Corpus Evidence Research Articles

/p/-driven geminate devoicing in Japanese: Corpus and experimental evidence

Abstract In Japanese loanwords, voiced geminates can be devoiced in the presence of another voiced obstruent (e.g., /doggu/ → /dokku/ ‘dog’). This devoicing pattern has been studied extensively in the recent phonological literature in terms of theoretical modeling as well as from the perspective of experimentation and corpus studies. Less well-known is the observation that /p/ may cause devoicing of geminates as well (e.g., /piramiddo/ → /piramitto/ ‘pyramid’), although to date no objective evidence has been offered to confirm this observation. The current study thus attempts to test this observation objectively by way of a corpus study and two phonological judgment experiments. The results generally support the idea that /p/ can cause devoicing of geminates in Japanese loanwords; in other words, /p/ may trigger Lyman’s Law in causing devoicing of geminates. In addition to this descriptive discovery, throughout the paper we discuss intriguing task effects in phonological experimentation, by comparing the corpus data and the results of the two judgment experiments. Although our aim is primarily descriptive, we offer some analytical possibilities for the /p/-driven devoicing of geminates at the end of the paper.

Is multi-noun compounding a productive process in English?

The subject matter of this paper is English nominal compounding — the process of putting nouns together to form a new lexical item. More specifically, this paper addresses the issue that is commonly taken for granted in available accounts of compounding, i.e. the recursiveness of English endocentric nominal compounds. Corpus data indicates a great disparity between the frequencies of noun-noun compounds and multi-noun structures. Our study gives possible reasons behind the low number of occurrences of noun compounds composed of more than two words. Corpus evidence points to the conclusion that English multi-noun compounds are typically constructed with nouns that have been previously lexicalized; such lexicalized compounds commonly function as the base for more complex noun structures; the low frequency of multi-noun compounds emerges as a result of insufficient number of lexicalized noun-noun constructs. The small number of multi-noun compounds has no effect on the overall compound productivity as the process of multi-noun compound creation in the mind of a speaker is identical with that of noun-noun compounding — compounding always consists in putting together a modifier and a head, regardless of the number of nouns within a compound. The structure of any compound is a reflection of the way it is created in the mind of a speaker.

Corpus evidence for a discipline-specific phraseological approach to academic vocabulary

This study examines the validity of the rationale underlying recent trends towards discipline-specific and phraseological approaches to vocabulary selection for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses. It examines the behaviour of Coxhead’s (2000) New Academic Wordlist (AWL) using a 2,795,031 word corpus compiled from journal articles taken from the disciplines of History, Microbiology, and Management Studies. A two-stage method of analysis is employed. Firstly, coverage statistics for all AWL word families and their members are compared across the History, Microbiology, and Management Studies sub-corpora. This suggests difference in language use across disciplines. This difference is investigated further in a second stage of analysis which employs the Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al. 2004) Word Sketch Difference tool and Corpus Pattern Analysis (Hanks 2004) techniques to examine the collocational behaviour of a sample of 57 AWL headwords across the three sub-corpora. The results demonstrate that a large number of the AWL words have discipline- specific meanings, and that these meanings are conditioned by the syntagmatic context of the AWL item.

Journalistic engagement patterns and power relations: Corpus evidence from Chinese and Australian hard news reporting

In this article, I explore the ways in which journalists engage with different news sources in Chinese and Australian hard news. Based on the analysis of a comparable corpus of Chinese and Australian hard news reporting on risk events, the study investigates the cultural variability of engagement patterns and indicates how text patterns point to distinctions in the ways the power relations are reproduced in news production processes. Corpus findings show that Chinese and Australian journalists mediate news sources of different statuses in different ways. Chinese journalists tend to close down the dialogic space of elite sources but to open up that of ordinary citizens’ sources. Australian journalists tend to contract the dialogic space of elite sources as much as they expand it. It is argued that such different patterns of engaging with news sources are related to the power relations between journalists and news sources in each context.

