Frequent Content Words Research Articles

Working Titles. Computational Analysis of Film Titling Practices: A Polish Case Study

This article traces historical trends in film titling practices in Poland, based on quantitative analysis of film metadata. The authors analyse a corpus of 2,519 films produced in Poland until 2023, looking at regularities in the naming of Polish original films: the average length of titles, title duplication, the most frequent content words typical of successive phases in the history of Polish cinematography, lexical diversity, and the presence of proper names and foreignisms. Then they replicate some of the tests on the corpus of foreign films translated into Polish, which includes 5,585 foreign films distributed in Poland between 1945 and 1989 and 33,794 films released in Poland after 1989. The authors compare the peculiarities of the original titles and those translated into Polish in search of similarities and discrepancies, potentially symptomatic of translationese, or titlese.

Speech pauses in speakers with and without aphasia: A usage-based approach

Pauses in speech are indicators of cognitive effort during language production and have been examined to inform theories of lexical, grammatical and discourse processing in healthy speakers and individuals with aphasia (IWA). Studies of pauses have commonly focused on their location and duration in relation to grammatical properties such as word class or phrase complexity. However, recent studies of speech output in aphasia have revealed that utterances of IWA are characterised by stronger collocations, i.e., combinations of words that are often used together. We investigated the effects of collocation strength and lexical frequency on pause duration in comic strip narrations of IWA and non-brain-damaged (NBD) individuals with part of speech (PoS; content and function words) as covariate. Both groups showed a decrease in pause duration within more strongly collocated bigrams and before more frequent content words, with stronger effects in IWA. These results are consistent with frameworks which propose that strong collocations are more likely to be processed as holistic, perhaps even word-like, units. Usage-based approaches prove valuable in explaining patterns of preservation and impairment in aphasic language production.

Development of Novel Speech Stimuli With Phonetic Coverage and Phonemic Balance

Purpose: Gurevich and Kim (2022) call for new speech materials that provide not only phonemic but also allophonic coverage so that production and perception of consonants can be examined as a function of their positional contexts. The purpose of this work was to construct such materials. Method: A total of 466 allowable contexts for the 24 English consonants were determined by considering positional contexts in terms of word and syllable positions, lexical stress, and proximity to other phonemes. These contexts were filled using 308 unique tokens composed of frequent content words ensuring both phonemic and allophonic coverages. In addition, the words were combined into 37 declarative and interrogative phrases to incorporate prosodic elements of speech. Twenty healthy adults were recorded reading these phrases to assess time and effort required for the task. Results: The newly constructed speech materials achieved high-overall phonetic coverage at 83.05% of all allowable English contexts, including coverage of consonant categories and positional contexts of particular importance for clinical and research purposes. Moreover, these materials attained the balance of consonant frequencies in typical spoken English. This was achieved with 37 phrases that take an average of 3 min, 6 s to read at an average of 5.02 s per phrase. Conclusions: Compared with the commonly used standard reading passages examined in Gurevich and Kim (2022), the newly constructed materials provide significantly superior phonetic coverage, including important linguistic features known to affect production and perception of consonants. The new materials are therefore well suited for eliciting speech representative of General American English for investigating consonant production and perception.

A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study of English Translation of <i>Tao Te Ching</i>

<i>Tao Te Ching</i> is a work by Laozi, one of the greatest philosophers in Chinese history. Despite the large number of existing translations, it is still necessary to revisit, reinterpret and retranslate it for the need of changing readers and market. Previous translation studies of<i> Tao Te Ching</i> focused on the interpretation of important terms and concepts, the comparison of different versions to discuss translation strategies. Some researchers used corpus tools to compare overall stylistic differences, but ignored minute details reflected in translators’ word choice. Improving upon previous ones, this study uses corpus tools to comparatively analyze two English versions of <i>Tao Te Ching</i> translated by Lin Yutang and by James Legge. Their lexical diversity is calculated with a more reliable measure: moving average type/token ratio (MATTR). A wordlist is then made to extract 10 most frequent content words in the source text for detailed comparison of their translation. Similarities are found in both translations. First, they have a similar level of lexical diversity. Second, they share a degree of inconsistency of word choice when translating high-frequency words. Third, both combine the translation strategies of domestication and foreignization. Differences are found as well. First, Legge has a preference for explicitation and poetic effect. Second, Lin makes his choice more dependent upon the changing context.

Корпус русского рассказа начала XX века. Пример лингвостатистического анализа.

