The present study concentrates on Maria Edgeworth’s use of auxiliary verbs (have or be) in combination with the participle gone in perfect tenses and the possible reasons for the choice of one or the other. A corpus containing most of her novels and moral tales was compiled and all the examples in which gone appeared were extracted and later analysed manually. The results show a clear preference for be, even in her later works, dating from when have was already well-established in the language as the auxiliary verb for perfect tenses. As for the reasons, while Maria Edgeworth was thought to have been influenced by the Irish English variety in her choice, a comparison between her use of auxiliaries in the narrative sections of her works and in the voice of the characters might indicate a possible manipulation by editors or an intention to show differences in speech. Similarly, it is also likely that some of the components of motion situations may have motivated her choices
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jana Kochanowskiego w Kielcach
oai:bibliotekacyfrowa.ujk.edu.pl:4261 ; doi:10.25951/4364
Token : A Journal of English Linguistics
Feb 14, 2023
Nov 25, 2021
43
59
https://bibliotekacyfrowa.ujk.edu.pl/publication/4364
Edition name | Date |
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Cortés, Nuria, Calvo, Maria Edgeworth’s choice of auxiliary verb in perfect tenses | Feb 14, 2023 |