British National Corpus Research Articles

Morphological and syntactic identification of clauses of universal concession in British National Corpus

The article investigates morphological and syntactic organization of English sentences of universal concession in modern English fiction dramatic, prose and verse texts of the British National Corpus. In the context of the studied sentences identification with the semantics of concessive action, the main attention is focused on generalization of morphological and syntactic characteristics of universal sentences of concession with the verification of their statistical data implementation in the modern English corpus. It has been found out that in the fiction texts of the British National Corpus English sentences of universal concession are actualized in four syntactic types of sentences: in simple, compound, complex, and cohesive types, where the concessive action clause is introduced by various types of conjunctions such as though, even though, although; in any case, in spite of; yet … (al)though etc. with / without punctuation for the cohesive type. Morphological features of means of syntactic connection are defined in three types of clauses of concession with hypotactic, paratactic, cohesive conjunction coherence in the morphological configuration as: “simple means of connection – conjunctions or adverbs”, “complex or composite means of connection – prepositional phrases”, “correlative means of connection – correlative conjunctions or disjuncts”. Seven basic morphological and syntactic subtypes of English sentences of universal concession have been identified with the syntactic description of models of concessive clauses as: finite / non-finite -ed (-ing) participial / non-finite to infinitive / nominative / prepositional / adjective / adverb clause of concession. In order to identify the structural semantic grid of the studied sentences, taking into account the corpus analysis in terms of the semantic marking tagging with the collocation [+1 Right] to the right of the conjunction of the universal concession, the quantitative indicators of nine structural and semantic types of concessive clauses are determined and calculated in the adjustment of the concessive conjunction with any verb, noun, adjectival, adverbial, conjunctive, prepositional, pronominal categorical phrase, as well as the agreement with any article and punctuation.

Information packaging strategies serving the communicative needs of speakers

This paper presents the findings of a study of diverse information packaging strategies employed by speakers of English to better serve their communicative needs in given contexts, based on examples from the British National Corpus (BNC). More precisely, the analysis centres around the information packaging possibilities offered by light verb constructions (LVCs) in comparison to their full verb counterparts. As is conventionally recognised in previous studies, LVCs formally stretch the predicate over a verbal and a nominal element (e.g. to order vs to give an order). It is precisely this fact that makes it possible for speakers to structure their utterances in various ways. Thus, either all participants are overtly realized in the sentence and the communicative focus could be placed on each one of them depending on the context, or some participants are reduced, which is the preferred strategy when their identity is implied, unfamiliar, irrelevant or would rather be concealed.

A comparison of textbook vocabulary load analysis

The popularity of using textbooks in second language programs in universities around the world continues to grow. Textbooks support teachers in their teaching by providing accessible materials and clear instruction. In addition, learners are guided by familiar lesson frameworks (e.g., beginning, middle, end) to guide their independent study (Swales, 1980). However, textbooks present many challenges. Learners’ difficulties include the range in lexical knowledge they must possess (Nation, 2006) and the different lexical and grammatical features that are found in written textbook registers (Biber et al., 1998). This study investigates and outlines the vocabulary load of two English for Academic Purpose textbooks, using the British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English (BNC/COCA) 25,000 (Nation, 2012) and JACET8000 (JACET, 2016) word lists. The results show that for each textbook, more lexical demands are needed for second language learners in the JACET8000 compared with the BNC/COCA 25,000 lists. Understanding the content in textbooks will inform of the vocabulary-level requirements needed when taught in tertiary-level programs. Using a general and a Japanese-specific word list to identify possible pedagogical priorities can help to determine textbook priorities for teachers that can be applied to teaching in the Japanese classroom.

Transitivity of Try and V Construction in British and American English

Try and V construction is prevalent in British and American English. This construction is found in both spoken and written English, although with different frequencies. The verb in this construction only appears in in the base form. The lack of research on this verb formation leaves many aspects unexplored, one of which is the transitivity of the verb. Therefore, this study is intended to find out the number of arguments informed by this construction by matching the number of arguments to the verb try and the verb following it after the conjunction and. Two verbs were used to test this match, i.e., give and bring, which are three-place predicate verbs, and other two two-place predicate verbs, i.e., see and answer, were used to validate the finding. British National Corpus (BNC) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) were used to collect the data. The findings show that the number of arguments matched the verb following the conjunction and. Therefore, it can be concluded the number of arguments in try and V construction is not unique to this construction, but it is similar to the try to V, where V is the non-finite verb which selects the number of arguments. This result suggests that try and V construction needs to be included in English grammar textbooks in order that non-native speakers can use and understand this rare grammatical rule in appropriate contexts.

Прилагательное “empty” в Британском национальном корпусе

The work examines peculiarities of the functional and semantic relations of the adjective “empty” in the modern English language using data from the British National Corpus. The paper aims to identify peculiarities of the semantics of this adjective, its collocability and lexico-semantic links. The work is novel in that it is the first to carry out a complete synchronic analysis of the derivational stem empt- using corpus data in English. The results show some difference in how the meanings of the adjective “empty” are recorded in the Corpus and in regular dictionaries, as well as a negative subjective assessment peculiar to this adjective.

Profiling of the Ethical Concepts Good / Evil and Justice from the Etymological Perspective

The paper gives a comprehensive insight into the peculiarities of concept profiling through defining the related etymological domains. The aim of the paper is to reveal the peculiarities of the profiling of the concepts GOOD / EVIL and JUSTICE through elucidating their source domains from an etymological perspective. The choice of the analysed ethical concepts is stipulated by their higher contextual actualization frequency, as compared with the other ethical concepts, according to the data obtained from British National Corpus. The research method of trajector / landmark alignment used in this work is based on R. Langacker’s views on the profiling of concepts in language utterances and on the tenets of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The novelty of this approach consists in the fact that it was elaborated and tailored for the analysis and explanation of the onomasiological principles of ‘wrapping’ abstract ethical concepts into the language form. The underlying idea is that abstract categories were conceptualized on the basis of background central life experience and knowledge of concrete things. It is argued that such things were the source domains in ontological cross-domain mappings for the target ethical concepts. The current research into the source domain etymons of the ethical categories made it possible to determine the underlying images, which are the core for drawing metaphorical correspondences between source and target concepts. The etymological layer of source domain lexicalizers revealed the intrinsic psychological mechanisms of human cognition and perception of the world, which consist in the inherent proclivity of the human mind to make metaphorical parallels in the direction from daily, central experience to complex abstract ideas and notions. The results made it possible to develop the matrix model of the analysed concepts, which was further developed into a ‘conceptual edifice’ multi-layer model, which reveals the conceptualization paths along which the human mind classifies and categorizes abstract ethical ideas.

ПРАГМАТИКА З’ЯСУВАЛЬНОГО ВИСЛОВЛЕННЯ-ЕКСПРЕСИВУ З ОПОРОВИМ ПРЕДИКАТОМ РОЗУМОВОЇ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ ЛЮДИНИ В АНГЛІЙСЬКІЙ МОВІ

The paper considers the communicative-and-pragmatic organization of speech acts of the expressive type, which are verbalized at the semantic level of speech expression within the elucidative utterances of modern English. The research is based on a thorough analysis of scientific studies conducted in different periods on the taxonomy of expressive speech acts of the elucidative type. At the heart of the proposed research, there is the typology of illocutionary acts by American philosopher, lingvo-pragmatist J. R. Searle. The elucidative utterances-expressives have been analysed on the basis of an integrated approach with the application of valency-and-colligational, transformational, componential, valency-and-collocational and intent analysis. Illustrative examples have been selected from the texts of the British National Corpus. The paper provides the definition of an elucidative utterance-expressive, reveals the key role of the illocutionary predicate of human mental activity in the principal clause of these utterances-acts in their communicative-and-pragmatic structure formation, determines the communicative-and-pragmatic subtypes of expressively coloured elucidative utterances actualized in the expressive speech acts of elucidative type. The results of the research prove that the key illocutionary predicates of human mental activity are frequent in the elucidative utterances-expressives formation with the help of which the communicants take part in the situation of communicative interaction. The perspective of the research lies in the conducting of contrastive microanalysis of communicative-and-pragmatic structure and organization of elucidative utterance-expressive based on the material of different languages.

A Corpus-based Study of the Use of Pause Fillers Among British English Speakers

Many people use pause fillers such as um, erm, and er in order to signal to the other person that they have not finished speaking yet. This paper aims to investigate pause fillers and their relationship with the two sociolinguistic variables of age and gender. The data-driven analysis is based on the British National Corpus (BNC). The results show that the sociolinguistic variables of age and gender influence the use of pause fillers among British English speakers, which is proposed to be linked to the advancement of age and an improved fluency among female speakers.

