Rivalry between expect and hope with particular reference to their constructional developments

Minoji Akimoto
Aoyama Gakuin University

Abstract

1. Introduction

According to Dixon (2005), the verbs expect and hope are classified as belonging to the wanting type. Syntactically, these verbs behave very similarly as follows:

On the other hand, these verbs display differences in syntactic behaviour as follows:

Semantically, these verbs have very similar, but slightly different meanings to be discussed later.

This paper discusses the functional and constructional developments of expect and hope from Middle English (1100–1500) to present-day English, based on various corpora. While I shall focus on these two verbs, I shall also refer to other such verbs of the wanting type as desire and wish.

The research questions to be raised are as follows:

1. What are the particular developments of expect and hope?
2. Why has expect developed its multiple functions compared with the other verbs?
3. In terms of subjectification, what implications do these two verbs contain?
4. How has ‘constructionalization’ played a role in the formation of the pattern ‘be expected to-inf’?
5. What statuses have expect and hope retained in the category of the wanting type including desire and wish?

2. Previous studies

For present-day English, Quirk et al. (1985: 1114) mention ‘I expect’ in the comment clause type (i) (a), which hedges, i.e. it expresses the speaker’s tentativeness over the truth value of the matrix clause.

Biber et al. (1999: 710–711, 860, 969) refer to some characteristics of expect as follows:

1. Expect + NP + to-clause is particularly common in news.
2. Be expected + to-clause is very common in news.
3. With as, expect is used as a stance adverbial clause in news and academic prose.

Dixon (2005: 236, 365, 367) mentions the parenthetical use of expect and hope, the passive construction of expect, and the passive construction with it as subject of expect and hope.

Wierzbicka (2006) also mentions some properties of expect as an epistemic phrase. According to her, the relevant meaning of ‘I expect’ seeks immediate confirmation from the addressee. (229).

There seem to be no historical studies of expect and hope. Brinton (1996, 2008) makes no special mention of these verbs. Only Noël and van der Auwera (2009) refer briefly to the pattern ‘be expected to-inf’ in relation to ‘be supposed to-inf’. What is peculiar with expect is that it has developed the pattern ‘be expected to-inf’ from an earlier stage than the pattern expect to-inf. The OED (s.v. expect, v. 4.b.) gives the following citations.

3. What are the particular developments of expect and hope?

3.1 Expect

Expect came from Latin ex(s)pectare around the middle of the sixteenth century (cf. OED (s.v. expect, v.). Its original meaning was ‘wait’.

Table 3 shows the functional development of expect from Early Modern English to present-day English. [2] There was no example found in the Middle English part of the Helsinki Corpus. The figures in parentheses show percentages.

The general tendency is that expect has been taking more and more to-infs at the expense of NPs. Particularly, the increase of the pattern be expected to is remarkable. Expect takes more that-less clauses than that-cl complements.

3.2 Hope

Hope (OE hopian), according to the OED (s.v. hope, v. 1.a. intr.), was used in the OE period as an intransitive verb in the sense of ‘To entertain expectation of something desired; to look (mentally) with expectation’ as follows:

Table 4 shows the functional change of hope from Middle English to present-day English

The pattern ‘hope + Ø’ has been more predominant particularly since the Early Modern English period than the pattern ‘hope + that cl’. The pattern ‘hope + to-inf’ which appeared in the ME period, is also frequent. Parenthetical ‘I hope’ has been in use since the EModE period. However, the germ of the development of hope as a parenthetical marker was already seen in

Furthermore, comparing these two verbs, the following points are of particular interest.

1. The pattern ‘be expected to-inf’, which was unknown until Early Modern English, has become very frequent from 1800 onward. This pattern should be connected with the active pattern ‘expect NP to-inf’ which appeared around the seventeenth century, a little earlier appearance than ‘be expected to-inf’. But in present-day English, ‘be expected to-inf’ appears more frequently than ‘expect NP to-inf’. Usually it is assumed that the active form appears first, and then the passive form. This case seems opposite. I will take up this case later again.

   ‘Be hoped to-inf’ was a rather frequent pattern between 1600 and 1900, but not so frequent in present-day English.