Annotierte Korpora für die Historische Syntaxforschung: Anwendungsbeispiele anhand des Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch

Abstract This article addresses the use of annotated corpora for research in historical German syntax, introducing the Reference Corpus of Middle High German (REM) as a showcase. The article shows how to search the corpus with the corpus tool ANNIS. It takes up a range of popular research questions from historical syntax, in particular inflection of predicative adjectives, pre- and postnominal genitive constructions, relative order of pronouns and of verbs and auxiliaries. It is shown in detail how REM can be exploited to retrieve corpus evidence of these phenomena. The article also discusses challenges and opportunities of using annotated corpora. It argues that use of annotated corpora opens up new ways for research in historical syntax.

Locuzioni preposizionali «evidenziative» del tipoa dimostrazione che/die costruzioni equivalenti con l’infinito in italiano, francese e spagnolo

The main aim of this article, based extensively on corpus evidence, is to describe a particular system of constructions denoting metaphorical showing in Italian: PPs introduced by a complex preposition headed byaand containing a deverbal noun, and corresponding PPs of the <;a+ infinitive> type. The most frequent forms area dimostrazione che/dianda dimostrare che/NP. Such expressions are typically, but not exclusively, used as parenthetical comments in written texts. Constructions of this kind, which have gone largely unnoticed by lexicographers and grammarians alike, are widespread in (journalistic) Italian and can be found, to some extent, also in French and, to a lesser degree, in Spanish.

Lord Lucan: ‘missing’ or ‘on the run’?

In November 1974 a murder took place which, both at the time and in retrospect, provided British journalists with material for countless articles. Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (generally referred to as ‘Lord Lucan’) apparently killed his children's nanny with a blunt instrument, attacked his wife, and then fled his Belgravia home. His whereabouts since then, and even (despite the fact that he was declared dead in the High Court in 1999) the question of whether or not he is still alive, continue to be a matter of sporadic discussion in the media and among the general public. As British National Corpus (BNC) evidence shows, Lord Lucan is now sometimes lumped together in the conversation and writings of the British with other creatures and objects whose existence is the stuff of legend rather than of scientific certainty: 1GX9 4072 Forget the Loch Ness Monster and Lord Lucan, the Yeti and the Holy Grail.

Collocations and Colligations of the Metonymic Shipment: Exemplification in Learners' Dictionaries vs. Corpus Evidence

Collocations and Colligations of the Metonymic Shipment: Exemplification in Learners' Dictionaries vs. Corpus Evidence

Spoken Grammar: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

AbstractThis article synthesises progress made in the description of spoken (especially conversational) grammar over the 20 years since the authors published a paper in this journal arguing for a re-thinking of grammatical description and pedagogy based on spoken corpus evidence. We begin with a glance back at the 16th century and the teaching of Latin grammar in England, with its emphasis on speaking the target language. Later grammars were dominated by written standards, a situation that persisted till the 20th century, when recording technology and spoken corpora enabled new insights into the grammar of everyday speaking. We highlight those insights which especially challenge grammars derived only or mainly from written sources. We evidence the view that conversational grammar is non-sentence-based, co-constructed and highly interactive, and that it poses questions concerning metalanguage. We briefly review debates concerning spoken grammar and ELT/ESL pedagogy. We then consider 21st-century Internet technologies and e-communication, and implications for the spoken/written grammar distinction, arguing that description and pedagogy may need to undergo further re-thinking in light of the multi-modality which characterises e-language.

The Pragmatics of Pronoun Choice in China English: Corpus Evidence from Advanced English Students’ Oral Proficiency Exam

AbstractChina English is defined as a developing variety of international English spoken in China with some characteristic features at the level of phonology, grammar, lexis and pragmatics. The authors present the analysis of the use of the first-person plural pronoun

Syntactic Patterns of English and Polish Fixed Phrases with Proper Names

This paper focuses on English and Polish fixed phrases involving personal and place names. First, the definition of a name and the distinction between proper and c ommon nouns or proprial lemmas and proper names are provided, following a short overview of theories that constitute the basis for any discussion related to proper names. Next, subcategories and sources of names, together with their linguistic characteristics are presented, followed by the working definition of phraseological fixed units. Afterwards, the study is undertaken of personal and place names in fixed phraseological units, surveying a broad list of English and Polish fixed entities that are classified according to five syntactic patterns: phrases with (1) NPs, (2) VPs, (3) PPs, (4) clauses, and (5) similes. Additionally, the biblical, literary, classical, cultural and historical origins of these expressions are pointed out. Finally, in the light of the examined data, the predominance of personal over place names is noticeable, while the items with NPs constitute the vast majority of the phraseological units. Investigating corpus and dictionary evidence, fixed elements typical either of English or only of Polish, or those common to both English and Polish are listed. The most frequent are the units from biblical and mythological sources, while the least popular are the expressions with historical and literary background, as these aspects are unique for each country. With regard to the meaning of the fixed phrases containing proper personal and place names, the data reveal that the units do convey information, recall connotations that arose some time ago in relation to the biblical, mythological, literary, cultural, and historical background, and are still relevant today.

