarah decides to ask the question with the risks included while Sylvia has not had the courage to do it probably because there might have been some risks or consequences. Evan in the sentence (53) tucks the label of T-shirt in the face of the risk she might get upset. The action is also involved in (54) and also includes the boldness of the person because he did not know where he is and was brave enough to look.

However, this usage of lexical dare is not always clear. Especially, when the lexical form appears in non-assertive contexts as can be seen in example sentences below. Lexical dare in non-assertive contexts is quite common in the corpus of

American English.

(55) …I don't dare to do that because if I do that I may end up in jail… (COCA)

(56) …the boy dreamed of being an artist but hardly dared to think it possible.

(COCA)

(57) If I dared to spend just half an hour in summer sun, I would burn severely…

(COCA)

(58) Would a terrorist group that got its hands on a nuclear weapon actually dare

to use it against us? (COCA)

(59) This was more than she'd ever dare to dream. (COCA)

Sentence (55) is an example that the reason for selecting the lexical form in non- assertive context is not that obvious. The consequences of that action are mentioned in the context which means there are essential and the gravity of the risks is actually serious because no one probably wants to end up in jail so modal dare not do or contracted daren’t do would be more suitable. On the other hand, it could be argued that the subject chose the lexical form because he or she could lay more emphasis on not having enough courage to do it. It is not that clear in the sample sentence (58) which is more concentrated on the hypothetical situation (the improbability of that action) and also the gravity of consequences is serious in this instance. However, the speaker could, again, want to put more emphasis on the audacity of that action. The other sentences are more obvious because there is no specific mention or sign of contemplating the impossibility of the action of daring due to the risks. It can be taken as possessing enough courage.

The usage of lexical dare to say is also connected to the boldness of the action of daring. However, it is rarely chosen. This phrase with to-infinitive appears in the corpus

94 times. The example sentences of this situation can be seen below. Both are taken from the spoken register.

(60) You know, I dare to say that the majority of Americans do not know a lot about

Islam. (COCA)

(61) The reason I dare to say this is because I realize the potential of the Chinese

beer market. (COCA)

The speaker in (60) realizes the audacity of his action and therefore decided to use the lexical. To-infinitive in the sentence (61) is chosen because the speaker is sure about his statement and the focus is on the action of saying and also the boldness of doing it.

Lexical form of dare is sometimes used with subtext of outrage, annoyance. The verb still has the meaning of having courage but there is also an indication that the speaker is not happy that it happened. It is similar to modal meaning of outrage but the focus here is on the action and audacity.

(62) What? You dare to accuse me, you, you preposterous little worm? (COCA)

(63) Do you dare to gainsay me? (COCA)

(64) During the facebook live, a fan dared to comment that Baby Groot was

useless. Groot useless? How dare you. (COCA)

(65) How did he even dare to speak to her when he had been talking about her

behind her back? (COCA)

The speaker in the sentence (62) is outraged because of that accusation and by using the lexical he or she highlighted the action of daring. The question in (63) is basically asking Are you so impudent to gainsay me? The person in (64) is angry and it is marked by the phrase How dare you afterwards. Sentence (65) is similar to the modal use after how but the emphasis is put on the effrontery of that action.

The verb dare + to-infinitive is also used in the sense of challenge. This usage was quite common in COCA. The sample sentences to see how it is used are listed below.

(66) He dared me to do things, stupid things, but I was a coward. (COCA)

(67) I dare you to go up on her porch and tip over her rocker. (COCA)

The sense of challenge lies in the fact that the challenger dares the others to do something audacious that they would not normally do and therefore might be afraid to do it. It can be nicely observed in the sentences above. For example, in the sentence (66) the speaker points out he or she was challenged to do things he was not brave enough to

46 do. Sentence (67) also includes challenging; the action required is unusual and could need courage to perform it.

There are also few instances of lexical dare with a meaning of threat that is mostly connected to the blend construction without to-infinitive. The example sentence

(68) below shows the behaviour with lexical dare that might have been chosen because of the meaning: Don’t you have the courage to…

(68) And don't you dare ever to doubt it again. (COCA)

Dare as a modal

In this part of the thesis the usage of the modal form of dare in COCA will be analysed. The most frequent modal phrase in COCA is dare say that appears in the corpus 310 times. The example sentences from the corpus containing this phrase can be seen below.

