An Analysis of the Grammatical and Pragmatic Values of Seem in the C19th Section of the Corpus of English Philosophy Texts

Abstract

This paper examines the functions of seem in the Corpus of English Philosophy Texts (CEPhiT), a sub-corpus of the Coruna Corpus. The study focuses on the several meanings of this verb with respect to the contexts in which it is embedded. This includes the analysis of the linguistic context, which might have some effect on this verb selection in comparison with other semantically related forms, such as appear. My objective is to describe the manifestations of seem, and, as a result, a categorisation of seem units in the text is presented in accordance with Aijmer's (2009) classification of the values of seem. This analysis also seeks to contribute to studies dealing with the description of grammaticalization processes concerning this verb. In many ways, the values of seem are related to those of modal verbs, as pointed out in Aijmer (2009). I depart from this modal meaning of seem. In my description of seem samples in CEPhiT, we will follow Aijmer (2009), de Haan (2007) and Cornillie (2007), among others, to demonstrate the evidential, rather than epistemic, meaning of this verbal form. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier