Functions and translations of discourse markers in TED Talks: A parallel corpus study of underspecification in five languages

2019 ◽  
Vol 142 ◽  
pp. 139-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludivine Crible ◽  
Ágnes Abuczki ◽  
Nijolė Burkšaitienė ◽  
Péter Furkó ◽  
Anna Nedoluzhko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Ted Talks

scholarly journals Marcadores del discurso derivados de los verbos de percepción

Revue Romane ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Tanghe ◽  
Marlies Jansegers
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Markers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
The Past ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Formal Behaviour

Despite the growing interest in discourse markers over the past two decades, few studies are dedicated to the interlinguistic comparison of discourse markers. By means of a corpus-based approach the present study proposes a comparison between the discourse markers derived from verbs of perception in Italian (guarda/guardi, senti/senta) and Spanish (mira/mire, oye/oiga). The results of a comparable corpus study reveals that the discourse markers sharing the original perception modality display a similar formal behaviour (mira/mire ~ guarda/guardi, oye/oiga ~ senti/senta). From the parallel corpus on the other hand it results that the most frequent equivalent of mira/mire is senti/senta, which can be linked to the original semantics of both verbs. These two main observations confirm the relevance of a parallel corpus as a complementary source to a comparable corpus when comparing phenomena in two (or more) languages. This combined corpus approach brings about not only interlinguistic insights but provides at the same time knowledge about the relation and uses of the discourse markers within the languages.

scholarly journals Pro-drop in interrogatives and declaratives.

2019 ◽  
Vol 100 (7) ◽  
pp. 95-140
Author(s):  
Federica Cognola ◽  
George Walkden
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Old High German ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Substantial Body ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
The Asymmetry

While there has been a substantial body of research on the asymmetry between main and subordinate clauses in terms of the licensing of pro-drop, potential differences between types of unembedded clause have received much less attention – despite the fact that competing theories of pro-drop make strong, clear predictions about the distribution of null subjects across clause types, especially with regard to interrogatives. This paper presents the first in-depth comparative study of pro-drop in both declaratives and interrogatives in two asymmetric pro-drop languages: Old High German and Old Italian. Based on a parallel corpus study using two translations of Tatian’s Diatessaron, we show that there is a clear difference in distribution between interrogatives and declaratives: null subjects are more frequent in declarative clauses than in interrogatives, and these also differ in terms of the persons in which pro-drop is licensed. Our results speak against the V-in-C licensing theory of asymmetric pro-drop of Benincà (1984) and Adams (1987), and in favour of an account based on an Agree relation with left-peripheral operators in the sense of Frascarelli (2007, 2018).

scholarly journals Discourse markers in English and European Portuguese translations: establishing functional equivalents and types of omission

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-121
Author(s):  
Milana Andreevna Morozova
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Original Language ◽  
European Portuguese ◽  
Target Languages

Based on the translations of a bidirectional English-Portuguese parallel corpus, this paper examines some English discourse markers (henceforth ‘DMs’, such as well, you know, I mean). The goal is twofold: firstly, the analysis of the translations establishes functional equivalents of the English DMs in European Portuguese, thus complementing the existing studies on translation of DMs in parallel corpus. Secondly and most importantly, this paper aims to approach the phenomenon of DMs omission frequently observed in translations from the empirical, rather than theoretical point of view. In particular, the study focuses on omission of DMs in the target languages. The corpus analysis resulted in the identification of three most common types of omission: DM deletion (i.e. a common DM deletion or omission in the target language), partial DM deletion (i.e. when one of the two DMs in the original language drops, resulting in translation of only one of them in the target language), DM addition (i.e. when there is no DM in the original language, but the translator has added it).

scholarly journals How do translators handle (near-) synonymous legal terms? A mixed-genre parallel corpus study into the variation of EU English-Polish competition law terminology

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 69-90
Author(s):  
Łucja Biel ◽  
Dariusz Koźbiał
Keyword(s):  
Competition Law ◽  
Soft Law ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Mixed Genre

Terminological variation, i.e. synonymy at the term level, is regarded as a recurrent problem in EU law. Working with a parallel-comparable corpus of EU English-Polish legislation, soft law and judgments in the area of competition, this study explores how source-language synonymy is handled in translation across institutional genres. The findings show that synonyms may be reflected symmetrically or asymmetrically, with variation being eliminated, partly reduced, mirrored, or increased in translation. It is quite frequent for translators to introduce additional variation and cross-variation. This is affected by: genre, source and target asymmetries, complexity of a semantic field, low termness and microdiachronic shifts. The study confirms that synonymy is one of the causes of variation in translation and calls for more conceptual clarity at the drafting stage.

scholarly journals Annotating Causal Discourse Markers ‘because’ and ‘so’ for Learning English as a Foreign Language

Pedagogika ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 137 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-207
Author(s):  
Giedrė Valūnaitė-Oleškevičienė ◽  
Sigita Rackevičienė ◽  
Nijolė Burkšaitienė ◽  
Liudmila Mockienė ◽  
Jolita Šliogerienė ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Data Resource ◽  
Ted Talks ◽  
Learning English

This paper reports on an investigation of the functions of the English causal discourse markers ‘because’ and ‘so’ and their Lithuanian counterparts and analyses the Lithuanian translation equivalents of these discourse markers using the multilingual open translation project TED Talks as a data resource. The results revealed that the discourse marker ‘because’ and its Lithuanian counterparts express ideational cause, followed by its rhetorical equivalent. However, the discourse marker ‘so’ and its Lithuanian counterparts express rhetorical consequences, followed by the rhetorical specification.

scholarly journals A CORPUS-BASED CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF EXPERIENCER VERBS IN ENGLISH AND SERBIAN: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STRUCTURE OF VP

1970 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 57-73
Author(s):  
Predrag Stevan Kovačević
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Study ◽  
Semantic Equivalence ◽  
Parallel Corpus ◽  
Contrastive Study ◽  
Theoretical Significance

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it reports on a parallel corpus study of experiencer verbs in English and Serbian and offers a contrastive description of this class of verbs. This investigation reveals two important observations: (i) a number of Serbian equivalents of English verbs with PP complements require oblique case-marked bare NP complements, (ii) the association between P-heads of these PP complements in English and their Serbian equivalents is not random (i.e. certain Ps in English correlate with certain Ps and/or oblique cases in Serbian). Understanding the potential theoretical significance of these observations is the second goal of the paper. The non-random link between English Ps and their Serbian counterparts speaks in favor of them having a semantic contribution, which goes against Neeleman’s (1997) analysis of Ps in PP complements as having no semantic contribution due to the fact that they LF incorporate into the verb. Neeleman’s (1997) account also fails to generalize to Serbian because oblique-cased bare NP complements exhibit syntactic characteristics of arguments. It is argued that the link between oblique-cased bare NP and PP complements speaks in favor of the functional/semantic equivalence along the lines of Caha (2009, 2013).

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