Nuevos enfoques de la evaluación de los aprendizajes en la universidad

An important aim of the analysis of the cease + to infinitive and cease + ing

constructions has been to see what situation types these constructions appear with. As noted by Freed (1979) and also by the Webster’s New World Dictionary (1989), cease expresses the cessation of a condition or of an existence. In these

interpretations cease is defined as containing in its meaning the cessation of a state expressing existence or a condition.

As it will be assumed here, expressing the cessation of an existence or condition is a property of the construction as a whole. Although the cease + ing construction

can also express the cessation of an existence, this tends to be rather a property of the cease + to infinitive construction, as a result of the interaction between cease

and the to-infinitive; the change from one state of affairs to another is often gradual

expressing the gradual cessation of one existence and the emergence of a new one.

As tables 2) and also 3) show, ‘be’ seems to be the most frequent verb within the

cease + to infinitive constructions; ‘exist’ and ‘have’ are also quite numerous

within this construction. Thus, the queries in BNC yielded 473 matches for cease + to infinitive; the three constructions, ‘cease to be’, ‘cease to exist’ and ‘ceased to

have’ amounted to more than half of the findings (291 entries (61.5%) and the case with ceases + to infinitive is similar (out of 235 entries the three constructions gave

150 matches) (63.8%) and ceased + to infinitive (472 matches out of 795 entries)

(59.3%) (examples for ‘cease to be’, ‘cease to exist’ and ‘ceased to have’ are sentences 20, 21 and 22)60.

ICAME

BE EXIST HAVE

Cease to 30 entries 8 entries 1 2

Ceases to 14 entries 8 entries 0 2

Ceased to 48 entries 11 2 2

Table 2. The occurrence of ‘be’, ‘exist’ and ‘have’ within the cease + to infinitive

construction; findings from ICAME

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Egan (2003) also notes the high frequency of ‘be’ and ‘exist’ within the cease + to infinitive

construction. He states that in his findings the two verbs make up more than half of the complement predicates of cease + to infinitive.

160 BNC BE EXIST HAVE Cease to 473 entries 190 63 38 Ceases to 235 entries 125 13 12 Ceased to 795 entries 336 113 23

Table 3. The occurrence of ‘be’, ‘exist’ and ‘have’ within the cease + to infinitive

construction; findings from BNC

The occurrence of other state verbs, e.g. cognitive verbs like ‘believe’, emotive verbs like ‘feel’, ‘love’, ‘like’ also appear within the construction, although in a much more reduced number (ICAME findings show five matches for ‘cease to feel’) (sentences (23) and (24) with ‘cease to believe’ and ‘cease to love’).

(23) In those few hours from noon to midnight of that August day that had been so filled with the Unusual, she had never ceased to believe in the Usual, in the day-to- day life she had enjoyed for many years. (LOB)

(24) This is the normal way of gradually and painfully realising fully that a loved companion has gone, never to return: recognising what has happened and letting them go. Not rejecting them, not ceasing to love them, but slowly building up a new role and identity which no longer depends upon their presence for its satisfactory

functioning. (BNC)

Apart from the cases when the cease + to infinitive construction contains state

verbs and where the subject is an experiencer or a patient, this construction also appears with activity verbs. Although activity verbs often require an acting agent as their subject within the cease + to infinitive construction, the subject, instead of

being an agent often behaves like an experiencer or a patient, as is also the case in (25).

(25) If we unplug a TV set from the mains electricity, it ceases to function. But I can not then say that the real source of electricity is the socket upon the wall.

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Unlike the cease + to infinitive construction, cease + ing tends to appear frequently

with acting agents. So long as the subject is an acting agent, it is expected to appear within the cease + ing rather than within the cease + to infinitive construction (26).