(69) I dare say you'd like to make some, too. (COCA)

(70) I dare say she'll find you intriguing. (COCA)

This idiomatic phrase differs from the original meaning of dare. It can be substituted with the phrases I assume/I suppose. This can be seen in the example sentences above, for example in (70): I assume she’ll find you intriguing. It is mostly used with first person singular but there are exceptions:

(71) …and no leader dare say anything to the president of the United States…

(COCA)

(72) Yet who dare say no to the empress? (COCA)

The exception is not only the third person singular but also the meaning of the verb that seems to be “have courage”. Both sentences are in non-assertive contexts and

47 the modal is probably used because the realization of the action is improbable; no one would say anything against those leaders.

Modal dare with bare infinitive mostly appears in non-assertive contexts that includes negatives, interrogative questions, semi-negatives, comparative clauses and if and whether clauses. The non-assertive contexts closely correlate to the usage of modal form as something impossible to happen or something with grave risks or consequences.

One cannot imagine realizing the action without the undesirable outcomes. The example sentences of modal dare in such contexts can be seen underneath.

(73) I dare not go home because of Margaret's wrath! (COCA)

(74) I dare n't think what they would do to a lamb. (COCA)

(75) I hardly dare tell about it for fear of losing my credibility. (COCA)

(76) You're about to confront a crime that's seldom talked about or mentioned; yet

it may be more widespread than anyone dare imagine. (COCA)

(77) Dare I hope for escape from bureaucratic hell? (COCA)

Sentence (73) is the perfect example for selecting the modal form. The consequences of coming home are specifically mentioned – Margaret will be furious so it is unimaginable for the speaker to realize the action. It is inconceivable for the person in example sentence (74) to think about such things because they are unimaginable.

Sample (75) is also clear case since the speaker even mentions the risks involved in telling so he or she hardly imagines doing it. In sentence (76) no one thought it possible that it might be more widespread. The question (77) is tricky because it can be perceived as Do I have the courage to hope... However, the person is questioning the realization of hoping. He or she just thinks it is inconceivable to escape so there is no point in hoping.

It is an exception when the modal form of dare appears in affirmative clauses.

However, it is found in COCA several times. It can be said that this phenomenon is unusual.

(78) He knows his friends dare trouble by partying on the weekends. (COCA)

(79) Only a few of the old timers dared broach the subject directly. (COCA)

(80) Some dare go as high as 20%. Risk capital, it seems, isn't so risky anymore.

(COCA)

(81) But I must know what sort of bird you are really, before I dare enter your

territory. (COCA)

It is complicated to determine why the modal form was chosen in these instances.

The usage of modal form in sentence (79) is not clear because it includes performing of the action and the same happens in (80) – both can be substituted by the phrase have courage to so the lexical form could have been used. On the other hand, it can be perceived from different perspectives. In (79) it was impossible for everyone except those few people and the speaker in (80) could think it improbable because he or she considered it too risky. The modal form in sample sentence (78) is chosen not because of realizing the action but because the speaker knows that doing it might cause trouble.

In sentence (81) the modal dare is used because the conditions of realization of the action are stated in previous context. It does not deal with performing but stating the conditions for daring to be possible.

Modal dare is frequently used in the corpus when it expresses outrage, disapproval or reprimand. It has idiomatic status. The examples with this meaning can be seen below.

(82) … how dare you question my patriotism? (COCA)

(83) How dare you speak to me like that! (COCA)

(84) You dare call me a racist! (COCA)

In this meaning the modal is often preceded by how as can be seen in example sentences (82) and (83). The modal dare can be substituted by modal could in this meaning without changing anything. Sentence (84) shows that this meaning does not have to be connected to how every time. The speaker is also outraged that someone was impudent enough to call him racist and by using the modal the speaker suggest that he or she did not imagine it possible.

Blend constructions of dare

Blend constructions are very frequent in COCA. They are more common than the classical use of modal dare. The usage of blends will be examined in this part of the chapter. There were found no instances of blend construction with to-infinitive. Sample sentences with bare infinitive following the blends are shown below.

