Philippine E-Journals

Verb-Phrase Structures of the Modal Would in the Non-Professional Writings in the Philippines: A Corpus-Based Study

Dayang Kamlian

Discipline: Education

 

Abstract:

This study aimed to explore the frequency distribution of the verb-phrase structures of the modal would in the written texts of non-professional Filipino users of English and whether these structures resemble or deviate from the standard American English. The data, which composed of 132 script texts, were taken from the Philippine component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-PHI) compiled by Bautista, Lising, and Dayag (2004). AntConc 3.5.7 was employed to determine the occurrences of modal would in the chosen texts. The findings revealed that the most occurring verb phrase structure of modal would is “would + base form of the verb”. In addition, this study found out that there are varieties of verb-phrase structures of the modal would used in Philippine English.