Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

someone/something is certain or uncertain about an idea, a procedure or an action. Table 8.7
below lists adjectives of the CERTAIN group in the pattern A DJ about N, with which this
meaning is most commonly associated.
Order ALC Freq. BC Freq.
1 sure 3 uncertain 6
2 unsure 3 ambivalent 3
3 equivocal 1 unsure 2
4 skeptical 1 undecided 1
5 uncertain 1 agnostic 1
6 assertive 1 insistent 1
7 ambivalent 1
8 certain 1
9 dubious 1
10 definitive 1
Total 14 14
Prop. 50% 50%
Table 8.7. The CERTAINTY group in A DJ about N
As can be seen, the most immediately striking finding here is that most adjectives above
express uncertainty rather than certainty in both corpora. However, there is one further
observation to be made about these data. Specifically, in ALC this pattern is more likely to be
used to evaluate current or past phenomena, whereas in BC it is more likely to be used to
comment on phenomena presented as occurring in the future:
[Applied linguistics]
A further possibility however might be that speakers were unsure about which primes were correct,
grammatically, when associated with the words in different classes, leading to these slightly
paradoxical patterns of priming and grammaticality effects. (ALC: Speech2004_4)
At an overt level, it appears that the learners are still uncertain about assigning gender to nouns,
appearing willing to accept errors as possible forms. (ALC: SLA2005_6)
[Business studies]
If investors are uncertain about future tax rates, they may place less weight on the tax effect
of dividends, which would decrease the coefficient on yielded penalty.(BC:
Accounting2005_2)
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