(85) He dares not move for fear of missing a single sound. (COCA)

(86) Bold as they were, Orenco's designers didn't dare build the town center right

next to the station. (COCA)

(87) This week I'd done something I hadn't dared try before. (COCA)

(88) You see this? This will be the fate of anyone who dares insult the president.

(COCA)

(89) Do we dare apply their teaching to what we are doing today? (COCA)

(90) …you didn't dare say anything because people would run to the leaders and

report you. (COCA)

Blend constructions are mixing the contexts of both lexical and modal forms. This can be seen in the example sentences above. The person in the sentence (85) is afraid to

50 move (not having enough courage) because he does not want to miss anything (risk). In sample sentence (86) the boldness of the designers is pointed out but because it was probably too risky they did not build it there. Example sentence (87) contains the realization of daring and there is also subtext that the speaker considered it impossible before. Sentence (88) shows the consequences of realization of daring and at the same time there is the subtext that it happened before. The person in the sentence (89) asks if it is performing of daring feasible and at the same time if they have enough courage to that. Sentence (90) shows the example of blend with the phrase dare say which lost its meaning (I assume) in this instance. The person insinuates that the other one did not have enough courage to say it but at the same time realizes the gravity of the risks and consequences if such action happened.

There is also an idiomatic phrase including modal dare and do-support with the meaning of threat. This phrase is common and appears a lot in the corpus. Some example sentences are shown below to see how this phrase behaves.

(91) …don't you dare come between me and my weapon. (COCA)

(92) And don't you dare slam your door. (COCA)

(93) So don't you dare talk about her in that tone of voice. (COCA)

The first two sentences, (91) and (92), are the typical example of such behaviour.

The person in (91) threatens to shoot the other one if he or she does that. The person in

(92) might be a parent who threatens child to teach it how to behave properly. The remaining sentence is also threat but there is also a notion of irritation and outrage on the side of the speaker. The person in (93) is infuriated and irritated by that action and warns the other one not to do it.

5. COMPARISON OF THE USE OF DARE IN BNC AND COCA

Comparison of the use of the verb dare in both varieties of English is the essential part of the analysis. The frequency of occurrence, text type distribution and use of the verb dare in BNC and in COCA will be compared in this chapter.

5.1. Frequency of occurrence

At first, the frequency of occurrence in both corpora will be compared. Since

BNC and COCA have different sizes the numbers of hits taken from corpora cannot be compared like this. The normalized frequency has to be calculated to see the precise differences. The numbers were acquired by using this formula (taken from Normalizing word counts):

Normalized frequency = (frequency * normalization figure) / corpus size

Normalization figure is 1,000,000 since both corpora have sizes in millions. The results of the calculation can be seen in Table 5.

Table 5: Comparison of the frequency of occurrence in BNC and COCA

BNC COCA Patterns Normalized Normalized Frequency Frequency frequency frequency Dare 3,285 34.20 12,749 22.77

Dare + to-infinitive 762 7.93 3,248 5.80

Dare + bare infinitive 776 8.08 2,685 4.79 Dare + PP/NP/ADV + 48 0.50 518 0.93 to-infinitive Dare + PP/NP/ADV + 338 3.52 1,018 1.82 bare infinitive

The table shows the frequencies obtained from individual searches and also the calculated normalized frequencies for precise comparison. By looking at numbers of results from the searches the table shows that dare in BNC is less common than in

COCA. However, the normalized frequency takes into account different sizes of corpora and it gives a real perspective on the difference in occurrence. It shows that the verb dare is more common in BNC than in COCA. It can be argued that dare is more rooted in British English, being the Standard English, while American English evolved from

British English and develops more and does not use the verb as much as British English.

On the other hand, dare is very rare in both varieties and can be taken obsolete because it can be substituted by different phrases.

The table also indicates what patterns of dare in which English are preferred.

Even though the difference is not significant (when the patterns with PP, NP and ADV are taken into account) modal form is more used in BNC than in COCA which prefers the lexical form of the verb. The reason may be the fact that American English is more open to change and modal dare can be perceived as obsolete. Because of the phrases how dare you and don’t you dare the pattern with bare infinitive and PP/NP/ADV is more frequent in both corpora than to-infinitive with PP/NP/ADV.

