Corpus-based Perspective Research Articles

A Corpus-Based Perspective on the Formation of Passive Potential Adjectives in Irish

A Corpus-Based Perspective on the Formation of Passive Potential Adjectives in Irish

Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo: Phraseology in Legal and Institutional Settings: A Corpus-Based Interdisciplinary Perspective (Reviewed by Tenghua You, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo: Phraseology in Legal and Institutional Settings: A Corpus-Based Interdisciplinary Perspective (Reviewed by Tenghua You, Shanghai Jiao Tong University)

“ALTER” VERSUS “MODIFY” FROM A CORPUS-BASED PERSPECTIVE

Teaching and learning how to utilize academic lexical items have always been a challenge in EFL setting. With the desire of making some contribution to the understanding of academic synonyms, this piece of research aims to investigate the meanings of the two verbs “alter” and “modify” through their collocations with nouns and the similarities and differences in their collocation patterns. The issue is approached from a corpus-based perspective and the method of lexical collocation. The findings of the study include: (1) the two verbs embrace the same denotation of “to change proportionally” in certain contexts; (2) “alter” possesses a broader sense when referring to an action of profound and fundamental change.

Antonymic Discourse Functions and Manipulation: A Corpus Analysis of Present-Day French

The study of the discourse functions of antonymy was developed mainly by Steven Jones (Antonymy: a corpus-based perspective. Routledge, London, 2002; Antonyms in english. Construals, constructions and canonicity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012), who classifies antonymic co-occurrences in English into ten categories, based on the different discourse functions they can fulfil. On the basis of a similar study of antonymic discourse functions in French, this paper explores how two opposites used in the same sentence exploit our thought processes to influence the way we conceptualise the world. It focuses on sentences extracted from the newspaper Le Monde (1987–2006 and 2009–2011) in which two antonyms are used in co-presence. Through the analysis of these utterances, this paper describes the discourse functions of antonymy in French and shows how the semantic and syntactic roles of co-present antonyms determine the semantico-referential functions they perform. I then analyse how the two major (groups of) functions, the ancillary function and the coordination functions, identified in English journalistic texts by Steven Jones, produce meaning effects in French texts, and how the mechanisms underlying these functions allow opposites to manipulate us.

Mincing words: Balancing recovery and deletion in word truncation

Brazilian Portuguese exhibits word truncation: e.g., the word cruzeiro ‘cruise’ results in the truncated form cruza, where the vowel -a is added to the truncated stem cruz-. Gonçalves (2011) claims that truncated words preserve the onset of the rightmost syllable of the first binary foot. We argue from a corpus-based perspective instead that the truncated stem is better predicted by optimizing two opposing forces: original word recovery and phonological deletion. These are formalized and implemented as right-complete counts (RC) and left-complete counts (LC), based primarily on the analysis of blends and subtractive word formation in Gries (2006) and taking into consideration the informativity of the deleted material as well as the preserved material. Specifically, a model incorporating both RC and LC outperforms one that uses only one or the other, as well as prosodic models based on binary feet, in predicting truncated stems in Brazilian Portuguese. Beyond truncation, our model has implications for morpheme segmentation as well as the mechanics of morphological reanalysis.

Signalling Sites of Contention in Judicial Discourse. An Exploratory Corpus- Based Analysis of Selected Stance Nouns in US Supreme Court Opinions and Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal Judgments

This paper adopts a comparative, corpus-based perspective to examine the language of judicial justification. Based on substantial corpus data, the study explores one of the linguistics resources, i.e. head nouns (e.g. assumption, belief, notion, etc.) followed by a nominal complement in the form of that-clause in two comparable legal settings: the opinions given in the United States Supreme Court and the judgements handed down by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal. The findings corroborate the results of previous research which shows that nouns found in this pattern are used to perform various discourse functions but evaluation plays a central role in judicial writing and these nouns are used to signal sites of contentions. The study reveals the general similarity between the two sets of data suggesting that American and Polish judicial writing is underpinned by essentially the same epistemological assumptions. Yet, there are some differences in the way the nouns behave phraseologically. Polish nouns tend to show less collocational variation and they are found performing fewer discourse functions.