(26) (..) When the clock has been destroyed, the rest of the objects in the room cease attacking at once. When the adventurers have finished with the clock, this chamber will probably be a complete shambles. (BNC)

Although the cease + ing construction also appears with state verbs61, this seems to be more reduced than in the case of the cease + to infinitive construction; table 4)

shows the frequency of the verbs ‘be’, ‘exist’ and ‘have’ within the cease + ing

construction. As the data show state verbs tend to appear more frequently within the cease + to infinitive construction than within cease + ing.

WEBCORP

to be / being to exist / existing to have / having

Cease 252 / 262 206 / 151 538 / 147

Ceases 338 / 0 286 / 0 206/ 0

Ceased 337 / 0 258 / 0 0 / 0

Table 4. The occurrence of ‘be’, ‘exist’ and ‘have’ within the cease + to infinitive and cease + ing construction; Webcorp findings

Figure 1: The frequency of ‘be’ within cease + to infinitive and cease + ing (BNC)

By contrast, activity verbs activity verbs like ‘make’, ‘do’ or ‘run’, show an

increase within the cease + ing construction (table 5). Table 6) gives an overview

61 _{Tregidgo (1980) states that cease + ing does not appear with states, so that with states only cease}

+ to infinitive is possible. Although this construction can appear with statives as sentence 29) also

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over the occurrence of eventuality types within the cease + to infinitive and cease + ing constructions.

Table 5. ‘Make’, ‘do’ and ‘run’ within the cease + to infinitive and cease + ing

construction; Webcorp findings

Cease to (464) Ceased to (701) Cease + ing (96) Ceased +ing (105)

Be (190) Be (336) Trade (14) Trade (33) Exist (63) Exist (113) Be (8) Be (5) Have (38) Have (23) Use (7) Operate (4) Apply (21) Function (17) Feed (5) Work (3) Function (10) Believe (7) Make (4) Carry (2) Amaze (6) Operate (7) Fight (3) Provide (2) Use (5) Make (6) Attack (2) Struggle (2) Act (5) Hold (6) Brew (2) Talk (2) Do (4) Amaze (6) Childbear (2) Swing (2) Believe (4) Play (6) Defend (2) Use (2)

Table 6: The occurrence of event types within the cease (d) + to infinitive and cease (d) + ing constructions (based on data from the BNC

Findings from ICAME yielded 5 matches for the cease + ing construction; the

complement verb is an activity verb, like ‘farming’ and ‘going’. While ceases + ing produced no entries, ceased + ing gave 5 entries; the complement verb in most

cases is an activity verb, requiring an acting agent (e.g. ‘weeping’, ‘farming’, ‘trading’, ‘talking) (27).

Similar is the case with the findings from the BNC corpus: cease + ing turned 85

results, ceases+ing: 4 matches, ceased + ing: 96 matches. The verbs are mostly

agentive verbs, like ‘trading’, ‘using’, ‘feeding’, ‘making’, ‘operating’, ‘working’, etc.

WEBCORP

to make / making to do /doing to run / running

Cease 149/ 140 170/ 168 165 / 140

Ceases 146/ 129 143 / 126 154 / 107

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(27) The marine, hands on cheeks, rolled by his unwounded side onto his stomach. He ceased weeping. (..)The marine was still. He would soon die. (BROWN)

Even in case the cease + ing construction appears with state verbs the subject tends

to have an agentive interpretation. Examples of this are sentences (28-29); in both of these cases the subject behaves like an acting agent; in (28) ‘cease being a pawn’ can be paraphrased as ‘acting like a pawn’; in (29) the construction refers to the people that should behave in a certain way.

(28) How, you may ask, can you cease being a pawn? Firstly, as you perceive your old fears welling up within you, as you try to tackle the same old problem and are paralysed by the thought of failure, look at the screen of your mind. (BNC)

(29) With increasing concern for social problems as opposed to individual "sins" came an increasing amount of "social work" as opposed to individual acts of charity. The temptation was that the churches' social work, begun as a way to win the unchurched as well as to help them physically, would cease being the means and instead become the end. The justification for doing the work might be seen to lie in the material benefits it produced. (BNC)

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