A Corpora-Based Analysis of the Collocations of May as Well and Might as Well

The goal of this paper is to compare the collocations of May as well and Might as well and to provide an in-depth analysis of the frequency of each expression in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (3 July. 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/coca), the British National Corpus (3 July. 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc), and the Corpus of Historical American English (3 July. 2021. Online. https://corpus.byu.edu/coha). With respect to the COCA (3 July. 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/coca), it is interesting to note that May as well go is the most preferred by Americans, followed by May as well get, and May as well give, in descending order. It is also interesting to point out that Might as well get is the most preferred by Americans, followed by Might as well go, and Might as well make, in descending order. With respect to the BNC (3 July. 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc), it is noteworthy that the collocation May as well go is the most preferred by the British, followed by May as well tell (May as well get), May as well make, and May as well use, in descending order. It is also worth noting that Might as well go is the most preferable among the British, followed by Might as well get, Might as well make (Might as well take), and Might as well give, in descending order. Finally, this paper argues that Might as well is preferred over May as well by both Americans and the British and that the former is slightly different from May as well in its use.

Identifying the Core Vocabulary for Adults With Complex Communication Needs From the British National Corpus by Analyzing Grouped Frequency Distributions.

Purpose This study is aimed to identify the high-frequency vocabulary (HFV), otherwise termed "core vocabulary" for adults with complex communication needs. Method Three major characteristics of the HFV-a relatively small number of different words (NDW), a relatively high word frequency, and a high word commonality across speakers-were examined so as not to lose any candidate words for the HFV. Specifically, instead of applying the traditionally used cutoff word frequency of 0.5‰, a grouped frequency distribution was used to examine the appropriate frequency ranges to determine the HFV candidates. To improve the representativeness of the HFV across ages, social backgrounds, conversation situations, and topics, 330,000 spoken words of 66 adults (29 men and 37 women; M age = 45.47 years, SD = 16.07) were extracted from the British National Corpus database for analysis. Results A distinct pattern of NDW was observed from the frequency of 0.1‰ in the grouped frequency distribution. In total, 671 words were found to be candidates for the HFV, accounting for 90.94% of the total sample words. After the word commonality analysis indicated at least 80% commonality across speakers, 203 words were selected for the final HFV; accountability was calculated at 80.62%. Conclusions With the innovative word analysis approach, this study provided an HFV list that can be used for a wide range of conversation topics. This method provides a scientific and principled approach to identifying and organizing vocabulary for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention that does not exist in many AAC resources that promote "core vocabulary" with identifying the source for vocabulary selection.

A Cognitive Study on the Semantic Extensions of GOLD in English

Based on the British National Corpus (BNC), this study attempts to analyze the contexts with gold and gold-relevant words. The corpus-based analysis of the contexts shows that the main meaning focuses of GOLD are: Color; Value; Rarity and Stability. The target scopes of GOLD include: Human, Animal, Object, Star, Plant, Place, Sport, Economy, Occupation, Music, Time, Chance, Rules and Ideas. The relationships between the source focuses and the target scopes fall into two levels: types and tendency. The types of relationships are metonymy, metaphor. The tendency shows the application tendency of the source focuses onto the targets. Color tends to describe Stars, Places, Objects, Plants, Animals and Human. Rarity and Value tend to describe Places, Plants, Sports, Economy, Time, Idea and Rules. Stability tends to describe Human, Occupation, Economy and Rules.

A Corpora-Based Analysis of Rely on and Depend on

The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of rely on and depend on in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus. The COCA clearly shows that the expression rely on government is the most preferred by Americans, followed by rely on people, and rely on data. The COCA further indicates that the expression depend on slate is the most preferred by Americans, followed by depend on government, and depend on people. The BNC shows, on the other hand, that the expression rely on others is the most preferred by the British, followed by rely on people, and rely on friends. The BNC further indicates that depend on factors and depend on others are the most preferred by the British, followed by depend on age, and depend on food. Finally, in the COCA, the nouns government, luck, welfare, people, information, state, fossil, water, family, oil, food, and things are linked to both rely on and depend on, but many nouns are not still linked to both of them. On the other hand, in the BNC, only the nouns state, chance, government, and others are linked to both rely on and depend on, but many nouns are not still linked to both rely on and depend on. It can thus be inferred from this that rely on is slightly different from depend on in its use.