5.2. Text type distribution

Text type distribution in both corpora is another part of the analysis so it is important to compare text type distribution of dare in BNC and COCA. The tables below show text type distribution in both corpora with normalized frequencies to see the precise difference.

Table 6: Text type distribution in BNC (normalized frequencies)

Text type Frequency Spoken context-governed 1.26 Spoken demographic 2.04 Written-to-be-spoken 0.22 Written books and periodicals 29.92 Written miscellaneous 0.76

Table 7: Text type distribution in COCA (normalized frequencies)

Text type Frequency Academic journals 1.92 Fiction 11.00 Newspapers 2.84 Popular magazines 4.11 Spoken 2.89

Even though the text types are not entirely the same they can be compared.

Academic journals, Fiction, Newspaper magazines are included in all Written text types in BNC. In both corpora dare is mostly used in written text types – mainly Fiction in

COCA and Written books and periodicals in BNC which also includes fiction. The verb is also more used in the spoken register in BNC than in COCA. However, in BNC most of the data are taken from written samples and not the spoken register so that is why there are fewer examples of dare in the spoken register. It could have been more used in the spoken registers.

5.3. The use of dare

Analysis of the use of individual patterns of dare in context and from the semantic point of view is one of the key parts of the thesis. The use of dare in both corpora will be compared in this section.

As far as the meaning of dare is concerned there are no differences in BNC and

COCA. The meaning is not changed and it still has the meaning of courage / lack of courage, challenge, outrage, disapproval or threat. The example sentences listed below are for illustration of no change in meaning and in this cases courage meaning.

(5) The rich do not dare to be alone at night in their grand houses. (BNC: HGJ)

(51) She dares to peek over the top of the tombstone to see who it is. (COCA)

Nevertheless, dare in the sense of challenge was used significantly more in American

English together with idioms how dare you and don’t you dare. However, this may happen because COCA is larger corpus and contains more samples so even though dare is less frequent in COCA certain phrases can appear more times than in BNC. On the other hand, it suggests that fixed phrases with dare are highly frequent in American

English. They are probably fixed there from British English so they appear more frequently than the normal use of dare that is more common in BNC.

Concerning the preferences of lexical form and modal form of the verb in both varieties of English, modal form is used more in BNC whereas lexical form tends to be used more in COCA. Blend constructions of dare are also preferred more and widely used in COCA. Lexical form of dare appears in COCA even in contexts where modal form would be expected more, e.g. in non-assertive contexts. One case of such phenomenon can be seen below with sentence with similar context from BNC for comparison.

(38) `Christmas was better than I dared expect,' she concluded. (BNC: H46)

(59) This was more than she'd ever dare to dream. (COCA)

Both sentences are in non-assertive contexts which suggests modal dare. Lexical dare may also be used in such contexts both in BNC and COCA as was seen in the analysis in previous chapter. However, the sentences (42) and (64) have similar context and still different forms are used. There may be slight difference in the context: by using modal in (42) it is implied that it was impossible to expect more and the lexical in (62) indicates she never had the courage to dream. Nevertheless, this may suggest that

British English prefers modal forms whereas American English lexical forms. The same can be seen in the example sentence (60) below. The context of this sentence suggests

55 the usage of dare in modal form. However, the lexical form is used even when serious consequences are mentioned.

(55) …I don't dare to do that because if I do that I may end up in jail… (COCA)

Lexical form is more frequent in American English and is used even though the context suggests otherwise.

It also seems that the verb dare both as lexical and modal is used in negative sentences more in COCA than in BNC. This means that even lexical dare appears more in non-assertive contexts in COCA. In BNC, modal dare is also quite frequent in affirmative sentences even though it should not. This again implies the preference of modal dare in BNC and on the other hand preference of lexical dare in COCA.

As far as blend constructions of dare are concerned there are more frequent in

COCA, thus in American English. This confirms what was said in theoretical part of the thesis. American speakers may use it because modal form is obsolete for them and by taking the do-support they are making it more lexical or they just passively accept the blends without thinking.

