Nonfinite Clauses. an Analysis of To-Infinitives and -Ing Participles in Newspaper Articles from the Guardian

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3, University of Wurzburg, language: English, abstract: The present study focuses on nonfinite clauses as one of the three main types of clauses aside from finite clauses and verbless clauses. The aim of this paper is to analyse the structural classes of to-infinitives and -ing participle clauses concerning their realizations on the clause level as well as the phrase level. In Section 5 the theoretical background knowledge to the analysis of three newspaper articles from "The Guardian" is applied along the lines of these features. "Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations." Edward Sapir, a poet as well as pioneer linguist, draws our attention to the great diversity that language itself holds. Even the small section of Sentence Analysis presents a great many points of interest that would be worth analysing and applying on a text."