An exceptive account of unless clauses: corpus-evidence

This paper provides a corpus evidence to prove that unless clauses act like exceptive constructions (ECs). Adopting Galal et al (2019) categorization of ECs: paradigmatic ECs (connected/regular exceptive) and hypotactic ECs (free exceptives). The current analysis tries to apply this classification on unless clause to examine its behavior. Corpus evidence shows that unless clauses always display a fixed position in relation to its antecedent just like paradigmatic ECs, however the two constructions differ in that: unless occurs before the antecedent regardless the position of the consequence ( q statement), whereas paradigmatic ECs occur after the antecedent. In addition to that, unless allows universal and non-universal quantifiers, but universal quantifiers are more commonly used. Regarding coordinating sequences, unless accepts coordinating like hypotactic ECs. Some statistical analyses of use of unless conditionals in two native corpora: Contemporary Corpus of American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC), are presented showing that unless is more commonly used in BNC assuming that it is a characteristic of British English. Results demonstrated that this construction is more frequently used in the written proportions of COCA, whereas they are more commonly used in the spoken proportion of BNC.

Using Corpora in Teaching Languages to Enhance Competency in English as a Foreign Language with Focus on English for Business and Economics

The necessity to be competent in understanding and interpreting written as well as spoken English language is vital in our society. There are many methods and approaches set to confront this particular demand, one of which corpus linguistics addresses in a highly efficient way. Corpora can be used to study purposes with which words are used in a text and the circumstances under which they are used. This work considers the advantages of using corpora, carefully and meticulously designed collections of written texts, in teaching a foreign language, thus promoting cross-cultural competency. Recent development in communication and the requirements for growing intercultural cooperation bring demands on today’s society to be able to communicate in an effective way. Languages are the most prominent part of one’s culture, that is why it is imperative to master them as well as possible to avoid ambiguities and misunderstandings. This paper shows an introduction of a possible approach to accomplish this task, demonstrating methods and views upon a tiny fraction of features of language utilizing available data concentrating on some aspects of using an online corpus, namely the British National Corpus, to provide a communicative context in language learning, focusing on English as a second language with special emphasis on English for business and economics.

Exploration of Phrasal Verbs in ELT Textbooks: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Lower Secondary Level Bangladeshi Books

The study aims at exploring the usage of the Phrasal Verbs in the lower secondary Bangladeshi ELT textbooks which are prescribed by the Government of Bangladesh at national education levels. The methodological approach continues in this study based on the corpus tools and related analysis on the topic of Phrasal Verbs usage in those textbooks. The phrasal verbs that are found in the textbooks are extracted from the textbooks; their frequency distributions are analyzed, and finally checked with the two most authentic corpus of the English Language - The British National Corpus (BNC) and Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Alongside, deriving the top fifteen Phrasal Verbs in the textbook corpus with their significant values; the relative positions to the two reference corpora and other corpus-related scores of the phrasal verbs are compared, regarding the study of Liu (2011). The results find that the Phrasal Verbs used in the selected textbooks are quite irrelevant to the two standard big corpora. Finally, based on the findings some remarks and implications are prescribed for pedagogical purposes. The current study would be the first one that examines the Bangladeshi Lower Secondary ELT textbooks assisted by the corpus approach.

Textual functions of low confidence adverbs: The case of perhaps

Epistemic adverbs often become discourse markers and perform various interpersonal and textual functions. While the interpersonal functions of epistemic adverbs have been discussed extensively, their textual functions have received less attention, and have mostly been reported for high confidence adverbs, such as indeed. This study attempts to explore the potential of low confidence adverbs to perform textual functions. It focuses on perhaps – one of the most frequent epistemic adverbs in English. Using Halliday’s typology of expansion markers, it examines the occurrences of perhaps in a sample of the British National Corpus. Its findings indicate that while the uses of perhaps as a connective marker are considerably less frequent than its uses as an epistemic adverbial, there are several textual functions which it performs with some regularity. They include its use as a marker of apposition (exemplification), concession, clarification (corrective uses/reformulation), and, less often, alternation. Additionally, it performs opening and closing functions in the rhetorical domain of discourse. The connective functions of perhaps seem to be related to its ability to signal alternatives, which it shares with other low confidence adverbs, which is why similar connective functions can be expected from the other adverbs in this category.

