ALTS

This project aims to undertake a systematic study of bounded alternations in the English language from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives: semantic, functional, pragmatic and communicative consequences of the paradigmatic variation observed in phonetic, syntactic, thematic (in the sense of Systemic Grammar), discursive and textual (in the field of diachronic translation) alternations -- microvariation in stress patterns of compounds, in the order of constituents in the phrase and in the clause, in the explicit and implicit syntax of constituents in contexts of ellipsis and of subject deletion, in contexts of subject-verb agreement with collective nouns, in those choices of speech acts in controlled discourse and in solutions of diachronic translation. The methodology is empirical in all cases, since the study of individual cases of microvariation takes as the starting point actual examples retrieved from electronic collections of texts, both of historical and contemporary English, of native and learner language. ALTS has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (grant no. FFI2013-44065-P).