Исследование строится на базе представительного «Корпуса русских рассказов 1900 – 1930-х гг.». Для выборки из первого периода включенных в Корпус текстов (100 рассказов с 1900 по 1913 гг. отобранных по принципу не более одного рассказа от каждого из включённых в Корпус авторов) был построен частотный словарь. С целью выявления ключевых слов, соответствующих основной тематике рассказов, а также прослеживания влияния крупномасштабных политических изменений на язык художественной прозы первые 100 наиболее частотных знаменательных слов словаря были сопоставлены с данными полученных авторами ранее частотных словарей отдельных русских писателей – признанных мастеров рассказа и материалами частотного словаря русского языка в целом. Также было проведено сравнение с данными для русских рассказов аналогичного периода начала XXI века, полученными из НКРЯ. Для получения объективных результатов сравнения использовался показатель числа употреблений на миллион слов (ipm ). Полученные результаты показывают, что распределение частот знаменательных слов в верхней зоне словаря может служить хорошим индикатором общей тематики произведений не только отдельного писателя, но и отдельной эпохи, а также отражать актуальные внешние аспекты жизни общества.

Conceptualization of the ‘School’ in the English Available Lexicon of Spanish Adolescents

This study explores the conceptualization of ‘School’ in the English lexicon of EFL learners, and compares this lexicon to the meanings attributed to the entry School in English dictionaries. Our first objective aimed at identifying the most frequent content words retrieved by Spanish EFL learners in response to the cue-word SCHOOL in a lexical availability/association task, and comparing them with the meanings attributed by dictionaries. Our second objective aimed at ascertaining whether there were gender similarities or differences in the lexical production and the actual words retrieved by males and females. The quantitative analyses applied to the data revealed a common structure in male and female EFL learners’ available lexicon as well as a high correspondence to the meanings attributed to School in dictionaries. However, the qualitative analysis also uncovered typical patterns related to adolescent school life not present in dictionaries as well as vocabulary not shared by males and females but exclusively generated either by males or by females.

The creation and evaluation of a grammar pattern list for the most frequent academic verbs

The current research project was designed according to the conceptualization that vocabulary knowledge is multidimensional (Jaen, 2007; Qian & Schedl, 2004) and the learning of grammatical and collocational patterns should be considered as important as, if not more important than, the acquisition of semantic knowledge of single words. The purposes of the project were to (1) propose a method of extracting grammar patterns for the most frequent content words (verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs) in a given corpus; and (2) derive a tentative grammar pattern list for the 115 most frequent academic verbs.The extraction of grammar patterns was realized through a rule-based programming approach, where the researchers coded all possible patterns of the most frequent academic verbs and used the script to extract grammar patterns from a given corpus. The extracted grammar patterns were compiled with corpus-based frequency information and developed into a grammar pattern list for the top-frequency academic verbs. The grammar pattern list is expected to complement the widely used EAP (English for academic purposes) word list, the Academic Vocabulary List (Gardner & Davies, 2014), by specifying the frequency of each verb patterns (e.g. provide n with n, select n from n, base n on n).

The relationship between thematic, lexical, and syntactic features of written texts and personality traits

The relationship between linguistic features of written texts and personality traits was investigated. Linguistic features used in this study were thematic (co-occurrence of the most frequent content words across participants), lexical (the maximum of new words) and syntactic (average sentence length). Personality traits were measured by VP+2 questionnaire standardized for Serbian population. Research was conducted on text materials collected from 114 Serbian participants (age 15-65), in their native tongue. Results showed that participants who gained low scores on Conscientiousness and high scores on Neuroticism and Negative Valence wrote about repeated daily activities and everyday life, but not about job-related matters or life perspective. Higher scores on Aggressiveness and Negative Valence coincided with writing about job-related matters and with the lower lexical richness. By showing that thematic content of text materials is affected by personality traits, these results support and expand previous findings regarding the relationship between personality and linguistic behaviour.

The Missing-Phoneme Effect in Aural Prose Comprehension

When participants search for a target letter while reading for comprehension, they miss more instances if the target letter is embedded in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. This phenomenon, called the missing-letter effect, has been considered a window on the cognitive mechanisms involved in the visual processing of written language. In the present study, one group of participants read two texts for comprehension while searching for a target letter, and another group listened to a narration of the same two texts while listening for the target letter’s corresponding phoneme. The ubiquitous missing-letter effect was replicated and extended to a missing-phoneme effect. Item-based correlations between the reading and listening tasks were high, which led us to conclude that both tasks involve cognitive processes that reading and listening have in common and that both processes are rooted in psycholinguistically driven allocation of attention.

How Do Deaf Children With and Without Cochlear Implants Manage to Read Sentences: The Key Word Strategy.

