Corpus Material Research Articles

On Conceptual and Axiological Aspects of the Word Mutter ʻMotherʼ in Context (Based on Corpus Material)

Abstract This paper focuses on a linguistic image of mother in German languages. It seeks to grasp it through a typical context of the German word Mutter ʻmotherʼ. The research is based on results of distributional and thematic analyses of these words. These analyses are used as a base for reconstructing prototypical characteristics of “mother” and the related concepts used by speakers of German. The paper develops these findings into compiling the most frequent collocations and other (mostly contextual) information gathered by the use of corpus tools. The paper concludes with an outline of unconscious axiological processes used in evaluating the image of mother on the good/bad axis.

Multimodal communication in instructional settings: An investigation of the functional roles of gestures and arrows

In daily communication and instructional settings, arrows and spontaneous gestures usually convey similar spatial information to interlocutors. They can visualize spatial information in 2D or 3D space based on shared conceptual and spatial representations. The present study investigates the relationship between spontaneous gestures and arrows from the perspective of generation and comprehension in instructional settings. We introduce a corpus of arrows in written multimodal text and a corpus of gestures generated during communication through multimodal instructional material. We also report an experimental investigation that used corpus material to study the impact of gestures on comprehension learning. A comparison of the corpora reveals functional similarities and differences between arrows and gestures and their complementary role in multimodal communication. The findings suggest that arrows and gestures may share a common conceptual space during communication, having a significant impact on comprehension and learning.

Modal verbs of strong obligation in Scottish Standard English

This article investigates differences between Scottish Standard English (SSE) and Southern British Standard English (SBSE) in the semantic domain of strong obligation. Focusing on the modal verbsmust,have to,need toand(have) got to, we use new corpus material from nineteen written and spoken genres in the Scottish component of theInternational Corpus of English(ICE-SCO) and corresponding texts from ICE-GB. Data are analysed using a mixed-effect multinomial regression model to predict the choice of verb. Language-internal factors include mode of production (written/spoken), grammatical subject (first/second/third person) and source of obligation (objective/subjective). Our results show that, as previous research suggests, SSE is much more likely to employneed tofor the expression of strong obligation, and less likely to employmustand(have) got to. This general pattern remains essentially unaffected by language-internal factors. To account for our findings, we draw on the sociologically motivated process of democratisation and the language-internal process of grammaticalisation.

Pronominal right-dislocation in Norwegian

The goal of the paper is to propose a holistic analysis of the discourse properties and the interpretational effects of pronominal right-dislocation in Norwegian. Previous research has suggested that this is a topic construction, and it has been shown that the right-dislocated pronoun may affect reference assignment, is sometimes used in cases of discourse breaks, is associated with contrastiveness, and may lead to interpretational effects such as “emphasis” and “mitigation”. Based on Norwegian authentic corpus material, Givón’s (1983a) notion of marked constructions, and Sperber and Wilson’s (1986/1995) relevance theory, we present a novel analysis that connects the various properties of the construction together. A central aspect of our analysis is the assumption that marked constructions increase the accessibility of contrastive interpretations, which in turn may trigger the derivation of certain types of implicatures. Since the analysis is mainly based on assumptions about human cognition, the study makes cross-linguistic predictions despite its focus on one language.

A organização multidimensional da fala

Much of our understanding of linguistic structure was necessarily first built up on the basis of isolated sentences, either constructed by analysts or speakers consulting their intuitions, or from written documents. The availability of corpora of unscripted speech is now allowing us to see what speakers actually do, opening up vast new areas for exploration. Some of the advantages described here are the access to prosody and context. The question addressed is how closely traditional syntactic structures, particularly constituent structures, are matched by prosodic structures. Points are illustrated with corpus material from Mohawk, a language indigenous to the North American Northeast.

The Information Structure–prosody interface in text-to-speech technologies. An empirical perspective

Abstract The correspondence between the communicative intention of a speaker in terms of Information Structure and the way this speaker reflects communicative aspects by means of prosody have been a fruitful field of study in Linguistics. However, text-to-speech applications still lack the variability and richness found in human speech in terms of how humans display their communication skills. Some attempts were made in the past to model one aspect of Information Structure, namely thematicity for its application to intonation generation in text-to-speech technologies. Yet, these applications suffer from two limitations: (i) they draw upon a small number of made-up simple question-answer pairs rather than on real (spoken or written) corpus material; and (ii) they do not explore whether any other interpretation would better suit a wider range of textual genres beyond dialogs. In this paper, two different interpretations of thematicity in the field of speech technologies are examined: the state-of-art binary (and flat) theme-rheme, and the hierarchical thematicity defined by Igor Mel’čuk within the Meaning-Text Theory. The outcome of the experiments on a corpus of native speakers of US English suggests that the latter interpretation of thematicity has a versatile implementation potential for text-to-speech applications of the Information Structure–prosody interface.

IZGUBLjENO DETINjSTVO I SLOBODA U FILMOVIMA O ŠPANSKOM GRAĐANSKOM RAT

The paper deals with the presentation of children’s lives and the consequences of the Spanish Civil War in the film achievements of Spanish cinema. The corpus material consists of the films The Language of Butterflies (La lengua de las mariposas) and Black Bread (Pan negro) in which children interpret the roles of the protagonists. Taking into account the consequences that almost every war brings with it, we want to examine the extent to which children in Spain were deprived of a normal childhood and freedom at that time. Based on the analyzed scenes, we will show the gradational change of children from innocent victims of war to brave fight- ers for their own ideals. A peaceful and happy childhood was replaced by growing up and maturing prematurely, and the consequences of the war remained present in the years after this horrific event.

Błędy walencyjne w tekstach obcokrajowców uczących się języka polskiego w świetle korpusu PoLKo

Niniejszy artykuł ma na celu omówienie błędów walencyjnych w pracach pisemnych obcokrajowców uczących się języka polskiego jako obcego. Walencja jest kluczowym elementem przyswajania języka obcego, jednakże w przypadku języka polskiego jako obcego nadal brakuje badań nad błędami walencji, które byłyby oparte na danych empirycznych. Prezentowane opracowanie stanowi pierwszą próbę analizy błędów walencyjnychna podstawie danych z Korpusu Uczniowskiego Języka Polskiego PoLKo. Niniejsze badanie jest pilotażowe i obejmuje różne poziomy zaawansowania (A1–C1) i narodowości (słowiańskie i niesłowiańskie) autorów tekstów. Materiał korpusowy wykazał, iż błędy walencyjne występują na wszystkich poziomach językowych i dla różnych narodowości. Niemniej jednak błędy walencyjne są częstsze we frazach przyimkowychwśród uczniów z niefleksyjnym językiem ojczystym. Potrzebne są jednak dalsze badania w tej dziedzinie, które z rozwojem korpusu uczniowskiego PoLKo przyniosą nowe wyniki i wnioski.

Valence partikulí na základě dat z Pražského mluveného korpusu

Artykuł dotyczy opisu walencji partykuł w języku czeskim. Oparty jest na materiale Praskiego korpusu języka mówionego (PMK), pierwszego czeskiego korpusu języka mówionego. Po krótkim wprowadzeniu wstępnego materiału korpusowego i głównych wyników badań, artykuł skupia się na opisie walencji partykuł, czyli ich zdolności wiązania się z innymi słowami w zdaniu lub z całym zdaniem, co jest ściśle związane z miejscem ich występowania. Koncentruje się również na kumulacji partykuł w mowie, która z punktu widzenia syntagmatyki jest głównie tekstowa i wychwytuje tylko przypadkowo powtarzające się tekstowe kombinacje dwóch lub więcej partykuł obok siebie, w przeciwieństwie do systemowej, wynikiem które są partykuły wielowyrazowe. Jednak oba procesy wskazują na kombinatoryczne możliwości partykuł. Na koniec przedstawiono bezpośrednie otoczenie wszystkich partykuł, które wystąpiły w PMK.
 Abstrakt Článek se zabývá popisem valence partikulí v mluvené češtině. Vychází z materiálu Pražského mluveného korpusu (PMK), prvního českého mluveného korpusu. Po stručném představení výchozího korpusového materiálu a hlavních výsledků šetření se soustředí na popis valence partikulí, tj. jejich schopnost vázat se na jiná slova ve větě, nebo na celou větu, což úzce souvisí s místem jejich výskytu. Dále se zaměřuje na kumulacipartikulí v promluvě, která je z pohledu syntagmatiky převážně textová a zachycuje pouze náhodně se opakující textové kombinace dvou nebo více partikulí vedle sebe, na rozdíl od systémové, jejímž výsledkem jsou víceslovné partikule. Oba procesy však ukazují na kombinatorické možnosti partikulí. Nakonec je představeno bezprostřední okolí všech partikulí, které se vyskytly v PMK.