A Corpus-Based Analysis Of The Complementation Patterns Of The Adjective “Ashamed”

The paper presents a corpus-based analysis of the predicative use of the adjective “ashamed” giving a full description of its complementation patterns with the help of the Valency Theory (VT – Herbst et al., 2004). The findings are based on a reference corpus extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) by using the SkE software. The analysis reveals the advantages of the approach used for learners at levels B1 and B2 while, on the other hand, it shows the insufficiency of information found in the main English dictionaries (OALD, LDCE, etc.). It also demonstrates how both language learning and teaching, and materials production could be optimized using the corpus-based analysis.

Lexical use and social class: A study on lexical richness, word length, and word class in spoken English

Lexical use is an important indicator of an individual’s social class, and previous studies found that speakers from different social classes show distinct features in their lexical use. However, those studies are more qualitative in nature and the findings are far from conclusive. To address these issues, this study examined the lexical features of the utterances produced by speakers from different social classes in terms of lexical richness, word length, and word class based on a large dataset of spontaneous utterances, i.e., Spoken British National Corpus 2014. The analysis yielded several interesting findings. First, speakers from the middle and upper-middle classes produce utterances of a higher lexical richness than those from the lower class. Second, individuals from all social classes tend to produce utterances of a lower lexical richness and with shorter words in spoken language than they do in writing, which indicates the spontaneous nature of spoken language. Third, speakers from the middle and upper middle classes have similar lexical features such as the more frequent use of derived -ly adverbs (particularly intensifiers), conjunctions, and prepositions. In contrast, those from the lower class use more negative words and first-person singular pronouns. Such differences are explained by factors closely related to the speakers’ social class backgrounds.

A Corpora-based Analysis of You must and You have to

The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis of the frequency of you must and you have to in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the British National Corpus (BNC), and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). The COCA clearly shows that you have to may be the preferable one for Americans. When it comes to the genre frequency of you must and you have to, you must is the most frequently used one in the TV/movie genre and you have to is the most commonly used one in the blog genre. The BNC indicates, on the other hand, that you have to may be preferred over you must by British people. The BNC clearly shows that in the fiction genre, you must is the most widely used one, whereas in the spoken genre, you have to is the most frequently used one. This paper argues that the expression you must know is the most preferred by Americans, followed by you must go, you must understand, you must think, and you must take, in that order. This paper further argues that the expression you have to go is the most preferred one in America, followed by you have to get, you have to say, you have to make, and you have to take, in that order. Additionally, the BNC shows that the expression you must know is the most preferred by British people, followed by you must provide, you must go, you must get, and you must take, in that order. The BNC indicates, on the other hand, that the expression you have to go is the most preferred by British people, followed by you have to pay, you have to get, you have to take, and you have to make, in that order. Finally, the COHA clearly shows that you have to may have been the most preferable one for Americans in 1930, whereas you have to may have been the most preferable one for Americans in 2000.

Societal Age Stereotypes in the U.S. and U.K. from a Media Database of 1.1 Billion Words.

Recently, 194 World Health Organization member states called on the international organization to develop a global campaign to combat ageism, citing its alarming ubiquity, insidious threat to health, and prevalence in the media. Existing media studies of age stereotypes have mostly been single-sourced. This study harnesses a 1.1-billion-word media database comprising the British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English—with genres including spoken/television, fiction, magazines, newspapers—to provide a comprehensive view of ageism in the United Kingdom and United States. The US and UK were chosen as they are home to the largest media conglomerates with tremendous power to shape public opinion. The most commonly used synonym of older adults was identified, and its most frequently used descriptors were analyzed for valence. Such computational linguistics techniques represent a new advance in studying aging narratives. The key finding is consistent, though no less alarming: Negative descriptions of older adults outnumber positive ones by six times. Negative descriptions tend to be physical, while positive ones tend to be behavioral. Magazines contain the highest levels of ageism, followed by the spoken genre, newspapers, and fiction. Findings underscore the need to increase public awareness of ageism and lay the groundwork to design targeted societal campaigns to tackle ageism—one of our generation’s most pernicious threats.