Methoden bei kollaborativen Wörterbüchern [Methods in collaborative dictionaries / Méthodes dans le domaine des dictionnaires collaboratifs

Abstract In this article, we study lexicographical methods of collaborative dictionaries. We are particularly interested in the question to what extent they differ from the methods of expert lexicographers and how editorial dictionaries can leverage the user-generated data. We find that the preparation phase is equally important in expertbuilt and collaborative works and will fundamentally shape the final dictionary. For collaborative dictionaries, it is, however, essential to encourage discussion, define transparent decision workflows, and continually motivate the authors. The large user communities provide a high coverage of language varieties, translations, neologisms, as well as personal and spoken language, which often lack corpus evidence. Instead, their descriptions of general language terms are largely based on expert-built dictionaries. This is why we see great potential in the cooperation between expert lexicographers and collaborative user communities. Besides joint work on editing the dictionary articles, we consider quality assurance methods based on user feedback as a clear enrichment for dictionary making.

Unified Knowledge-Based Epistemologies: Corpus Evidence from Russia and England

Unified knowledge-based epistemologies have led to many important advances, including symmetric encryption and extreme programming. In fact, few statisticians would disagree with the improvement of robot corpus linguistics. We concentrate our efforts on verifying that the look aside buffer and object-oriented languages are mostly incompatible.

Frequency Affects Object Relative Clause Processing: Some Evidence in Favor of Usage‐Based Accounts

The processing difficulty of nested grammatical structure has been explained by different psycholinguistic theories. Here I provide corpus and behavioral evidence in favor of usage‐based models, focusing on the case of object relative clauses in Spanish as a first language. A corpus analysis of spoken Spanish reveals that, as in English, the overwhelming majority of object relative clauses are pronominal. Spanish allows flexibility of order of surface constituents within the clause. The corpus data revealed significant asymmetries in the frequency of order of surface constituents in pronominal and nonpronominal object relative clauses. Two offline rating tasks and one self‐paced reading task were next conducted, showing that complexity judgments and reading processing data mirrored the fine‐grained distributional patterns revealed by the corpus analysis. I conclude that frequent object relative clauses may become easier to process as a consequence of use and repetition, and I discuss the implications of these findings for usage‐based models of language representation and access.

The discourse motivation for split-ergative alignment in Dutch nominalisations (and elsewhere)

Dutch nominalisations of the type het eten van vlees (‘the eating of meat’) have ergative alignment. The alignment is functionally motivated, in that it is a natural consequence of the flow of discourse. The functional account that is put forward here draws on the notion of Preferred Argument Structure (Du Bois 1987) and on the distinction between foregrounded and backgrounded discourse (Hopper & Thompson 1980). Support for this account comes from other domains of ergativity in Dutch, such as causativised predicates and participial constructions and from the observation that the alignment in Dutch nominalisations is in fact split-ergative. The present study adduces corpus evidence to corroborate the claims. In the last section, the analysis is cast in a Functional Discourse Grammar model (Hengeveld & Mackenzie 2008), including its hitherto underdescribed Contextual Component.

Variation in Faroese and the development of a spoken standard: In search of corpus evidence

Although Faroese exhibits extensive linguistic variation and rapid social change, the language is near-uncharted territory in variationist sociolinguistics. This article discusses some recent social changes in Faroese society in connection with language change, focusing in particular on the development of a de facto spoken standard, Central Faroese. Demographic mobility, media and education may be contributing to this development in different ways. Two linguistic variables are analysed as a first step towards uncovering the respective roles of standardisation, dialect levelling and dialect spread as contributing processes in the formation of Central Faroese: morphological variation in -st endings and phonological variation in -ir and -ur endings. The analysis confirms previously described patterns of geographically constrained variation, but no generational or stylistic differences indicative of language change are found, nor are there clear signs that informants use Central Faroese. The results may in part be due to the structure of the corpus used.

