The perfect participle paradox: some implications for the architecture of grammar

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
CARSTEN BREUL
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
American English ◽  
Phonological Representation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Distributed Morphology ◽  
Generative Syntax ◽  
Know How ◽  
Verb Phrase ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

The topic of this article can be exemplified by the final clause of the following attested sentence: I don't know how he found out that she belonged to that lass, but find out he has. Clauses like this one show a preposed verb phrase that is headed by a plain verb whereas the non-preposed verb phrase of their canonical counterparts is obligatorily headed by a perfect participle (i.e. he has {found / *find} out). This peculiarity of verb phrase preposing, which will be referred to as the perfect participle paradox, has seldom been discussed. The article starts by showing that clauses that manifest the paradox are more frequent in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and in the British National Corpus than their non-paradoxical analogues with preposed canonical perfect participles. The article then looks at the paradox from the point of view of generative syntax, discusses and rejects previous analyses, and argues that a solution entails the rejection of two assumptions that have been associated with a lexicalist position, especially by proponents of distributed morphology. These are the assumptions that (a) a syntactic terminal is an item supplied by the lexicon and comprising a phonological representation and (b) that syntax may not manipulate the internal structure of syntactic terminals. The article proposes an analysis that is not based on these assumptions, but argues that the analysis does not entail the superiority of a distributed morphology framework.

A Corpora-Based Analysis of Rely on and Depend on

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
Namkil Kang
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Information State ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of rely on and depend on in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus. The COCA clearly shows that the expression rely on government is the most preferred by Americans, followed by rely on people, and rely on data. The COCA further indicates that the expression depend on slate is the most preferred by Americans, followed by depend on government, and depend on people. The BNC shows, on the other hand, that the expression rely on others is the most preferred by the British, followed by rely on people, and rely on friends. The BNC further indicates that depend on factors and depend on others are the most preferred by the British, followed by depend on age, and depend on food. Finally, in the COCA, the nouns government, luck, welfare, people, information, state, fossil, water, family, oil, food, and things are linked to both rely on and depend on, but many nouns are not still linked to both of them. On the other hand, in the BNC, only the nouns state, chance, government, and others are linked to both rely on and depend on, but many nouns are not still linked to both rely on and depend on. It can thus be inferred from this that rely on is slightly different from depend on in its use.

scholarly journals Semantic Modulation of the English Verbs of Leaving in Terms of the Space of Sets (On the Example of the Verbs Leave, Depart)

2020 ◽  
pp. 323-330
Author(s):  
A.S. Dautova
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Semantic Group ◽  
Surrounding World ◽  
Research Hypothesis ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Linguistic Reality

The article presents the experience of studying the semantic structure of the English verbs with the meaning of leaving. The author focuses on the problem of modulating the meaning of the English verbs “leave”, “depart” and their transition into another lexical and semantic group. The urgency of the study lies in addressing the category of space as one of the basic linguistic forms of conceptualization and interpretation of extra-linguistic reality, which man operates in the process of cognition, interpretation of the surrounding world. The problem of research is solved by describing the modulation of meaning in terms of the concept of space of sets, as one of the factors contributing to the change of meaning. The verification of the research hypothesis is based on the analysis of lexicographical data sources of the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Modern American English.

Meek as milk and large as logic: A corpus study of the non-standard poetic simile

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 203-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roi Tartakovsky ◽  
Yeshayahu Shen
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Salient Feature ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Poetic Discourse ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Operational Criteria ◽  
Unexpected Difficulty ◽  
National Corpus

A novel distinction is proposed between two types of closed similes: the standard and the non-standard. While the standard simile presents a ground that is a salient feature of the source term (e.g. meek as a lamb), the non-standard simile somewhat enigmatically supplies a non-salient ground (e.g. meek as milk). The latter thus violates a deep-seated norm of similes and presents interpreters with unexpected difficulty, whereby the concept set up to be an exemplar of a quality is actually less than ideal to fulfil this role. The main question addressed here is how these two simile types are relatively distributed across poetic and non-poetic corpora. We elaborate the criteria for what constitutes the non-standard simile, including separating it out from adjacent phenomena like the ironic simile (e.g. brave as a mouse), and go on to explain our operational criteria for salience. Then, we report culling 329 closed similes from an anthology of poetry and 350 closed similes from two corpora of non-poetic discourse, the Corpus of Historical American English and the British National Corpus. An independent judge rated the salience of each ground-and-source pair of each of the similes, presented in randomized order. Results show that while the standard simile is found in both types of discourse, the non-standard kind is only marginally present in the non-poetic corpora but makes up over 40% of the similes in the poetic corpus. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for theories of poetic language and literariness.

scholarly journals Basic Paradigmatic Correlations in the Semantic Field of the Concept Summer

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-522
Author(s):  
E. Grudeva
Keyword(s):  
Russian Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Species Relationships ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Time Of Year ◽  
The Russian Language ◽  
Illustrative Material ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Comprehensive Study

Article is based on the materials of a comprehensive study of the concepts summer and autumn from the point of view of their perception by representatives of Russian and English linguistic cultures. This paper shows the features of the paradigmatic relations of Russian and English concept summer. The study was built on the identification of synonymous (quasi-synonymous), antonymic, (hypo) hyperonymic, or genus-species relationships, as well as the incompatibility relations of this concept. Study is based on the materials of the explanatory dictionaries and dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms of the Russian and English languages; illustrative material was taken from the National corpus of the Russian language and the British National Corpus. The analysis made it possible to conclude that the paradigmatic explication of the content of the concept summer most clearly actualizes only one of the four previously identified cognitive features of the concept, namely the sign ‘time of year, season’.

scholarly journals FUNCTIONAL LOAD: TRANSCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS OF THE 10,000 MOST FREQUENT WORDS IN SPOKEN ENGLISH

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 135-162
Author(s):  
Leah Gilner ◽  
Frank Morales
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Functional Load ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Equal Importance ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Language Description ◽  
Fluent Speakers

Not all aspects of a language have equal importance for speakers or for learners. From the point of view of language description, functional load is a construct that attempts to establish quantifiable hierarchies of relevance among elements of a linguistic class. This paper makes use of analyses conducted on the 10-million-word spoken subcorpus of the British National Corpus in order to characterize what amounts to approximately 97% of the phonological forms and components heard and produced by fluent speakers in a range of contexts. