Analyzing the relationship between the English impersonal appearance construction and framed clause deicticity: a quantitative study

Abstract

This paper deals with the English impersonal appearance construction (it seems/appears) and its relationship with the propositions over which it scopes. Attention focuses on four aspects: the presence/absence of explicit personalization via circumstantial element to me; the use of conjunctive, comparative or elided binder; the modal/temporal deicticity of the framed proposition; and the instantiation of these features across written and spoken modes of communication. These features are considered on account of prior studies assigning semantic correlates to their occurrence on the basis of qualitative analysis. The study applies log-linear analysis, a statistical technique that allows exploration of associations between two or more categorical variables, to test the degree of association between the four aspects mentioned. Three significant effects are included in the final model: a three-way interaction between mode of communication, binder choice and personalization, and two two-way associations between personalization and framed clause deicticity, and between binder choice and framed clause deicticity. The identified associations are discussed in the light of relevant literature and qualitative findings. The paper ends with concluding remarks and critical reflections on the use of log-linear analysis for the study of linguistic variation.