Reference Corpus Research Articles

Fiction – one register or two?

Abstract In this paper our focus is on analyzing register variation within fiction, rather than between fiction and other registers. By working with subcorpora that separate text within and outside of quotation marks, we appromixate fictional speech and narration. This enables us to identify and compare linguistic features with regard to different situational contexts in the fictional world. We focus in particular on the novels of Charles Dickens and a reference corpus of other 19th-century fiction. Our main method for the register analysis is Multi-dimensional Analysis (MDA) for which we draw on altogether four dimensions from two previous MDAs. The linguistic distinctions we identify highlight similarities between fictional speech and involved registers such as face-to-face communication, and between narration and more informational and narrative prose. In addition to the detailed information on register features that characterize speech and narration, the paper raises more general questions about the ability of register studies to deal with situational contexts within fiction.

Schaalvergroting in het syntactische alternantieonderzoek

Abstract In this paper, we revisit earlier analyses of the distribution of er ‘there’ in adjunct-initial sentences to demonstrate the merits of computational upscaling in syntactic variation research. Contrary to previous studies, in which major semantic and pragmatic predictors (viz. adjunct type, adjunct concreteness, and verb specificity) had to be coded manually, the present study operationalizes these predictors on the basis of distributional analysis: instead of hand-coding for specific semantic classes, we determine the semantic class of the adjunct, verb, and subject automatically by clustering the lexemes in those slots on the basis of their ‘semantic passport’ (as established on the basis of their distributional behaviour in a reference corpus). These clusters are subsequently interpreted as proxies for semantic classes. In addition, the pragmatic factor ‘subject predictability’ is operationalized automatically on the basis of collocational attraction measures, as well as distributional similarity between the other slots and the subject. We demonstrate that the distribution of er can be modelled equally successfully with the automated approach as in manual annotation-based studies. Crucially, the new method replicates our earlier findings that the Netherlandic data are easier to model than the Belgian data, and that lexical collocations play a bigger role in the Netherlandic than in the Belgian data. On a methodological level, the proposed automatization opens up a window of opportunities. Most important is its scalability: it allows for a larger gamut of alternations that can be investigated in one study, and for much larger datasets to represent each alternation.

Towards Accuracy: A Model for the Analysis of Typographical Errors in Specialised Bilingual Dictionaries. Two Case Studies

This paper presents the results of research on typographical error analysis in two specialised bilingual paper dictionaries: Diccionario de terminos economicos, financieros y comerciales/ A Dictionary of Economic, Financial and Commercial Terms ( Ariel, 2012), and Diccionario de terminos juri dicos/A Dictionary of Legal Terms ( Ariel, 2012). A model of errors is described, including similar errors and errors that are repeated both intratextually and intertextually. The error frequency in A Dictionary of Economic, Financial and Commercial Terms is higher than the average error frequency in a reference corpus of fourteen dictionaries (mainly first editions). This indicates that repeated editions do not always guarantee a higher level of formal correctness. Our results also show that a high frequency of errors does not necessarily entail a high intratextual error repetition rate. On the other hand, we establish a relationship between typographical errors and the access function in dictionaries, as that kind of error can interfere with access to accurate lexicographical information and data retrieval (especially when they occur in lemmas or sublemmas).

Onde podemos encontrar a impressão digital da legendista? Um estudo sobre o emprego da colocação pronominal e de marcadores discursivos em legendas de Star Trek: Enterprise

Este artigo apresenta alguns resultados de uma pesquisa de mestrado que objetivou caracterizar o estilo de uma legendista. O foco deu-se na forma que ela empregou a colocação pronominal e marcadores discursivos (MDs) em legendas em Português Brasileiro, feitas para episódios da série de TV Star Trek: Enterprise. A investigação afiliou-se metodologicamente aos Estudos da Tradução Baseados em Corpus, principalmente por meio do auxílio de dois programas do WordSmith Tools©, 7, o WordList e o Concord. O corpus de estudo se constitui por arquivos de legendas disponíveis na Netflix, em português brasileiro, dos episódios 10 e 11 (temporada 1) e 16 e 24 (temporada 2), enquanto o corpus de referência consiste em outros arquivos de legendas das mesmas temporadas da série feitos por outros legendistas. Os resultados mostram que a impressão digital da legendista em estudo pode ser encontrada por sua preferência pela ênclise e por MDs mais facilmente aceitos nos guias normativos de legendagem da Netflix. Sendo assim, nota-se seu uso variado de registros linguísticos, especialmente do registro formal da língua portuguesa.Palavras-chave: Impressão digital da legendista. Registros linguísticos. Colocação pronominal. Marcadores discursivos.

