Construction and Interpretation Of Corpus-Based English Poetry Vocabulary Profile

Omar A Sheikh Al-Shabab

doi:10.7575//aiac.ijalel.v.6n.5p.51

Abstract

Vocabulary Profilers (VPrs) are deeply rooted in pedagogical purposes. The current investigation, however, uses the Classic and Compleat VPrs to: 1) determine the distribution and content of vocabulary in an English poetry corpus 2) explain differences in the constituents of the vocabulary profile (VP), 3) explore the role of language users in constructing the VP. The corpus includes Extended Corpus (EC: 1.363.225 words), Micro Corpus (MC: 43.200 words) from thirty-six poets, and two poems translated into Arabic. The main results show that Types, Offlist words, Academic and Anglo-Saxon words outline the VP, and that the number of Types and the size of the Individual Mental Lexicon constitute the main features of the translator’s VP. The paper concludes that the poet’s construction of the poetry VP undergoes multilayer interpretation by the reader/analyst and the translator, who utilize their socio-environmental context to pin down the semantic potential of the VP anew.

Highlights

1.1 Vocabulary and the Mental Lexicon (ML)Essentially, text is prior to corpus, and vocabulary contextualization in a text predates the text itself; the poet’s choices from existing vocabulary, mold new lexical and derivational forms, and necessarily result in an interesting design that embodies the poetic lexicon and message
The present paper examines vocabulary through the working of the Vocabulary Profile (VP) in the first person domain, a construct which explains the speaker’s internalization of language including interpretation, ML and linguistic processing
The poets’ works originally provide the first construct of the VP at a level which embodies the poet’s own works, while the second construct rests on the analysis and interpretation of the corpus presented by the researcher

Summary

Introduction

Text is prior to corpus, and vocabulary contextualization in a text predates the text itself; the poet’s choices from existing vocabulary, mold new lexical and derivational forms, and necessarily result in an interesting design that embodies the poetic lexicon and message. Lexical choices establish the fundamental layer upon which all matters of concepts, including terminology, propositions, and sense and reference rest. It is not surprising, that lexical items, as concepts or technical terms in scholarly works, especially science, have drawn the attention of philosophers, literary critics, mathematicians and scientists alike. Outside literary criticism and natural language processing, the study of vocabulary in English has been approached from three main traditions that differ in their fields and concerns but unite in their focus on learners of English. Lexicography as a profession is a main producer of learners’ dictionaries

Results

Discussion

Conclusion