Use of Aspect and Tense in the Language of Basketball Commentary

Abstract

The thesis deals with the grammatical categories of tense and aspect and their usage in the language of contemporary television basketball commentary. In the first part of the thesis, tense and aspect are defined as grammatical distinctions of an English verb, and the possible combinations of tense and aspect are introduced along with the ways these combinations express action. Furthermore, general stylistic features of sports commentary are presented. This theoretical background is then utilized in the analysis of a corpus of authentic basketball commentary. The results of the analysis are presented statistically and commented upon with regard to the typical features of sports commentary style.