Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

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prefer like hate love
Emotion verbs with to-infinitive complements 2
Figure 6. Percentage of general predications with four non-modalised matrix verbs from Late
Modern to Present-day English
case of love the change in numbers is barely perceptible in the figure. As for hate,
there is hardly any change between the first two periods and the change from the
second to the third period is not significant at the level of p = 0.05. In the case of
prefer the increase in the use of the construction from CETCT to BNC WI to encode
general predications is significant at the level of p = 0.005. In the case of like,
both stages in the increase are significant at this level.
The discussion below will be limited to like and prefer constructions displaying
statistically significant change in the periods in question. To begin with like,
there are two uses of non-modalised ‘like to’ in CLMET that are not represented
in the BNC, or indeed in other corpora of Present-day English, such as FLOB and
FROWN. 7 The first of these is the use of ‘like to’ to encode same-time predications.
(27)–(30) are cases in point.
(27) ‘‘Oh no,’’ wept the young lady; ‘‘you wished me away
because you knew I liked to be there!’’ (Brontë, Wuthering Heights)
(28) Thereupon I could have kissed her as a sort of tribute, liking to
be appreciated. (Blackmore, Lorna Doone)
(29) I wonder his brother likes to sit there, so late at night—on this
night too. (Dickens, Barnaby Rudge)
1780-1850
1911-1922
BNC WI
7. Although the construction illustrated in (27)–(29) is no longer current in English, one can
still encounter it in the literature. Hamawand’s (2002: 9) example “She likes to join the club” is
a case in point.