The Generic Structure of CSR Reports in Italian, Chinese, and English: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Background: This study examines the generic structure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, which are becoming standard practice for corporate communication of social and environmental performance beyond financial disclosure. Literature review: Genre theories provide a framework for exploring genres contextualized in different cultures. Based on the English for Specific Purposes approach of genre analysis, this study compares the move structure of CSR reports in Italian, Chinese, and English from a corpus-based perspective . Research questions: 1. What are the main moves used in CSR reports? 2. Are there any cross-cultural similarities or variations in terms of generic features? Methodology: Combining genre theories with concepts from Systemic Functional Linguistics, we designed an observational framework for move identification. Based on a 15-move scheme, we annotated 18 CSR reports for comparative analysis. Results and conclusions: The CSR report is characterized by rhetorical recursivity and hybridity of speech acts: beyond “reporting” and “presenting,” it is also “demonstrating,” “evaluating,” and “committing.” As a globally established genre, it presents noticeable generic similarity in different languages, suggesting that the communicative purposes of CSR reports are recognized by different cultures. The top six moves in the Performance-reporting section of the CSR reports present identical trends in terms of extensiveness ranking in all three languages. Cross-cultural variations mainly involve the use of optional moves, such as the dominant use of the move “Presenting individual cases” in the Chinese sample. The observational framework for move identification may also be transferable to other genres. The limitations of this study include the sample size and the absence of an author survey. Future research could investigate the CSR report from a diachronic perspective, to explore how its genre structure has developed over time.

Structural priming within and across languages: a corpus-based perspective

Structural priming is the phenomenon that speakers tend to re-use structures they have recently comprehended or produced themselves. Most studies on this topic are experimental and looked at within-language priming. However, there are now also many observational studies, a development that is inextricably related to new/larger corpora, new statistical methodologies, and new theoretical ideas. Second, there is a growing body of research on cross-linguistic structural priming, though mostly experimental. These developments lead to a new potential research avenue: cross-linguistic priming on the basis of observational data. Here, we will first summarize some fundamental studies of cross-linguistic priming, and then trace the historical development of observational studies of structural priming to showcase how statistical and theoretical developments have shaped research on priming in general and discuss what such observational priming research has offered to within-language priming research. We end with a discussion of how this research can inform cross-linguistic priming.

“Que bé, tu! (« that’s great, you! »)”

The Catalan second person singular (2sg) pronoun tu (you) has acquired a wide range of pragmatic values in spoken registers that have received little or no attention from scholars in the field. The aim of the present article is to analyse a particular emerging use of the 2sg pronoun tu from a corpus-based perspective. In the light of Grammaticalisation Theory, it is argued that whereas in some contexts this pronoun maintains all or part of its referential function (e.g. as subject or as a vocative, respectively), in other contexts its use is very similar to that of an emphatic pragmatic marker. Data drawn from three spoken corpora suggest that the pronoun has consolidated this new use. Prosodic evidence is also provided to show the semantic and pragmatic changes undergone by the pronoun.

Changes in the Complementation Patterns of the Verb Commit : A Corpus-Based Perspective

Changes in the Complementation Patterns of the Verb Commit : A Corpus-Based Perspective

Subject-verb order variation with unaccusative verbs of change of location in Mexico and Southern Arizona

AbstractThe subjects of unaccusative verbs of change of location (e. g.,llegar, venir) may appear in pre-verbal and post-verbal position. However, most syntactic accounts of word order in Spanish suggest that VS is the canonical order for these verbs. This claim has been supported by some experimental data, but further insight on the mechanisms underlying this particular instance of variation can still be gained from its study from a variationist, corpus-based perspective. We investigate the SV-VS alternation in the spontaneous oral discourse of two populations, monolingual Spanish speakers from Mexico City and Spanish-English bilingual speakers from Southern Arizona. Multivariate analyses reveal that the informative load of the subject, the animacy of the subject, verbal tense and aspect, and the presence or absence of an initial modifier, in this order, condition word order selection. The results also show that bilingual speakers from Southern Arizona are less flexible than monolinguals speakers in assigning word order to unaccusative verbs of change of location when the subject does not introduce new information, favoring SV almost categorically. A possible cause for this dissimilar behavior is the influence of English, where unaccusative verbs tend to appear pre-verbally, on the Spanish of these bilinguals.