Unsupervised Translation Quality Estimation for Digital Entertainment Content Subtitles

We demonstrate the potential for using aligned bilingual word embeddings in developing an unsupervised method to evaluate machine translations without a need for parallel translation corpus or reference corpus. We explain different aspects of digital entertainment content subtitles. We share our experimental results for four languages pairs English to French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and present findings on the shortcomings of Neural Machine Translation for subtitles. We propose several improvements over the system designed by Gupta et al. [P. Gupta, S. Shekhawat and K. Kumar, Unsupervised quality estimation without reference corpus for subtitle machine translation using word embeddings, IEEE 13th Int. Conf. Semantic Computing, 2019, pp. 32–38.] by incorporating custom embedding model curated to subtitles, compound word splits and punctuation inclusion. We show a massive run time improvement of the order of [Formula: see text] by considering three types of edits, removing Proximity Intensity Index (PII) and changing post-edit score calculation from their system.

Asymmetrical Relations in Audiovisual Translation in Brazil: A Corpus-based investigation of Fixed Expressions

This study aims to investigate, in dubbed and subtitled versions of the films Madagascar (2005) and Ice Age (2002), how fixed expressions (Moon, 1998) are translated in dubbing and subtitling methods and to examine how employing domestication and foreignisation (Venuti, 1995) can undermine or reinforce the asymmetrical relations, here defined by globalisation as discussed by Venuti (1998) and Cronin (2003, 2009). The analysis is carried out through reference and parallel corpus (Baker, 1995). Final results show that subtitling, rather than dubbing, is more prone to adopt foreignising strategies with regard to the translation of fixed expressions. Additionally, there have been identified, in the subtitled versions of the corpus, translation instances that deliberately move away from target language fixed expressions.

An academic Arabic corpus for plagiarism detection: design, construction and experimentation

Advancement in information technology has resulted in massive textual material that is open to appropriation. Due to researchers’ misconduct, a plethora of plagiarism detection (PD) systems have been developed. However, most PD systems on the market do not support the Arabic language. In this paper, we discuss the design and construction of an Arabic PD reference corpus that is dedicated to academic language. It consists of (2312) dissertations that were defended by postgraduate students at the University of Jordan (JU) between the years 2001–2016. This Academic Jordan University Plagiarism Detection corpus; henceforth, JUPlag, follows the Dewey decimal classification (DDC) in the way it is structured. The goal of the corpus is twofold: Firstly, it is a database for the detection of plagiarism in student assignments, reports, and dissertations. Secondly, the n-gram structure of the corpus provides a knowledgebase for linguistic analysis, language teaching, and the learning of plagiarism-free writing. The PD system is guided by JU Library’s metadata for retrieval and discovery of plagiarism. To test JUPlag, we injected an unseen dissertation with multiple instances of plagiarism-simulated paragraphs and sentences. Experimentation with the system using different verbatim n-gram segments is indeed promising. Preliminary results encourage that permission be sought to enrich this corpus with all the theses in the Thesis Repository of the Union of Arab Universities. The JUPlag corpus is intended to function as an indispensable source for testing and evaluating plagiarism detection techniques. Since the University of Jordan is seeking to become a center for plagiarism detection for Arabic content and being a non-profit organization, it will charge a nominal fee for the use of JUPlag to finance the maintenance and development of the corpus.

Linguistics Terminology and Neologisms in Swahili: Rules vs. Practice

In this article we discuss the use of Swahili terminology in the field of linguistics. In particular, we are interested in finding out whether the rules laid out by scholars in the scientific literature for the creation of terminological neologisms in Swahili correspond with actual practice. In order to do this, three steps are taken. In Step 1 we undertake the semi-automatic extraction of linguistics terminology, by comparing occurrence frequencies in a special-purpose corpus consisting of ten recent Swahili language/linguistics textbooks, with their corresponding frequencies in a twenty-two-million-token general-language reference corpus of Swahili. In Step 2 we study the source languages and actual word formation processes of the terms and neologisms with the highest keyness values obtained during the previous step. This discussion is divided into several sections, one section per source language. In Step 3, the terms and neologisms that have been found are compared with their treatment (or absence thereof) in two existing reference works, a general dictionary and a linguistics terminology list. These three steps are preceded by brief introductions to (i) the Swahili language; (ii) its dictionaries and terminology lists; (iii) its metalexicographical, terminological and neologism studies; and (iv) our use of the term neologism. The three steps are followed by a discussion of our findings and a conclusion.

