Lexical Profile Research Articles

The lexical typological profile of Swedish mental verbs

The lexical typological profile of a language is a crosslinguistically valid characterization of its lexical structure with particular focus on basic features which are language-specific. The paper deals with basic mental verbs in Swedish from this perspective based on data from translation corpora against the background of available information about typological patterns. A brief sketch is given of language-specific characteristics of the nuclear verb se ‘see’ which is the primary equivalent of English see but is also frequently used as an equivalent of look used as an activity verb (look at) and as a phenomenon-based verb (e.g. look happy). The extensive pattern of polysemy of the verb känna ‘feel’ is dealt with in detail and turns out to have several language-specific characteristics even in comparison with closely related languages such as German and English. Swedish veta is shown to have a more restricted extension beyond its basic meaning than its primary English equivalent know. English in this case appears to represent a more common pattern than Swedish judging from available typological data. A major section is also devoted to the semantic differentiation between the three basic verbs of thinking tänka-tro-tycka which represents one of the major language-specific characteristics of Swedish mental verbs.

Investigating Intercollocations - towards an Archaeology of Text

This paper explores the issue of how reciprocal, interdependent networks of words based on differences as described by Saussure are at work in the dimension of collocation. The investigation is carried out concerning how a verb (the verb conceal in its infinitive form is chosen as a point of departure) shares some of its most typical collocates (the top 10 collocates by t-score) with the other lexical verbs in BNC. Consequently, the lexical networks articulated by the differences in collocational patterns emerge. These networks consist of paired sets of nodes and collocates corresponding in a many-to-many way. Each set in the pair is observed to include words with multiple, complementary but indeterminate semantic orientations (polarities) towards the members of its corresponding set, thus delimiting the scope of the collocational dimension. The unique lexical profile of each word can be described as a bundle of several such collocational networks.

A naturalistic study of early lexical development: General processes and inter-individual variations in French children

This study investigated early lexical development in French by analysing changes and variability in lexical production and composition of children’s spontaneous speech samples from three age groups: 1;8, 2;6 and 3;3 years (20 children in each). Analyses of general developmental changes showed that lexical productivity increased strongly between 1;8 and 2;6 and between 2;6 and 3;3. Changes in lexical composition mostly occurred between 1;8 and 2;6, indicating that the most important reorganizations are achieved by 2;6. The main changes observed (decreases in proportions of nouns and paralexical classes, and increases in proportions of predicate and grammatical classes) fit overall the developmental trajectories found for other languages, such as English and Italian. Two controversial issues were particularly examined and discussed with regard to cognitive, language-specific and methodological factors: noun-verb asynchrony and grammatical word explosion. Quantitative individual differences in lexical composition were greater at 1;8 than at 2;6 and 3;3, supporting the hypothesis that stylistic variation decreases in the course of the third year. Children’s lexical profiles were strikingly diversified at 1;8, whereas they appeared as variants of a same ‘grammatical profile’ at 2;6 and 3;3. We propose that the decline of stylistic variations reflects the impact of developmental constraints, such as the necessity for children to produce function words, which suggests that variations found in the youngest children are not determinant factors for subsequent lexical development.

Features of the Verbal System in the Christian Neo-Aramaic Dialect of Koy Sanjaq and Their Areal Parallels

Koy Sanjaq, an Iraqi Kurdish town located fifty-five kilometers southeast of Arbil, once had two small minority communities of Neo-Aramaic speakers, one Jewish and one Christian, each speaking its own variety of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA). In 1951 the Jews of Koy Sanjaq all left for Israel, and since then only the town's Christian Neo-Aramaic variety has lingered on in loco, now spoken by approximately 140 adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church.' Whereas the grammatical and lexical profiles of the Jewish dialect of Koy Sanjaq are now largely known through the works of R. D. Hoberman and the present writer,2 the Christian dialect of the same town (henceforth CKS) has remained to date completely outside the scope of Neo-Aramaic dialectology. In section 2 salient features of the verbal derivation and verbal inflection of CKS will be presented. The description of these features is based on data obtained from two Koy Sanjaq-born Christians living in Detroit during fieldwork there in 2001, as well as from short recordings of the dialect, including one made in Koy Sanjaq itself, which I had received from my informants a few years earlier. Both informants (a man and a woman unrelated to each other) have been exposed to other Neo-Aramaic dialects since they left their hometown, especially to the dialects of Alqosh and Telkepe, prevalent among Neo-Aramaic speakers in Detroit, and can no longer speak their native dialect in its pristine form. Nonetheless, the dialectal interference detectable in my informants' native speech is by no means heavy, and they could readily furnish genuine CKS grammatical and lexical traits that are absent in the Neo-Aramaic varieties to which they were exposed. In section 3 I shall focus on two selected innovative features of the verbal system of CKS-the loss of Neo-paccel and the constructions of present progressive and present

