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This paper provides a corpus-based study of the Spanish phrase en plan (de) from a functional perspective. Overall, seven different functions have been identified, which can be grouped into two macrofunctions, namely the adverbial and the discursive values. Discursive uses are only recorded since the late 20th century, and they are more frequent in oral texts. The study also shows the variation between the prepositional phrase en plan de and the adverbial phrase en plan, which gains ground in the most recent texts. Finally, a more detailed analysis of the use of en plan (de) among Spanish teenagers in the early 21st century is also provided, since it is in this demographic sector where the use of the formula is more recurrent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide a formal and functional analysis of a selection of four English exemplifying markers, namely including, included, for example and for instance. The analysis unveils some recent ongoing changes which point at the broadening of the structural scope of including (which used to link exclusively non phrases in the past but can now be used with a wider variety of syntactic forms) and an increasing discursive use of for example and for instance (both tend to connect whole chunks of discourse and seem to be developing pragmatic meanings, especially - but not exclusively - as mitigators). The corpus-driven study is based on the texts of the Brown family of corpora, which allows the identification of any potential diachronic variation observed at three points in present-day English (namely, the 1960s, the 1990s and the 2000s) in both British and American English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]