Representations of Trust to Public Service in Russian Newspapers during Election Time: Corpus-based Content Analysis in Public Administration Sociology

This article presents a study of the trust as social and public administration categories from the sociological and corpus-based perspective. To study the trust as the social category was elected a newspaper corpus (corpus of contemporary media). The corpus includes the texts of the seven media: printed Newspapers (Novosty, Sovetsky sport, Trud, Komsomolskaya Pravda), and electronic agencies (RIA Novosti, RBC, New region) in approximately equal volume. The study has revealed that the category ‘trust’ in the Russian newspapers is used in the context of political institutions. The political context means that the text describes the relationship of the actors of public administration, who, in Russia, often are the staff of public service. We believe that this fact highlights the loyalty of people to the authorities. It is indirectly confirmed by the data of positive mentions of trust in the context of ‘respect’ and ‘authority’. In 2011, State Duma elections took place, with the number of mention of trust in political institutional context decreasing more than twice. Thus, in the pre-election period, the significance of the problem of recognition and respect for the subjects of political institutions in the media decreases, but increases the importance of social harmony. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s1p436

Some binominal size noun constructions in English and French: a contrastive corpus-based perspective

This paper compares binominal size noun constructions in English and French from a contrastive perspective based on analysis of parallel and monolingual corpus data. It is argued that, even though there are structural similarities between the constructions in both languages, there are differences in the frequency of their use and constructional equivalence is only partial. There are differences in terms of premodification potential, which can be explained by typological differences between the two languages. Another difference lies in the formal reflexes and agreement features, which is again in keeping with the typological profiles of both languages. Translation equivalence is also typically only partial and depends on the use (e.g. quantifier versus head use).

The SKT construction in English: A corpus-based perspective

Kim, Jong-Bok and Grace Ge-soon Moon. 2014. The SKT construction in English: A corpus-based perspective. Linguistic Research 31(3), 519-539. The so-called SKT constructions in English involve sort of, kind of and type of. This paper looks into the grammatical properties of the constructions and discusses their four main uses: referential, qualifier, adnominal, and adverbial. Based on a corpus-based research of the constructions, the paper first reviews the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of these four uses and then discusses the properties shared among these four uses as well as the distinctive properties of each use. It also offers a construction-based view in accounting for how the mapping relations between form and functions in the SKT constructions have been changed in the present day of American English. (Kyung Hee University · Dongduk Women's University)

Mapping meaning with distributional methods

The semantics of existential there is discussed in a diachronic, corpus-based perspective. While previous studies of there have been qualitative or relied on interpreting relative frequencies directly, the present study combines multivariate statistical techniques with linguistic theory through distributional semantics. It is argued that existential uses of there in earlier stages of English were not semantically empty, and that the original meaning was primarily deictic rather than locative. This analysis combines key insights from previous studies of existential there with a Construction Grammar perspective, and discusses some methodological concerns regarding statistical methods for creating computational semantic maps from diachronic corpus data.

The Right Periphery of Interrogatives in Catalan and Spanish: Syntax/Prosody Interactions

S’ha destacat en la bibliografia que les oracions interrogatives del castellà i del català es comporten de manera ben diferent respecte a la inversió subjecte-verb: mentre aquelles permeten la inversió VS ‘clàssica’ i, en especial, l’ordre VSO, aquestes recorren sistemàticament a la dislocació a la dreta en tots els casos (V(O)#S). En aquest article revisem aquesta observació a partir d’un estudi de corpus i afegim a la descripció els trets prosòdics i pragmàtics de les interrogatives. Mostrem que les interrogatives del català afavoreixen la dislocació a la dreta, en clar contrast amb el castellà, que prefereix la realizació in situ del material del rerefons. Aquesta última opció té conseqüències importants per als contorns prosòdics de les interrogatives castellanes, que marquen els constituents focals finals amb un to ascendent i el material del rerefons amb una lleugera caiguda.