Глаголы падения в финском языке

In Finnish, a Finno-Ugric language, many different verbs are used to describe the process of falling. They differ in meaning according to the trajectory, the characteristics of the falling object, and the process of landing. The list of verbs of falling was compiled with the help of dictionaries, corpus material, and native and multilingual speakers of Finnish. After completing the list of verbs, the authors collected examples of the use of the chosen ca. 40 verbs (in some cases, different Aktionsarten were also included). The main corpus of examples was retrieved from the Language Bank of Finland, available online at www.korp.csc.fi. The examples illustrated the direct, special, and metaphoric meanings of the verbs. After comparing the contexts where different verbs were used, it was found that the most frequent verbs are pudota, tippua (falling from above to the ground), kaatua (falling from a vertical position into a horizontal one) and romahtaa (collapse). The first two verbs may replace each other in almost all contexts. Although the primary meanings of the other verbs are often different, they may have very similar metaphoric meanings, especially when people speak of their mental state. The other verbs described in this study are: alentua ‘become lower, go down, fall, sink’, aleta ‘become lower’, kellahtaa ‘fall, tumble down, topple over’, kellistyä ‘fall, tumble (down), fall down’, kierähtää ‘fall, tumble over, stumble, flip over, turn over’, kolahtaa ‘bang, slam, hit, bump, clunk, go down well’, kompastua ‘trip, stumble, trip up’, kopsahtaa ‘thump, clap, click, fall with a thump’, kupsahtaa ‘topple, topple over, tumble over, pop off’, kuukahtaa ‘topple, topple over, tumble over, pop off’, langeta ‘fall, throw’, laskea ‘lower, reduce, fall, drop, go down’, lätsähtää ‘splash, belly-flop’, leijailla ‘float, soar, hover’, lentää ‘fly’, loiskahtaa ‘splash, spill’, luhistua ‘collapse, cave in, fall in, break down, fall apart’, lysähtää ‘collapse, sink, drop, slump, flop’, lyyhistyä ‘collapse, fall down, sink, drop, slump’, molskahtaa ‘splash, plop’, painua ‘sink, fall’, plätsähtää ‘splash’, roiskahtaa ‘splash, splatter, spurt out’, romahtaa ‘collapse, tumble down, fall down, crash down, cave in, topple over’, sortua ‘collapse, fall down, cave in, crash down’, tömähtää ‘thump, thud’, tuupertua ‘collapse, drop, sink, fall down’, vajota ‘sink, fall’, valua ‘flow, run, drip’, varista ‘fall off, drop off’, and vierähtää ‘roll, elapse’.

Example Markers at the Intersection of Grammaticalization and Lexicalization

ABSTRACT Givón’s words “today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax” have been widely used to describe grammaticalization, a process of linguistic change which implies an increase in the grammatical status of a word or construction. In this paper, the process of grammaticalization of (for) example and (for) instance from nouns to example markers will be described. The paper will also address the incipient lexicalization of these expressions. However, this process is still at a very early phase. In light of the corpus material, the lexicalization of for example and for instance can be summarized with the analogous formula “today’s syntax might be tomorrow’s lexis”, a more tentative motto since lexical constructions do not frequently originate in syntax. The examples analysed here show that grammaticalization and lexicalization may at times feed each other.