Linking learner corpus and experimental data in studying second language learners’ knowledge of verb-argument constructions

Abstract This paper combines data from learner corpora and psycholinguistic experiments in an attempt to find out what advanced learners of English (first language backgrounds German and Spanish) know about a range of common verbargument constructions (VACs), such as the ‘V about n’ construction (e.g. she thinks about chocolate a lot). Learners’ dominant verb-VAC associations are examined based on evidence retrieved from the German and Spanish subcomponents of ICLE and LINDSEI and collected in lexical production tasks in which participants complete VAC frames (e.g. ‘he ___ about the...’) with verbs that may fill the blank (e.g. talked, thought, wondered). The paper compares findings from the different data sets and highlights the value of linking corpus and experimental evidence in studying linguistic phenomena

Syntactic idioms across languages: corpus evidence from Russian and English

This paper considers the issues of compositionality, concessive meaning, negative polarity, scalarity, linguistic anthropocentricity, and semantics—syntax interaction in a corpus study of the concessive syntactic idiom pri vsem X-e ‘with all X’ in Russian and its non-idiomatic counterpart with all X in English. The study demonstrates (a) both compositional and non-compositional components in the Russian idiom on both syntactic and semantic levels; (b) strong correlation between the semantic and syntactic properties of the idiom; (c) semantic properties typical of other syntactic idioms (such as negative polarization); (d) pragmatic properties that are typical of other syntactic idioms (such as entailments incorporating implicit scales and anthropocentric evaluation); (e) language-specific idiomatic status, which cannot be predicted compositionally and needs to be established on an individual basis, even when a seemingly identical item is present in the two languages under comparison.

Emergent faithfulness to morphological and semantic heads in lexical blends

In many languages, sounds in certain "privileged" positions preserve marked structure which is eliminated elsewhere (Positional Faithfulness, Beckman 1998). This paper presents new corpus and experimental evidence that faithfulness to main-stress location and segmental content of morpho-semantic heads emerges in English blends. The study compared right-headed (subordinating) blends, like motor + hotel -> motel (a kind of hotel) with coordinating blends like spoon + fork -> spork (equally spoon and fork).<br /><br />Stress: Analysis of 1095 blends from Thurner (1993) found that right-headed blends were more faithful to stress location of the second source word than were coordinating blends. Given source words with conflicting stress (e.g., FLOUNder + sarDINE), participants preferentially matched the blend that preserved second-word stress (flounDINE) to a right-headed definition.<br /><br />Segmental content: When source-word length was controlled, segments from right-headed blends were more likely to survive than those from coordinating blends. Given source words that could be spliced at two points (e.g., flaMiNGo + MoNGoose), participants preferentially matched the one that preserved more of the second word (flamongoose) to a right-headed definition.<br /><br />These results support the hypotheses that Positional Faithfulness constraints are universally available, that heads are a privileged position, and that blend phonology is sensitive to headedness.<br /><br />

The emergence of English reflexive verbs: an analysis based on theOxford English Dictionary

Present-Day English is generally assumed to possess only a handful of lexicalized reflexive verbs (absent oneself from,pride oneself on, etc.) and to use reflexive pronouns neither for the marking of motion middles nor the derivation of anticausative (decausative) verbs. Such middle uses of reflexive markers (non-argument reflexives) are widespread in other European languages. Based on corpus evidence, Geniušienė (1987), Peitsara (1997) and Siemund (2010) demonstrate that English reflexive pronouns do occur in these functions and offer extensive lists of the verbs involved. I here follow up the historical development of these verbs from Middle English to Present-Day English. My analysis is based on a survey of the relevant verb entries in theOxford English Dictionary(222 verbs), complemented by an examination of theOEDquotation base. My study shows that the number of reflexive verbs in English has gradually, but steadily, increased since the emergence of complex reflexives (myself,yourself, etc.) in Middle English. They often result from lexicalization processes, but the data also show more regular patterns indicative of grammatical processes. TheOxford English Dictionaryproves to be a rich and highly valuable data source for carrying out serious grammatical analyses.