Review of Nkemleke (2011): Exploring Academic Writing in Cameroon English: A Corpus-based Perspective

Review of Nkemleke (2011): Exploring Academic Writing in Cameroon English: A Corpus-based Perspective

영어 인칭명사 합성어형성에서의 빈도수 효과

This study aims to explore the effects of frequency on the formation of English personal noun compounds. Under the assumption that personal noun compounds are formed by a process of non-derivational paradigmatic analogy, their well-formedness and productivity is argued to be governed by the relative frequency of lexical items within a network of relationships. From a corpus-based perspective, this paper also discusses some apparent asymmetries of bracketing paradoxes and casts serious doubts on the conventional level-ordering approach to word formation. Considering that grammar is a dynamic system similar to biology and that word forms are emergent through repeated language use in the real world, a corpus-driven approach adopted here can be another step toward capturing a comprehensive and consistent picture of personal noun formations in English.

Relative Clauses in Hong Kong English: A Corpus-based Perspective

This study, with the help of the International Corpus of English, contrastively explores uses of relative clauses by students in Hong Kong, Singapore and British English within the framework of world Englishes (Kachru, Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon, Hong Kong University Press, 2005, Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15: 85-95, 1989; Kachru & Nelson, World English in Asian Contexts, Hong Kong University Press, 2006). First, in the Hong Kong data, there is probably a tendency to use restrictive relative clauses led by WHICH in places where non-restrictive relative clauses led by WHICH are normally expected. Second, there is another tendency in the employment of non-restricted relative clauses led by THAT in Hong Kong university students' written work and it is interesting to note that this phenomenon seems to be more widespread in Hong Kong student writing than in Singapore student writing and no such cases were found out in the British subcorpus. Given that some distinctive patterns traditionally considered as developmental errors in the language learning process may also be seen as evidence of linguistic variations, second language teachers may need some tolerance towards this variation and compromise between “autonomy” and “grammaticality” in today's society of world Englishes (McKay, International English in Its Sociolinguistic contexts: Towards a Socially Sensitive EIL Pedagogy, Routledge, 2008). 本研究借助国际英语语料库，在“世界英语”（Kachru, Asian Englishes: Beyond the Canon, Hong Kong University Press, 2005, Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15: 85-95, 1989; Kachru & Nelson, World English in Asian Contexts, Hong Kong University Press, 2006)的框架下探讨了香港英语、新加坡英语和英式英语中学生英语作文里的定语从句的使用情况。香港英语似乎往往会在一般情况下使用非限制性定语从句的地方使用以which引导的限制性定语从句。在香港学生英语作文中似乎还存在用that来引导非限制性定语从句的情况，这种情况比在新加坡英语中要多，在英式英语中不存在。这些特点被传统地认为是发展中的语言错误，但从“世界英语”的角度来看，有可能是语言变体的特点。在当今世界英语的社会里，二语老师也许应该对这种变异有所宽容，并在语言“自主性”以及“语法性”之间取得一定的妥协（McKay, International English in Its Sociolinguistic contexts: Towards a Socially Sensitive EIL Pedagogy, Routledge, 2008)。

Fight metaphors in Spain’s presidential speeches: J.L. Rodríguez Zapatero (2004-2007)

This article investigates the metaphorical conceptualization of terrorism by president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who came into power soon after the biggest terrorist attack in Spain on March 11th, 2004. Specifically, it examines how terrorism is conceptualized via metaphors through the notion of fight, and their conceptual implication in discourse. I will refer to these as Fight Metaphors. The research questions addressed are as follows: 1. What Fight Metaphors are used in the discursive construction of terrorism? 2. How do Fight Metaphors contribute to support Zapatero’s anti-terrorism political agenda? I follow a combination of a cognitive and a pragmatic approach from a corpus-based analysis perspective. The cognitive approach is based on Lakoff’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory (1993), and the pragmatic one is based on Charteris-Back’s Critical Metaphor Analysis (2004). The corpus of investigation comprises 58 Spanish political speeches over a three-year period (2004-2007). Findings reveal that Fight Metaphors constitute the pivotal node that simultaneously performs various functions at several levels: cognitive, rhetorical, and ideological in order to promote his anti-terrorism political ideology.