2. ‘Expect Ø’ appears more frequently than ‘expect that’, but the difference is greater in the pattern ‘hope Ø/that’ where ‘hope Ø’ is more frequently used. [4]
3. The subject ‘I’ appears more frequently with ‘hope’ than with ‘expect’ where not only the first person subject, but the second and third person subjects are used. This difference will account for the higher frequency of the parenthetical use of ‘I hope’ than ‘I expect’. On the other hand, it can be said that the verb expect has the potential for the development of its passive form over time. Tables 5 and 6 show the breakdown of subjects with expect and hope.

4. With expect, a single NP object has been the most common pattern right from the beginning, but towards PDE its share has become less. This must be the result of the increasing of the patterns ‘expect + to-inf’ and ‘expect + NP + to-inf’.

   Hope + NP is infrequent throughout the periods. Instead, ‘hope for + NP’ appeared around the Early Modern English period.

5. ‘Expect’ is often used, headed by as and than, but hope is hardly used with these adverbial conjunctions.

As can be seen, expect takes more third person subjects than first person subjects. Hope, on the other hand, takes first person subjects predominantly. Second person subjects are more frequently used with expect than with hope.

4. Why has expect developed its multifunctions compared with the other verbs of the wanting type?

As can be seen from Table 1, expect has had more various functional patterns than theother verbs of the wanting type, such as hope, desire, and wish (see Tables 4, 9 and 10) respectively. Noël and van der Auwera (2009) discuss the brief history of expect in parallel with the development of be supposed to, referring to their shared meaning spectrum from ‘to believe that something will happen’ over ‘to intend to do something’ to ‘to want somebody to do something/obligation’. The paper suggests that the existence of be supposed to promoted the development of be expected to, but does not say anything about the multifunctional development of expect.

The development of this plurality of expect stems partly from its flexibility with subjective and objective nature. By ‘subjective’ I mean the projection of personal opinion/belief on to the statement, while ‘objective’ I mean no projection of personal opinion/belief. While expect takes first person subjects, which seems to be of a subjective nature, the verb more often takes third person subjects (see Table 5), which again seems to be of an objective nature. [5] This objective nature must have led to the passive + infinitive pattern which is also an objective construction. In this respect, the development of expect can be said to have gone against the subjectification process. See the discussion in section 5.

On its semantic side, the meaning of expect (= to think that something will happen because it seems likely or has been planned (LDCE)) combines the categories of thinking and wanting, as LDCE gives the meanings of thinking (see LDCE, s.v. expect) although Dixon (2005: 488–490) puts expect in the wanting type. This two-sidedness seems to have expanded the functions of expect in respective domain: that is, those of the thinking category and those of the wanting category in terms of their complementation. Verbs of the thinking category tend to take that or that-less complementation, while verbs of the wanting category tend to take to-infinitive complementation.

On the whole, the various infinitive constructions which expect has developed have been a remarkable characteristic of this verb.

5. Subjectification

Subjectification is usually defined as “the semasiological process whereby [speakers/writers] come over time to develop meanings for [lexemes] that encode or externalize their perspectives and attitudes as constrained by the communicative world of the speech event, rather than by the so-called ‘real-world’ characteristics of the event or situation referred to.” (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 30)

Traugott (1995: 38–39) gives ‘I think’ as an example of subjectification in the sense of indicating speaker’s epistemic attitude. Some characteristics of ‘I think’ are:

1. first person subject
2. change from propositional to non-propositional
3. expressing more epistemic meaning
4. parenthetical use; more discourse marker use

The pattern ‘I hope’ satisfies all these conditions, and is said to have undergone subjectification. Expect, on the other hand, does not have all these characteristics. This verb, as is seen in Table 3, takes more third person subjects. It is used parenthetically, but not as often as hope. On the contrary, expect is more often used in the passive form. The passive voice is considered as an objective device of expression, and therefore is used more often in scientific texts (cf. Huddleston 2009 [1971]: 93–127). In this regard, expect and hope can be said to have split into different pathways of change; that is, expect moves into non-subjectification directions, and hope into subjectification directions.

6. How has ‘constructionalization’ played a role in the formation of the pattern ‘be expected to-inf’?

6.1 Constructionalization

Recently, ‘construction’ or ‘constructionalization’ has attracted a lot of attention among linguists. Regarding constructionalization, Bergs and Diewald (2008: 4) state as follows:

It should have become clear that constructional approaches to linguistic change, and construction grammar in particular, not only raise some interesting new questions here, but that they are also well suited for dealing with these problems and for treating multiple elements as single units, either in the form of constructions or what could be termed constructionalization, i.e. the formation of new units (constructions) out of hitherto independent material.