One of the examples of blend construction is idiomatic phrase don’t you dare meaning threat. However, there are three instances of usage of this phrase with to- infinitive in each corpus making it very rare. This suggests that the idiomatic phrases are deeply rooted in both varieties that they do not allow any changes. This phrase with to-infinitive is an exception and might have been chosen to lay emphasis on the action and having courage. For illustration of this usage there were sample sentences (19), (20) from BNC and (68) from COCA that can be found in previous chapter.

Don’t you dare is not the only phrase that is deeply rooted in both varieties. There are also how dare you and dare say which is the most frequent. This phrase covers most

56 of the examples of modal dare in BNC and COCA. It is strongly rooted there so the modal dare say is used even when it has the original meaning of courage. This is the case mainly in COCA. Even though it prefers the lexical form of dare the phrase dare say is well integrated so American English chooses it even with the original “courage” meaning as can be seen below in sentence (76). Sentence (30) is there for illustration of the typical usage of the phrase as I suppose.

(27) I dare say you meant well. (BNC: HTR)

(72) Yet who dare say no to the empress? (COCA)

So, this supports that phrases are deeply rooted in both varieties. It can be said that modal dare is in American English mostly used with the idiomatic phrases.

6. CONCLUSION

This bachelor thesis was dealing with the verb dare which can function either as a lexical or modal verb. Special behaviour of dare is the blend construction that behaves like lexical verb even though it is followed by bare infinitive. The properties and meaning of the verb are therefore clearly set. However, unclear and limited information is given by grammar books in terms of context in which the individual forms of dare should be used. Only research by Duffley attempted to determine the context for lexical, modal and blend dare. Lexical dare represents the actual realization of the action; modal includes the conditions for the realization of daring like serious risks and consequences and also appears in non-assertive contexts and lastly blend mixes the contexts of both forms of the verb. These results were applied together with other information from grammar books and dictionaries in the corpus analysis for verification. The aim of this bachelor thesis was to bring together and confirm these theories on the sample sentences taken from corpora BNC for British English and

COCA for American English. Moreover, the frequency of occurrence and text type distribution of the verb dare in both corpora were analysed. The second aim of the thesis was to compare the frequency, text type distribution and mainly the usage of individual forms in both varieties of English.

The first part of the bachelor thesis was theoretical. It dealt with the theory and characteristics of the lexical verbs. Then the theory of auxiliary verbs was discussed.

Auxiliary verbs can be divided into non-modal auxiliary verbs (or primary verbs) and modal auxiliary verbs (or modals) which are further divided into central modal auxiliaries, marginal modal auxiliaries (category of dare) and modal idioms and semi- modals. The characteristics and meanings of modals were briefly described in this section. Afterwards only the verb dare and its theory were discussed. Several

58 researches about dare were briefly introduced in this section to show that dare and its problematics have been noticed before. However, only research by Duffley was considered in the practical part of the thesis since he dealt with the context and semantics of the verb that is the main focus of this thesis.

The second part of the thesis was practical. At first, the verb dare was analysed in

BNC. After the methodology of research was explained the frequency of dare in BNC was discussed. The verb appears in corpus 3,285 times in total which makes it rather rare when the size of the corpus is considered. As far as the individual forms are concerned the modal is slightly more frequent than the lexical form. Then the text type distribution in BNC was analysed which revealed that dare is mostly used in Written books and periodicals and less in spoken register. However, modal dare is more frequent in discourse than in written texts which can be because it saves time not to include the marker to in the utterance. When the usage of dare in sample sentences taken from BNC was analysed, it was discovered that the lexical dare mostly covers the meaning of “have enough courage to” and could be substituted by this phrase. The lexical form is used in the sense of challenge which was, however, not very frequent in

BNC. Duffley’s assumption that that lexical dare is used in the sense of realization of the action and having the courage to do it was confirmed even though it appeared in non-assertive contexts as well as modal. Few cases were disputable. However, if the verb was substituted by the phrase have courage to, the selection for lexical form was clearer. Modal dare appears mostly in the phrases I dare say and how dare you in which can be substituted without change of meaning by modal could. Modal dare mostly appeared in non-assertive contexts; that verifies the information from grammar books.

