Taking genre into account when analysing conceptual relation patterns

Abstract

This paper uses a corpus study to investigate the influence of text genre on the frequency and semantic interpretation of certain pattern/concept relations. In linking pattern/concept relations to text genre, this study identifies three types of dependency: weak dependency, where the relation appears in almost any kind of text; complete dependency, where it is strongly linked to a particular text or group of related texts; and dependency in terms of text genre. The particular examples that form the basis of the study are meronymic chez, which is found to have a significant dependency in didactic texts in the natural sciences; comme as a marker of hypernymy and co-hyponymy, which has a weaker, but observable dependency in technical and didactic genres; nominal anaphora involving hypernyms, where no consistent conclusions can be reached; and meronymic avec, where the significant factor is shown to be communicative objective rather than domain (subject matter). I discuss the relevance of such studies to Natural Language Processing, and indicate the potential for further research.