Los adverbios en –mente en las proposiciones proyectoras en la obra de Benito Pérez Galdós: un enfoque de corpus

In this article, we analyse Benito Pérez Galdós’s use of adverbs ending in -mente in his fictional narratives. The study focuses on those examples identified in projecting clauses that introduce stretches of direct speech. In order to search for the examples under analysis, a corpus-stylistic approach was used. First, we carried out a comparison of the examples identified in a corpus of Galdós’s novels against the backdrop of a reference corpus made up of nineteenth-century Spanish fictional narratives. Then, we analysed the examples identified across Galdós’s novels, focusing on three self-contained functional patterns: characters’ voices, their psychological dimension and their body language. As will be shown, Galdós’s extensive use of adverbs ending in -mente results in stylistically significant functions, such as characterisation and the construction of fictional universes. https://doi.org/10.17398/2660-7301.43.243

СТРАТЕГИИ ПРЕОБРАЗОВАНИЯ РУССКИХ ФОНЕТИЧЕСКИХ ЗАИМСТВОВАНИЙ В КИТАЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ: ФОНЕТИЧЕСКИЕ И ГРАФИЧЕСКИЕ АСПЕКТЫ

This article considers phonetic and graphic transformations of Russian loanwords in Chinese. The study comprises an analysis of both proper and common nouns, as well as both loanwords included in dictionaries and those used in the Internet. The data considered make it possible to detect the main trends in the adaptation of Russian consonants in Chinese, as well as to localize the hypothetical influence of the Russian-Chinese pidgin on current loanword adaptation in Mandarin Chinese. It is noted that there is a dramatic discrepancy between the norms of transliteration prescribed by the PRC media and the usage in the Internet. Furthermore, a significant level of specificity of the hieroglyphic N-grams in the loanwords is revealed, compared to the reference corpus of the Chinese texts. The author expects that the results of the work will be useful for specialists both in phonetic typology and in NLP.

An Enhanced Twitter Corpus for the Classification of Arabic Speech Acts

Twitter has gained wide attention as a major social media platform where many topics are discussed on daily basis through millions of tweets. A tweet can be viewed as a speech act (SA), which is an utterance for presenting information, hiding indirect meaning, or carrying out an action. According to SA theory, SA can represent an assertion, a question, a recommendation, or many other things. In this paper, we tackle the problem of constructing a reference corpus of Arabic tweets for the classification of Arabic speech acts. We refer to this corpus as the Arabic Tweets Speech Act Corpus (ArTSAC). It is an enhancement of a modern standard Arabic (MSA) tweet corpus of speech acts called ArSAS. ArTSAC is more advantageous than ArSAS in terms of its richness of annotated features. The goal of ArTSAC is twofold: Firstly, to understand the purpose and intention of tweets which act in accordance with the SA theory, and hence positively influencing the development of many natural language processing (NLP) applications. Secondly, as a future goal, to be used as a benchmark annotated dataset for testing and evaluating state-of-the-art Arabic SA classification algorithms and applications. ArTSAC has been put in practice to classify Arabic tweets containing speech acts using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification algorithm. The results of the experiments show that the enhanced ArTSAC corpus achieved an average precision of 90.6% and an F-score of 89.6%. Substantially it outperformed the results of its predecessor ArTSAC corpus.