Calculating the lexical frequency profile of written German texts

Abstract Measures of lexical richness aim at quantifying the degree to which L2 writers are using a varied and large vocabulary. One method for calculating lexical richness is the Lexical Frequency Profile, or LFP (Laufer & Nation, 1995). The LFP, calculated by a computer programme, provides a detailed picture of vocabulary use measured against several frequency lists of words. This paper reports on a small-scale study to investigate the effectiveness of calculating the LFP of written texts of German. This study formed part of a larger study to investigate the impact of dictionaries on students’ writing. Six subjects completed two timed writing tasks in examination conditions, one with and one without a bilingual dictionary. It was envisaged that the LFP might be helpful in determining if the presence of the bilingual dictionary made a difference to students’ lexical sophistication. A calculation of the LFP was carried out using two context-specific lists. Figures were calculated for the number of word tokens and word families. It was concluded that, although using the computer programme with German texts presented some difficulties not present when using the software with English frequency lists, the LFP showed itself to be a valuable diagnostic tool that was able to differentiate between proficiency levels in German and to provide useful information about lexical richness in German texts.

Argumentation And Values: An Analysis of Ordinary Political Competence via an Open-Ended Question

Through an analysis of answers to an open-ended question, this research seeks to demonstrate the argumentative competence of ‘laymen' in a salient issue of public debate (in this case the future of nuclear power). The hypothesis is that ordinary citizens, in their justification process, use the same type of rhetorical device that politicians do. This hypothesis can be further refined by postulating that these topoi, self-evident propositions that are shared by all and that therefore remain implicit in the enthymeme, are values. The Alceste method used here favors a statistical approach that identifies, within a given text corpus (the answers to the open-ended question), homogeneous subsets of verbatims on the basis of their lexical profile. The classes of answers garnered can be characterized by the available sociological variables in the survey, whether they are socio-demographic or attitudinal. By classifying free responses used to justify an initial stand, we can identify typical arguments. We then show how it is possible to reconstruct a rhetorical syllogism, or enthymeme, and thus attempt to retrieve the implicit value supporting the reasoning.

Developmental changes and variability in the early lexicon: a study of French children's naturalistic productions.

This paper investigates developmental changes, as well as inter-linguistic and inter-individual variations, in the expansion and composition of French children's early lexicons. Two studies were conducted using children's naturalistic productions: a longitudinal study of one child between 1;2 and 2;6, and a cross-sectional study of two groups (12 children each) aged 1;8 and 2;6. Analyses indicate that lexical productivity (measured in types, tokens, and new words) strongly increased with age, whereas lexical diversity showed almost no developmental progression. Nouns and para-lexical elements (including interjections, fillers or formulas) were predominant until 1;8 and decreased over time, while predicates and grammatical words increased. As compared to English, French development was characterized by less frequent nouns, initially more frequent predicates, and a remarkable expansion of grammatical words. Inter-individual variability in lexical productivity, in lexical diversity, and in the proportions of different categories was more marked at 1;8 than at 2;6. Lexical profiles found at 1;8 suggest the existence of more diversified organizational patterns than those captured in the referential-expressive distinction.

The Lexical Profile of Second Language Writing: Does It Change Over Time?

The paper examines changes in the productive lexicon of advanced second language learners' writing over a period of one academic year. Sets of compositions of the same learners were analyzed in terms of lexical profile and lexical variation at three points of time. The analysis was performed by LFP (lexical frequency profile) measure, which classifies the vocabulary of an essay into frequency levels using a public domain computer programme developed for this purpose. Results indicate that there was some progress in lexical richness, but not in lexical variation. There was no correlation between the progress on the two variables. The results are discussed in terms of productive vocabulary development in a second language. Some teaching implications are suggested which relate to explicit vocabulary teaching as opposed to incidental vocabulary learning.

Recent developments in the statistical processing of textual data

Statisticians are accustomed to processing numerical, ordinal or nominal data. In many circumstances, such as socio-economic, epidemiologic sample surveys and documentary data bases, this data is juxtaposed with textual data (for example, responses to open questions in surveys). This article presents a series of language-independent procedures based upon applying multivariate techniques (such as correspondence analysis and clustering) to sets of generalized lexical profiles. The generalized lexical profile of a text is a vector whose components are the frequencies of each word (graphical form) or ‘repeated segment’ (sequence of words appearing with a significant frequency in the text). The processing of such large (and often sparse) vectors and matrices requires special algorithms. The main outputs are the following: (1) printouts of the characteristic words and characteristic responses for each category of respondent (these categories are generally derived from available nominal variables); (2) graphical displays of the proximities between words or segments and categories of respondents; (3) when analysing a combination of several texts: graphical displays of proximities between words or segments and each text, or between words or segments and groupings of texts. The systematic use of ‘repeated segments’ provides a valuable help in interpreting the results from a semantic point of view.