The aim of this study is to examine the mechanisms used by deaf children with and without cochlear implants (CIs) to read sentences and the linguistic bases (vocabulary and syntax) underlying those reading mechanisms. Previous studies have shown that deaf persons read sentences using the key word strategy (KWS), which consists of identifying some frequent content words and ignoring the function words. The present results show that deaf children, including those wearing CIs from an early age, do use the KWS. It is also shown that this tendency is related with a linguistic deficiency, especially with a poor ability to deal with function words. Furthermore, the age of implantation, and the degree of hearing loss for children without CIs, plays an important role in using the KWS. Some pedagogical consequences of this situation are considered.

Analysis of reading strategies in deaf adults as a function of their language and meta-phonological skills.

The first aim of this study was to examine the mechanisms used in reading sentences by deaf adults who had completed secondary or higher education. Previous data allowed us to hypothesize that they used the key word strategy, consisting of identifying (some of) the frequent content words, and deriving an overall representation of the sentence's meaning ignoring the function words. The results supported the hypothesis. The second aim was to establish the relationships between this strategy and the linguistic and phonological abilities of deaf participants. The results show that vocabulary increased with reading level, but syntax, evaluated with the use of function words, did not. This suggests that using the key word strategy during long periods of time increases knowledge of content words but not syntax, probably because function words are neglected by this strategy. The results also showed that the deaf participants had a fairly large orthographical lexicon. This implies that the extensive use of the key word strategy allows them to store lexical information. The next question was whether the written word representations of the deaf participants were memorized as mere logograms, or if they had been stored in connection with the phonological representations of the corresponding words. The metaphonological tasks conducted produced evidence indicating that deaf participants used both orthographic and phonological representations. A factor analysis of the metaphonological tasks together with reading and spelling confirmed that both factors were necessary to explain the whole variance in the deaf group.

A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF THE LEXICAL MAKE-UP OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS ARTICLE ABSTRACTS

This paper reports results from a corpus-based study that explored the frequency of words in the abstracts of applied linguistics journal articles. The abstracts of major articles in leading applied linguistics journals, published since 2005 up to November 2011 were analyzed using software modules from the Compleat Lexical Tutor. The output includes a list of the most frequent content words, lists of frequent words and abbreviations not found in the British National Corpus. The study also weighed applied linguistics abstracts against the General Service List and the Academic Word List and identified words in these abstracts which are shared by the GSL or the AWL or are unique to one set. The report separately lists words from the GSL and the AWL which are proportionally more frequent in these abstracts than in general written texts, and hence may be reasonably regarded as playing key textual roles in applied linguistics abstracts and, by extension, discourse.

A Corpus-based Analysis of Collocations in Tenth Grade High School English Textbooks

Increased corpus-based language studies have resulted in research on individual words in textbooks, but these teaching materials have not been extensively analyzed on the type and frequency of collocations. Previous research has been limited to studying certain parts of textbooks or specific types of collocations. By analyzing 16 Common English I High School textbooks of English (1,441,402 running words), 852 lexical collocations were extracted with the 41 most frequent content words used as nodes. For detailed analysis, 50 high-frequency lexical collocations were compared to collocations in the 2k Graded Reader native-speaker corpus for their frequencies and usages. Collocations that are closely related to learners` real life and interest (e.g., volunteer work, good grade, fast food) were found while the number of collocations combined with adverbs was relatively small comprising only 41 out of 852 collocations (less than 5%). The comparison of the fifty most frequent collocations in the textbook with the 2k Graded Reader native-speaker corpus produced considerable differences. The results suggest that a variety of high-frequency collocations from native-speaker corpus need to be given thought in the process of materials development. The study suggests contrastive instruction for teaching collocations to L2 learners.

Sex differences in the missing-letter effect: A question of reading or visual–spatial skills?

When readers must search for a target letter while reading a continuous text, they are more likely to miss targets in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. This missing-letter effect has been found across many languages, methodologies, and types of reading materials. Despite the ubiquity of the missing-letter effect, sex differences have been reported, but their pattern is conflicting and no clear interpretation has been offered so far. In two experiments, sex differences were examined in the letter search task, while also measuring spatial and reading skills. In both experiments, the missing-letter effect was found for both genders and a larger missing-letter effect was found for faster readers. It is concluded that when sex differences are observed in the missing-letter effect, they are likely due to reading speed and not to spatial skills as previously hypothesized. Results are interpreted in light of the Attentional Disengagement model of the missing-letter effect.