Handstyle as social meaning: Graphic variation, graffiti and gender

The work presented here contributes to a better understanding of graphic variation and its role in the making of social meaning. Specifically, we report on a case study of female-coded graffiti, and how its graphematic and visual rendering undermines dominant street art norms. In early 2018, the inner city of a small German college town was covered with street art with an overt feminist stance, including tropes such as “riot girls” and topics such as female empowerment and anti-fraternity stances. Because of the temporal and spatial consistency of the inscriptions, they became salient to public perception and were reported on as such in the local press. However, these instances of feminist graffiti did not just stand out based on their content and political positioning, but arguably due to their graphematic and visual qualities. Thus the handstyles displayed in the graffiti are described as diverging from expected visual street art norms – as unprofessional, but also as feminine or even “girly”. This unexpected, and transgressive, graphematic quality raises interesting questions for the construction of social personas around graphematic practice.Our study is based on a picture corpus of over 60 street art instances, as well as a reference corpus of non-female coded graffiti in the same location. We analyze the linguistic landscape data based on semantic and lexicogrammatical, but also graphematic features such as coloring, capitalization, roundedness and use of serifs in the handstyles. By interpreting our data as a case of graphematic variation as social practice, we locate our case study in the larger discussion on street art and the making of social meaning in written discourse. Specifically, we critically discuss perceptions of graffiti as a transgressive semiotic practice (Pennycook 2008), and draw attention to the gendered social meaning to be found here: as Macdonald (2001: 149) argues, street art can be seen as “(n)ot a site for ‘youth’, but a site for ‘male’ youth – an illegal confine where danger, opposition and the exclusion of women is used to nourish, amplify and salvage notions of masculinity.” We link this to ongoing research into gendered perceptions of graphematic practice, such as Vaisman's (2014) study on gender and graphic style.

A Comparative Study of Keywords and Sentiments of Abstracts by Python Programs

Four corpora are created to investigate the self-mentions, keywords and sentiment of abstracts. First, self-mentions are categorized to examine the authorial interactions with the reader. Then, the study of high-frequency words and keywords is conducted with different Python programs and the software AntConc. The keywords generated with WordCloud and TF-IDF-LDA methods show a definite relation with high-frequency words generated by Jieba_Counter and NLTK FreqDist. Further, the sentiment analysis is performed with SnowNLP and TextBlob yielding different results, which verifies the authorial interactions with the reader and increased factual information respectively. Finally, the verification by reference corpora validates the consistency of the sentiment analysis by these two methods. The research suggests that the methods for high-frequency words generation, keywords generation and sentiment analysis be selected discriminatively since different methods generate different results; meanwhile, the study verifies that the objectivity remains in the writing of abstracts. The investigation is conducive to the choices of keywords generation and self-mentions in writing.

Referential Coherence of Academic Texts: A Corpus-Based Analysis of L2 Research Papers in Management

This paper focuses on referential coherence, which is seen as a crucial attribute of effective academic writing. Findings are reported from a corpus study of Russian students’ research proposals. The learners’ use of anaphoric expressions is compared with a reference corpus, which comprises research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. It was hypothesised that learners use anaphora less frequently than professional writers and face some difficulties when using anaphoric expressions. The results of the analysis partly confirmed the hypothesis and allowed the identification of particular problems connected with the students’ use of anaphoric expressions, which were then classified into several groups. Examples of exercises aimed at dealing with the identified problems are also provided. It is hoped that the reported findings, as well as the author’s suggested reasons for the problems and possible ways of dealing with them, will be useful for EAP practitioners, researchers, and students writing their research papers in English.

Considerations on the Acceptance of German neologisms from the 1990s

AbstractAre borrowed neologisms accepted more slowly into the German language than German words resulting from the application of wrd formation rules? This study addresses this question by focusing on two possible indicators for the acceptance of neologisms: a) frequency development of 239 German neologisms from the 1990s (loanwords as well as new words resulting from the application of word formation rules) in the German reference corpus DeReKo and b) frequency development in the use of pragmatic markers (‘flags’, namely quotation marks and phrases such as sogenannt ‘so-called’) with these words. In the second part of the article, a psycholinguistic approach to evaluating the (psychological) status of different neologisms and non-words in an experimentally controlled study and plans to carry out interviews in a field test to collect speakers’ opinions on the acceptance of the analysed neologisms are outlined. Finally, implications for the lexicographic treatment of both types of neologisms are discussed.

A Comparative Analysis: Linking Adverbials in Learners’ Academic Writing

This study examines the frequency and usage patterns of linking adverbials (LAs) in Indonesian EFL learners’ essay writing in comparison with those of native speakers. The ICNALE corpus is used as a source for the learner and reference corpora: Indonesian EFL learners and native speakers’ themed essays, each consisting of 100 essays. The sub-categorizations of LAs adopted Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman’s (1999) where they are divided into: additive (in addition, besides, furthermore), adversative (however, in contrast, actually), causal (therefore, consequently, in that case), and sequential (first, last, second). The results found a similar distribution in the usage frequency of linking adverbials. Further analysis discovered a significant overuse in additive LA also and underuse causal LA on the other hand. A more detailed and comprehensive investigation of why such things are apparent found similar misuse cases to previous research, one of them is the lack of understanding in semantic properties. On the basis of the findings, a number of pedagogical implications can be taken.