However, it also appeared in affirmative sentences but the choice for modal dare was justified by Duffley’s statements about usage of modals. As far as the blends in BNC

59 are concerned there were two exceptions with to-infinitive that were probably used because they wanted to emphasise the action of daring. Otherwise the blends were mixing the contexts of both forms exactly how Duffley claims.

The frequency of occurrence, text type distribution and usage of dare were also analysed in COCA. At first, the methodology of research was explained. After that, the frequency was examined. The verb appears 12,749 times in COCA that makes dare very rare in American English. It was discovered that lexical is slightly more popular than modal form. The reason may be that modal form is considered obsolete in

American English and is mostly used with the fixed phrases like dare say and how dare you. Text type distribution of dare revealed that the verb is mainly used in Fiction and is highly uncommon in spoken register. As far as the usage of dare in COCA is concerned, it was discovered that the lexical form is preferred and sometimes even in contexts more suitable for modal dare. This may be again because the modal can be perceived as obsolete construction. Otherwise the lexical form keeps the meaning of

“have enough courage” or challenge that was quite frequent in COCA. Modal dare appears mostly in phrases dare say and how dare you. Modal also mostly appears in non-assertive contexts and exceptionally in affirmative sentences. Blend constructions were very frequent in COCA and mostly verified Duffley’s assumptions of mixing the contexts of both forms.

The last part of the practical part of the thesis was the comparison of usage of dare in British English and in American English. After the normalized frequencies were calculated it was discovered that dare is more frequent in BNC than in COCA which can be because American English is more open to change and dare can be perceived as obsolete and therefore substituted by different phrases like I am afraid. Moreover, lexical form is preferred in COCA while the modal is more frequent in BNC.

Comparison of the text type distribution discovered that in both varieties dare is used in written text types more than in spoken registers. On the other hand, dare is more used in spoken register in BNC than in COCA. Lastly, the usage of the verb in both corpora was compared. There was no change of meaning; the verb preserves its meaning of

“having enough courage”, challenge, outrage or threat in both varieties. However, the sense of challenge was more frequent together with fixed modal phrases in COCA.

Furthermore, the lexical form and blend construction are preferred more in COCA than in BNC which prefers the modal form. Lexical form in COCA is sometimes chosen even when contexts suggest the modal form. The preference for lexical form in

American English is also suggested by the fact that it appears more in non-assertive contexts than in BNC. Both varieties highly use idiomatic phrases dare say, how dare you and don’t you dare. They do not allow any changes and if so, it is an exception. For example, only a few times was the phrase don’t you dare used with to-infinitive.

Moreover, American English sometimes uses the phrase dare say even with “courage” meaning. This suggests that idiomatic phrases are deeply rooted in both varieties and especially in American English where the usage of modal form declined but is kept thanks to these phrases.

The verb dare is very special thanks to its different forms and definitely should be examined more thoroughly. This bachelor thesis attempted to bring together given information to clarify how the verb is used in what contexts. It was discovered that it mostly correlates with the results of Duffley’s research and other theories taken from grammar books – the usage in non-assertive contexts and with the meaning of the verb.

However, exceptions were found and it can be argued that the choice for individual forms of dare depends on the speaker or the subject of daring and also which form is preferred either in British English or in American English.

7. REFERENCES

Primary Sources

Davies, M. (2008-). The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 560

million words, 1990-present. Web. 3 April 2018. Retrieved from

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The Sketch Engine. (n.d.) Web. 3 April 2018. Retrieved from

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Alexander, L. G. (1988). Longman English grammar. London: Longman.

Duffley, P. J. (1994). Need and dare: The black sheep of the modal family. In Lingua,

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Curme, G. O. (1947). English grammar. New York: Barnes & Noble.

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Huddleston, R. D., & Pullum, G. K. (2002). The Cambridge grammar of the English

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Leech, G. N., & Svartvik, J. (1994). A communicative grammar of English (2nd ed.).

London: Longman.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (n.d.). Web. 19 April 2018. Retrieved from

https://www.merriam-webster.com/

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http://www.thegrammarlab.com/?p=160.