Constructionalization is a diachronic model with generalization, abstraction and productiveness as key concepts for explaining language change. As regards meaning, the concept includes pragmatic meaning, possibly to be developed into conventional meaning. Confined to the subject under discussion, Palmer (2003: 12–13) and Noël and van der Auwera (2009) in their discussions on the meaning of ‘be expected to-inf’, connect this pattern with its active correspondence. But as can be seen in their Table 1, ‘be expected to-inf’ is more frequent than ‘expect (NP) to-inf’ in the FLOB corpus, and it can be said that ‘be expected to-inf’ is a new construction with new meanings: epistemic and deontic.

Frequency of use also plays an important role in establishing a construction. In the discussion on the frequency and the formation of constructions, Bybee and Hopper (2001: 14) state: “the more often two elements occur in sequence the tighter will be their constituent structure. The tightest constituency is the result of two very specific items occurring frequently together.” However, further investigation is needed into why some verbs, such as expect and suppose, form constructions in the passive construction with new meanings, while other verbs, such as know and think do not.

‘Be expected to-inf’ is a subtype of the passive construction. Since the Early Modern English period, the pattern ‘be + pp + to-inf’ has been productive as in

[6]

Their active counterparts must have preceded their passive ones, but the passive constructions have been more frequent than active ones, possibly because the passive form in general need not refer to the agent, which means no personal involvement, in other words, an objective way of expression.

As regards expect, as discussed previously, this verb has had multiple constructions with more third person subjects than first person subjects; that is, expect is a less subjective verb, and fits into the construction where the passive form appears. See the following examples.

6.2 Constructionalization and idiomatization

Constructions and idioms, by definition, consist of more than two elements, and are regarded as fairly fixed patterns with new meanings. As a matter of fact, Goldberg and Casenhiser (2006) include idioms in their construction definition, such as sleep the days away and the more ~ the more, “[t]he syntax of the construction cannot be accounted for by the rules of English…”

Jackendoff (2002: 172–177) introduces the idea of ‘constructional idioms’ which include verb-particle idioms (put NP off), way and away constructions. These cases show constructional similarities in that they have constrained syntactic structures with particular meanings. Although the idea of constructional idioms derives from a mixture of constructions and idioms, we will tentatively tease out the differences of constructions and idioms as follows:

Keeping these properties in mind, I would like to consider the ‘be expected to-inf’ pattern.

Quirk et al. (1985: 137, 143–4) classify be supposed to as a semi-auxiliary. Other similar phrases included in the semi-auxiliary category are: be bound to and be obliged to. Limiting the discussion to the ‘be + pp + to-inf’ construction, syntactically, they have the property of having no active correspondences, but semantically, they express ‘obligation’ and ‘epistemic’ meanings. In the case of ‘be expected to-inf’, the pattern is not fully fixed compared with ‘be supposed to-inf’ as follows:

But this pattern is more frequent than its possibly active correspondence. On the other hand, be expected to expresses epistemic and deontic meanings. These factors all being taken into account, the ‘be expected to-inf’ pattern has not been regarded as a member of the semi-auxiliary category, but has the potential for becoming a semi-auxiliary.

‘I hope’ in the form of ‘first person subject + present tense verb’ satisfies the properties of the construction (see Table 6), and has established itself as a comment clause (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 1114)

7. What statuses have expect and hope retained in the category of the wanting type?

In addition to these two verbs, desire, and wish are also included in the type of wanting (Dixon 2005: 490). They share some properties with expect and hope as follows:

The following tables show the frequencies of the functional changes of desire and wish.

The main function of desire is ‘desire + NP’, and the main functions of wish are ‘wish + NP’ and ‘wish + that zero’ The function of expect overlaps with those of desire and wish (see Tables 3, 9, and 10), although their frequencies differ. Interestingly, desire and wish have narrowed down their functions over time, but expect, possibly because of its young history, has maintained its various functions up to the present. The pattern ‘be desired to’ is similar to the pattern be expected to, but the former occurs far less frequently than the latter in present-day English. Wish has not developed this function (see Table 10). Compared with these verbs, the pattern be expected to in particular can be said to be a remarkable development in terms of its frequency and its epistemic meanings.