Identifying Indonesian-core vocabulary for teaching English to Indonesian preschool children: a corpus-based research

This corpus-based research focuses on building a corpus of Indonesian children’s storybooks to find the frequent content words in order to identify Indonesian-core vocabulary for teaching English to Indonesian preschool children. The data was gathered from 131 Indo¬nesian children’s storybooks, which resulted in a corpus of 134,320 words. These data were run through a frequency menu in MonoConc Pro, a corpus program. Data analysis was analyzed by selecting the frequent nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs before each of them was lemmatized. The result showed that the children were already exposed to both ordinary and imaginative concepts, antonym in adjective, time reference, and compound nouns. The narrative discourse clearly influenced the kind of verbs the children exposed to

WHAT ENGLISH COLLOCATIONS TO TEACH FIRST TO INDONESIAN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN? A MINI-CORPUS BASED RESEARCH OF INDONESIAN CHILDREN'S STORYBOOKS

Abstract : Frequent content words in a mini-corpus of 131 Indonesian children’s storybooks, which resulted in a corpus of 134, 320 words, were investigated. The result was used to identify what English collocations to teach first to Indonesian preschool children. The data were run through a collocation menu in MonoConc Pro, a corpus program. To identify the frequent collocations in the corpus, the preceding and following words from each frequent lemma were analyzed. All the data were calculated in terms of the whole corpus and normalized per 100,000 occurrences. The result showed that the children were already exposed to various collocations; however, it turned out that several English and Indonesian collocations were not similar in terms of syntax and morphology. Teachers cannot literally introduce those collocations to children. K ey words : corpus, frequent collocation, content words

The role of eye movements in the missing-letter effect revisited with the rapid serial visual presentation procedure.

When participants read a text while searching for a target letter, they are more likely to miss the target letter embedded in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. This effect is usually observed with a text displayed normally, for which it has been found that frequent function words are fixated for a smaller amount of time than less frequent content words. However, similar pattern of omissions have been observed with a rapid serial visual presentation procedure in which words appear one at a time. These parallel results would demonstrate that fixation duration per se is not the proximal cause of the missing-letter effect only if eye movements are not made during the rapid serial visual presentation procedure. Therefore, the authors performed eye monitoring during the rapid serial visual presentation procedure. Results revealed that, with a rapid serial visual presentation procedure, participants fixated function and content words for almost the entire presentation duration. It is concluded that eye movements are not the proximal cause of the missing-letter effect.

Solving the chicken-and-egg problem of letter detection and fixation duration in reading

When asked to detect target letters while reading a text, participants miss more letters in frequent function words than in less frequent content words. According to the truncation assumption that characterizes most models of this effect, misses occur when word-processing time is shorter than letter-processing time. Fixation durations for detections and omissions were compared with fixation durations from a baseline condition when participants were searching for a target letter embedded in different words. Although, as predicted by truncation, fixation durations were longer for detections than for omissions, fixation durations for detections were also longer than those for the same words in the baseline condition, demonstrating that longer fixation durations when targets are detected are more likely to be due to demands associated with producing a detection response than to truncation. Also, contrary to predictions from the truncation assumption, the standard deviation of fixation durations for detections was larger than that from the baseline condition.

Lexical Diversity in a Literary Genre: A Corpus Study of the Rgveda

This research 1 evaluates the extent to which lexical diversity, measured by frequent content words, hapax legomena, and type-token ratios (TTRs), is dependent on three features of the genre of the oral Indo-Aryan cultic poetry represented by the literary corpus of the Rgveda (ca. 165,000 tokens): characteristic choice of subject matter, usage of refrains, and the attribution of hymns to distinct poetic collectives. Analysis of 255 texts of 200 tokens showed that hymns on popular topics and where refrains were attested have a significantly higher rate of high-frequency content words and a lower ratio of once-occurring types. A higher TTR is observed in the hymns of specific family origin. Complexity of genre can be interpreted as a result of different discourse strategies of the poets. Overall, conservative mythological texts are characterized by regularity in word usage. Occurrence of content words, in the entire corpus, with lexemes denoting 'deities' on the one side and 'nature' on the other is accounted for by the factor of semantics, which deals with the structure of narrative.

Familiarization effects for bilingual letter detection involving translation or exact text repetition.

In two experiments, English-Spanish bilinguals read passages, performing letter detection on some passages by circling target letters as they read. Detection passages were sometimes familiarized (primed) by prior reading of the same passage or a translation of it. Participants detected letters in English passages in Experiment 1 and in Spanish passages in Experiment 2. For both experiments, a missing letter effect occurred (depressed detection accuracy on frequent function words relative to less frequent content words). Familiarization promoted overall improvements in letter detection only for English passages, suggesting that reprocessing benefits depend on high language fluency. For Spanish passages, cognates engendered greater error rates than noncognates; the visual similarity of Spanish and English cognates apparently enabled faster identification of Spanish cognates in a way unaffected by familiarization of the whole text passage. Priming by familiarized text was significantly higher when the passages were in the same language than when they were in different languages, suggesting that the reprocessing benefits are at the word level instead of the semantic level. These results are consistent with the GO model of reading (Greenberg, Healy, Koriat, & Kreiner, 2004) but require an expanded consideration of attention redistribution processes in that model.