About the idiomatic potential of Russian colloquial speech

The article is devoted to the description of the idiomatic potential of Russian colloquial speech, revealed on a voluminous corpus material. The observations and conclusions are based on the analysis of the material of two oral corps: Russian everyday speech (“One speech day”, mainly dialogues and polylogies of native speakers) and Russian monologue speech (“Balanced annotated text collection”). Both corps were created at St. Petersburg State University and allow multilevel analysis of both types of oral speech. In a broad sense, all the units that refer to idioms meet the criteria of stability, reproducibility, and also the integrity of the value of a unit, which cannot be reduced to the sum of the values of its components. As the analysis of the corpus material has shown, our speech is rich in such idioms: the maximum number of idioms per fragment of the record is 1.1% (the average share is 0.2–0.3%). For a minute of communication, the speaker (along with his interlocutors) is able to use up to 2 idioms. The article presents the results of the analysis of everyday Russian speech. The main array of idiomatics is not only the units recorded in dictionaries, but also colloquial neoplasms and everything that can be called the idiomatic potential of colloquial speech. A certain systematization of this potential is proposed in the article: (1) modifications (s polotencem napereves); (2) contamination (ni v koej zhizni); (3) occasional formations (golovu zakhlaml’at’ negativami); (4) generalized statements understandable to native speakers, but requiring comments in a foreign-language audience (kak razd l’ablondinok); (5) precedent texts, often modified (ikh jest ’u men’a); (6) speech formulas, or grammatical constructions-collocations (Pravda chto li?! pon’al net?); (7) prepositional-case combinations (forms-idioms) (bez nikakix). The criterion of idiomaticity in most cases can be the possibility of replacing a speech fragment with a unit-identifier.

Linguo-specific lexis of Chinese language and problems of translation: on the example of 麻烦 máfan ‘trouble; disturb; worry’

The subject of this research is the translation strategies of linguo-specific lexis of Chinese language. On the example of lexeme 麻烦 máfan ‘trouble; disturb; worry’, the author highlights the fundamental principles of describing linguo-specific words based on their grammatical functions, lexical compatibility, and stylistic connotations. The analysis of use of 麻烦 máfan determined a correlation between grammatical functions and stylistic connotations. Therefore, 麻烦 máfan is often used as an adjective in colloquial speech, while in the official language it is rather used as a noun. The study is conducted with application of the modern lexicographical methods, including work with dictionaries, corpus data analysis of the Chinese-English parallel corpora, as well as survey of native speakers. The scientific lies in the systematic application of extensive corpus material towards the analysis of linguo-specific lexis, which allows finding the appropriate translation equivalents. The research results lead to a number of recommendation on improvement of the Chinese-Russian dictionaries, and can valuable in the practice of teaching Chinese language.

Маркеры метакоммуникации в разных социальных ролях: на материале прагматического аннотирования корпусных данных

Прагматическое аннотирование материала корпуса «Один речевой день» позволяет видеть, как говорящий, выстраивая свою речь с помощью определенных маркеров, эксплицирует свои коммуникативные намерения, отношение к адресату, обращается к общей с собеседниками перцептивной базе. Некоторые единицы буквально отражают структурную сторону речи, делают доступным для понимания процесс протекания коммуникации – маркируется начало и конец реплики, поиск единиц, опущение (игнорирование) деталей, подчеркивание важного, затруднения разного рода и призыв продолжить коммуникацию. В докладе рассматривается употребление маркеров метакоммуникации в зависимости от социальной роли говорящего. Корпус «Один речевой день», который имеет обширную метатекстовую разметку, что позволяет анализировать материал с учетом социолингвистических данных, информацию о коммуникативной ситуации. Социальная роль говорящего является одним из малоизученных параметров в корпусе. Анализ подвыборки материала, в котором говорящие выступают в социальных ролях, противопоставленных по принципу симметричности/асимметричности отношений, позволил обнаружить некоторую зависимость используемых для построения дискурса единиц метакоммуникации (контактоустанавливающих) от роли говорящего.

The analysis of meteorological metaphors in the кazakh and еnglish languages.

The article discusses the cognitive processes of the metaphorical conceptualization of the wind andthe definition of its specificity through the corpus representation in the Kazakh and English languages.Based on the studied corpus material there were described and analyzed metaphorical uses of the wind.The investigation of which identified more that 300 metaphoric expressions that has demonstrated universal and unique characteristics of wind metaphorical conceptualization in the studied corpus data baseof Kazakh and English languages. The aim of the scientific work includes an attempt to determine theprocesses of metaphorization of meteorological lexis and its specifics related to the thematic group ofwords wind/жел, so during the study were involved explanatory, translation, phraseological and terminological dictionaries. The data obtained by this cross-linguistic study suggests the presence of certaingeneral and individual characeristics in the conceptualization of wind/жел in the figurative meaningthe most essential features of the metaphors have been described and revealed, productive and nonproductive ways of its metaphorical conceptualizations, also equivalent and non-equivalent expressionsoccurring in two lanuguages which were resulted due to historical development and linguisculturalreasons. Thus the wind is an invisible abstract force that affects human life. The language verbalizationof the wind concept is rather heterogeneous, due to the specifics of two national languages and otherexplanations, which include extralinguistic factors of the development of these analyzed languages.