Oxford English Dictionary. (n.d.). Web. 19 April 2018. Retrieved from

http://www.oed.com/

Quirk, R. & Duckworth P. A. (1968). Co-existing negative preterite forms of dare. In

Essays on the English language: medieval and modern. Harlow: Longmans.

Quirk, R., Crystal, D., Greenbaum, S., & Leech, G. (1985). A comprehensive grammar

of the English language. London: Longman.

Swan, M. (2005). Practical English usage (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Taeymans, M. (2004). An investigation into the marginal modals DARE and NEED in

British present-day English: A corpus-based approach. In Up and down the Cline

– The Nature of Grammaticalization, 97-114. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Publishing Co.. Retrieved from

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and practice: proceedings of the second international conference on English and

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Republic, 51-64. Zlín: Univerzita Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně. Retrieved from

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n_English

8. RESUMÉ

This bachelor thesis deals with the verb dare that can function either as lexical or modal and also have special form of the blend construction that mixtures the properties of both forms. The thesis focuses on the use of the verb in individual forms. Its aim is to clarify in what contexts people tend to use which form and to compare the usage of the verb in British English and American English.

The thesis is consisted of two parts. The first part is theoretical and briefly deals with the theory about lexical verbs. Then the theory about auxiliary verbs and their division into non-modal auxiliary verbs and modal auxiliary verbs is introduced. This part also includes summary of theories and various researches about the verb dare and the usage of its forms. The dictionary definitions are also provided in this section.

The second part is the corpus analysis. This section examines the verb dare and its forms in selected sample sentences taken from the corpora British National Corpus and

Corpus of Contemporary American English. These corpora were chosen because they represent British and American English. The analysis provides explanation why the particular forms were chosen based on the information given in previous part of the thesis. It considers the context of the sentences and meaning of the verb. Second part of the analysis is the comparison of the usage of dare in British and American English.

Although grammars and dictionaries provide general information about the verb it is not always clear in what contexts which form to choose. The thesis brought together given information and clarified the usage of the verb. The results mostly proved the information to be right. However, exceptions were found and it can be argued that the choice for individual forms depends on the speaker or the subject of daring and also which form is preferred either in British English or in American English.

RESUMÉ

Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá slovesem „dare“, které se může chovat jako lexikální nebo modální a také může mít smíšenou funkci, která spojuje charakteristiky obou forem. Práce se zaměřuje na použití slovesa v jednotlivých formách. Jejím cílem je vyjasnit, ve kterých kontextech mají lidé tendenci používat konkrétní formy a také porovnat užívání slovesa v britské a americké angličtině.

Práce je rozdělena na dvě části. První část je teoretická a stručně se zabývá teorií o lexikálních slovesech. Dále pak teorií o pomocných slovesech, které se dělí na nemodální pomocná slovesa a modální pomocná slovesa. Tato část také zahrnuje shrnutí teorií a různých výzkumů o slovese „dare“ a použití jeho forem. Slovníkové definice slovesa jsou také součástí této kapitoly.

Druhou částí práce je korpusová analýza. Tato sekce zkoumá sloveso „dare“ a jeho formy ve vybraných příkladových větách, které byly vybrány z korpusů Britský národní korpus a Korpus současné americké angličtiny. Tyto korpusy byly vybrány, protože představují britskou a americkou angličtinu. Analýza poskytuje vysvětlení, proč byly jednotlivé formy zvoleny na základě informací získaných v předchozí části práce.

Analýza zvažuje kontext daných vět a také význam slovesa. Druhou částí analýzy je porovnání použití slovesa „dare“ v britské a americké angličtiny.

Ačkoli gramatické příručky a slovníky poskytují všeobecné informace o slovese, není vždy jasné, v jakých kontextech jakou formu zvolit. Tato bakalářská práce spojila a shrnula dané informace a vyjasnila užití slovesa „dare“. Výsledky ve většině případů dokázaly, že jsou dané informace správné. Výjimky se ale našly a může být prohlášeno,

že volba jednotlivých forem závisí na mluvčím nebo podmětu děje a také na preferencích konkrétních forem v britské a americké angličtině.