8. Summary

I have examined the functional and constructional developments of expect and hope with brief reference to desire and wish in the same category based on various corpora. These two verbs entered the phase of rivalry around the Early Modern English period. Of the various patterns of these verbs discussed so far, the most predominant characteristic patterns are ‘be expected to-inf’ and I hope respectively. In terms of subjectification, the former pattern is less of subjectification nature than the latter which has been subjectified in terms of the criteria given before (see section 5). From a view point of the construction, be expected to is in the process of development as a construction, and I hope has been established as a construction.

The verb expect, which was borrowed from Latin around the sixteenth century, has developed a variety of constructions – possibly because of the flexibility with which the verb possesses various subjects and meanings both with thinking and wanting types. The verb’s more objective property, part of which is exhibited in the taking of third person subjects, has led to the establishment of the to-infinitive constructions, particularly the ‘passive + to-infinitive’ construction. This construction has a potential for becoming a semi-auxiliary in the auxiliary system.

A question remains why the pattern ‘be expected to-infinitive’ has come to possess epistemic meanings, while many other verbs keep their neutral passives in this construction. Further investigation will be needed.

Finally, as a further broad picture of rivalry, I also referred briefly to the other verbs of the wanting type, such as desire and wish, and pointed out some similarities between expect, desire and wish irrespective of their frequencies.

Notes

[1] ‘Hope + NP’ was possible before, as in

But now ‘hope for + NP’ is common. This pattern began to appear in the Early Modern English period.

[2] The Helsinki Corpus is divided into the following periods: ME I (1150–1250, 113,010 words), ME II (1250–1350, 97,480 words), ME III (1350–1420, 184,230 words), ME IV (1420–1500, 213,850 words), EModE I (1500–1570, 190,160 words), EModE II (15706–1640, 189,800 words), EModE III (1640–1710, 171,040 words). The ARCHER Corpus covers seven subperiods of 50 years, spanning the time between 1650 and 1990. Each 50-year subcorpus includes roughly 20,000 words per register, containing ten texts of approximately 2,000 words each. The entire corpus totals some 1,700,000 words. Approximately two-thirds of the corpus are British English, and the one-third is American English. The FLOB Corpus (short for Freiburg version of the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus) represents written British English from 1991 and contains 500 samples of approximately 2,000 words each, totalling approximately one million words. As regards the Helsinki Corpus and the ARCHER Corpus, see Kytö (1996) and Biber et al. (1994) respectively.

As regards the Archer Corpus, for convenience, I have divided the periods as follows: I = 1600–1699, II = 1700–1799, III = 1800–1899, IV = 1900–.

[3] I order the patterns based on Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003: 546). Curiously, there is no ‘be expected to-inf’ pattern in LDCE. As can be seen from Table 3, however, this pattern has become very frequent towards the present time.

[4] The omission of the conjunction that was already frequent in OE (see Gorrell 1985: 348). Reasons for this phenomenon are various and depend on verbs. It is often said that when there are some intervening elements, such as adverbs, that is retained. But this is not deterministic. See the following example:

[5] Traugott (2010: 58) cautions that “[s]hifts toward first person subjects are not necessary correlates of or indicators of subjectivity …”

[6] According to the OED, the first occurrences of these patterns are as follows:

Noël and Auwera (2009: 611) give the following example of be supposed to:

Seoane-Posse (1996: 300–304) refers to the spread of the non-finite passive in Early Modern English.

Sources

ARCHER Corpus (AC) = A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers. More information at CoRD: http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/ARCHER/index.html

FLOB = The Freiburg-LOB Corpus ('F-LOB') (original version) compiled by Christian Mair, Albert-Ludwigs-Universit\E4t Freiburg. More information at CoRD: http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/FLOB/index.html

HC = The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (1991). Department of English, University of Helsinki. Compiled by Matti Rissanen (Project leader), Merja Kytö (Project secretary); Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Matti Kilpiö (Old English); Saara Nevanlinna, Irma Taavitsainen (Middle English); Terttu Nevalainen, Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (Early Modern English). (Included in the ICAME CD-ROM.) More information at CoRD: http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/HelsinkiCorpus/

MED = Middle English Dictionary. (1952–2001). Hans Kurath, Sherman M. Kuhn, John Reidy and Robert E. Lewis (eds.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec

OED = Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. Oxford: Clarendon, 2nd ed. (also OED CD-ROM (Version 2.0, 1999)

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