Does Ergative Case Assigning Depend on Transitivity Condition in Georgian?

The article presents empirical data on the dependency of case assigning on the transitivity condition in Georgian. Based on the original corpus material obtained during fieldwork in 2019, and following the theoretical assumptions of a dependent case theory originally proposed by Marantz (1991) and further developed in Baker (2015) and Baker & Bobaljik (2017), among others, the article outlines the empirical results validating the hypothesis that the transitivity condition is decisive for assigning the ergative case in Georgian. Further, problematic issues, like assigning the ergative to intransitive unergative verbs, are analysed and some strategies used by native-speaking consultants involving valency increasing operations are discussed.

ВЕРБАЛЬНЫЙ КОМПОНЕНТ ОБЛОЖЕЧНОГО КРЕОЛИЗОВАННОГО АНОНСА В ЖУРНАЛЕ “THE ECONOMIST”

The article deals with the creolized announcements of a leader from The Economist magazine which are published on its cover. The inquiry is aimed at describing the usage of the main verbal component of the creolized announcements and focuses on its supragraphemics, localisation, interaction with the iconic component. Considered in terms of comparative analysis, the component under discussion displays its typical properties. Special attention is paid to the corpus material units with increased semiotic capacity, as well as the various main verbal components involvement in compressing the creolized announcements and its impact on the conditions of semiosis. The revelation of the properties of the component under discussion, the description of its usage impart novelty to this study. The results arrived at in it could be employed when researching the creolized texts of some other types, in college syllabi of instruction.

A Diachronic Approach to Web-Based Genres: The Case of the Personal Weblog

This study pursues two related aims: (1) It develops a diachronic approach to web-based genres and explores its potentials and limitations. (2) As a case in point, it uses the genre personal weblog, providing a diachronic description of both recurrent and changing features of the genre. It applies a mixed-methods approach that draws on historical sources and the DIABLOC, a diachronic blog corpus, which spans 15 years from 1997 to 2012 and includes also examples of the very first weblogs. Analyses are selectively extended beyond the surface of blog-pages to their HTML source code. On the basis of corpus material, patterns of genre change such as migration, pattern embedding and genre split are described and embedded into a differentiated model of the development of the personal weblog genre.

Indirect evidentiality in Dutch and German: a contrastive corpus study of the seem-type verbs schijnen and scheinen

The present study deals with the seem-type verbs schijnen and scheinen in Dutch and German. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of spoken and written corpus material, the construction types these verbs typically appear in as well as their function and meaning are analysed. As seem-type verbs often develop into evidential markers (this is the case in e.g. English, French and Spanish), I will particularly concentrate on evidential uses (and the syntactic patterns that are associated with those uses). The study will lay bare important differences between German, Belgian Dutch and Netherlandic Dutch regarding both verbs. Moreover, the distinction between spoken and written language will be shown to play a crucial role with respect to the construction types found. Finally, the fact that the verbs exhibit different constructional preferences will be linked to different semantic properties as well.

Diminutief als beleefdheidsstrategie: Een vergelijking tussen Nederland en Vlaanderen

This paper, using a corpus of eight contemporary films from Belgium and the Netherlands (four original versions and four that are their Dutch or Flemish remakes), aims to look at the use of diminutives in politeness strategies in the Netherlands and in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. The corpus material shows that there is a visible difference in both the quantitative (174 diminutives in the Dutch films and 275 in the Belgian ones) and qualitative use of diminutives in the Netherlands and in Belgium. Besides its primary function, the diminutive has several pragmatic functions in both varieties of Dutch, however it is more frequently used in certain contexts in Belgium. This corresponds with the use of diminutives in politeness strategies. While the Dutch and Flemish use diminutives in a similar way in positive politeness strategies, in the negative strategies, there is quite a clear difference.