Furiously fast: On the speed of change in formulaic language

Abstract Addressing a topic that has been marginal to discussions within historical linguistics, this study looks at how extent and speed of language change can be quantified meaningfully using corpus data. Looking specifically at formulaic language (understood here as word sequences that instantiate typical phrasings), a solidly data-based assessment of the speed of change within a 100-year time window is offered. This includes both a relative determination of speed (against the speed of change in lexis which is generally thought to be the fastest type of linguistic change, cf. Algeo 1980: 264; Trask and Millar 2010: 7) as well as a new independent measure of speed which is easy to interpret and therefore of high validity, while also robust and potentially applicable to any linguistic feature that can be counted in corpus data. Using data from a diachronic reference corpus of 20th century German, it is shown that change in formulaic language is very notably faster than lexical change, that the extent of change over a century is comparable in extent to contemporary inter-genre variation and that overall, the rate of change does fluctuate somewhat at the level of temporal granularity employed in this study. It is also argued that quantifying the speed of linguistic change can play an important role in building a deeper understanding of language change in general.

Using Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis to Identify Food Ideologies: a Study of Online Product Descriptions

The present paper relies on a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to reveal how food manufacturers construct very specific product identities through product descriptions, which (1) reflect some cultural and institutional values, and (2) have some implications of food ideology. This investigation primarily focuses on the text functions of bread descriptions, the dominant verbal discourses of bread promotion in Lithuania, and the typical linguistic choices used to disseminate these discourses. The data includes product descriptions available on the websites of six major industrial bread bakers in Lithuania and consists of more than 150 product descriptions (approx. 10,000 words). The lexical choices in these texts are evaluated by referring to the Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian (tekstynas.vdu.lt) as a general reference corpus. The results show that in Lithuanian bread descriptions two text functions dominate: descriptiveness and prepared expressiveness, which further indicates that the target texts are closest to academic prose and fiction. The analysis of collocations and word frequencies supports the prevalence of features characteristic of both academic prose and fiction. This new digital genre is used by producers to disseminate and emphasise certain values and ideologies through explicit verbal references to tradition, inheritance, and continuity.

Necessity and Obligation Modals in English Academic Discourse: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Modals are linguistic units that seem to be ubiquitous in nearly all genres and text categories. However, there are some tendencies in which some modals are more likely to occur in a particular text category than the others. It is said that modals are less frequent in academic texts compared to fiction and news. This paper then aims at describing the modals, focusing to those expressing necessity/obligation, by using corpus-based analysis. This study uses a general reference corpus, Corpus of Contemporary American English, and compiled the data from the academic subcorpus. The results show that statistically the usage frequency of necessity and obligation modals is negligible; however, no matter how small it is, it still purports to mark something. Among the modals in the same category there are some tendencies, e.g. modal should is the most frequent of all, followed by must, have to, shall, be supposed to, and have got to. The collocate analysis focuses on should and must and found out that the most frequent verb type following these two modals belong to thinking verbs (e.g., consider, learn, understand). However the most frequent modal constructions are should have and must have enabling a slightly different interpretation. Besides, due to the nature of language in an academic setting, it is thus predictable that the use of the core modals (e.g., should, must) is more frequent than the quasi-modals (e.g., have to).

Building a corpus-based glossary of Spanish-Russian higher education for specialised translation

University systems of various European Union countries and some non-EU nations, while aligned in theory, have not been considered homogeneous until the twenty-first century. To put this in perspective, while the European cooperation has an established common market for goods and services, the long-term higher education collaboration still seems far from being completely harmonized. The inability to entail a new dimension based on full equivalence of all university systems of the countries involved in the Bologna Process has been selected as a starting point of this study as we assume that higher education terminology harmonization will improve understanding and cooperation within the EHEA. Focused on the case of university systems in Spain and Russia, the objective of this paper is to compile a corpus of reference documents in both languages and then extract higher education terminology in Spanish and Russian to identify the degree of equivalence according to conceptual domains proposed by the European network Eurydice.