University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2013 Expressing Future Time In Spoken Conversational English: A Corpus-based Analysis Of The Sitcom Friends Brandon Harris University of Central Florida Part of the Language and Literacy Education Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Harris, Brandon, "Expressing Future Time In Spoken Conversational English: A Corpus-based Analysis Of The Sitcom Friends" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 2917. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/2917 EXPRESSING FUTURE TIME IN SPOKEN CONVERSATIONAL ENGLISH: A CORPUS-BASED ANALYSIS OF THE SITCOM FRIENDS by BRANDON A. HARRIS B.A. University of Central Florida, 2010 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Summer Term 2013 Major Professor: Keith Folse © 2013 Brandon A. Harris ii ABSTRACT Far from being simply will, a survey of English grammar textbooks revealed that a multitude of expressions exists in the English language to express the future time. These expressions include, but are not limited to, will, be going to, the simple present tense, modals, the future perfect tense, and the present progressive tense. With so many choices and with a lack of direct relationship between tense and time, a language learner may certainly have difficulties in choosing which expression to use when attempting to produce a future utterance. A corpus-based approach to analyzing real language has been demonstrated to be quite useful for the field of TESOL (Biber, Conrad, & Reppen, 1996; Biber & Conrad, 2001; Biber & Reppen, 2002) and numerous studies on the frequency of lexical and grammatical items of language have revealed salient features that otherwise would have remained unknown. Adding to this body of knowledge, the current study was an analysis of future expressions in spoken conversational English using the television sitcom Friends as a corpus. A careful analysis of 349,106 words from transcripts of 117 randomly selected episodes revealed that the most common expression of the future in the English language is the contracted form of be going to – gonna. The results of the study also revealed that only six future expressions emerged in this spoken conversational English from this corpus: will, be going to, the simple present tense, the present progressive tense, modals, and be about to. iii This thesis is dedicated to the King, Jesus Christ, who gives me strength. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Without the tremendous help of few, this thesis would not have been possible. I would first and foremost like to acknowledge my lovely wife Melissa who encouraged me and motivated me throughout the whole journey. She has and no doubt always will stand as a strong pillar in my life. I am also largely indebted to Dr. Keith Folse, who was a tremendous help, guide, and mentor throughout the entire study. I am extremely grateful for his patience, instruction, and kindness. In addition, I am grateful to the rest of my committee – Dr. Florin Mihai and Dr. Gergana Vitanova – some of the finest professors I have ever had in my academic career. Finally, I would like to acknowledge Mrs. Myrna Creasman and Dr. Marcella Farina from the Center for Multilingual Multicultural Studies for supporting me in this academic pursuit. Grace, mercy, and peace be upon you all in the Lord Jesus Christ. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... ix LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................... x LIST OF ACRONYMS ................................................................................................................. xi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Statement of the Problem ............................................................................................................ 2 Purpose of the Study ................................................................................................................... 3 Research Questions ..................................................................................................................... 4 Limitations of the Study.............................................................................................................. 4 CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE .................................................................................. 5 What are the future expressions in English? ............................................................................... 5 Grammar ................................................................................................................................. 5 English grammar ..................................................................................................................... 6 Verbs in English ...................................................................................................................... 7 English verb tenses ................................................................................................................. 8 Future expressions in English ................................................................................................. 9 How do ESL/EFL grammar textbooks present future time? ................................................ 11 Future time in ESL/EFL textbooks ........................................................................................... 11 Ordering of WILL and BGT in Textbooks ........................................................................... 16 Explanations for WILL and BGT in Textbooks ................................................................... 16 vi How can corpus linguistics help? ............................................................................................. 18 Corpus linguistics.................................................................................................................. 18 Advantages of corpus linguistics .......................................................................................... 19 Studies using corpus linguistics ............................................................................................ 20 What is spoken grammar? ..................................................................................................... 23 Conversation and sitcom dialogue ........................................................................................ 24 Corpus linguistic studies on future time expressions. ............................................................... 26 McCarthy & Carter, 1995 ..................................................................................................... 27 Berglund, 1997 ...................................................................................................................... 29 Berglund, 1999 ...................................................................................................................... 30 Szmrecsanyi, 2003 ................................................................................................................ 31 Cacoullos and Walker, 2009 ................................................................................................. 33 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................ 36 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 36 Design of the Study ................................................................................................................... 36 Pilot Study ................................................................................................................................. 37 The Corpus for this Study ......................................................................................................... 37 Analysis..................................................................................................................................... 39 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS ............................................................................................................ 43 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 43 vii Results ....................................................................................................................................... 43 1. How do native speakers actually express future time in spoken conversational English?................................................................................................................................. 43 2. Which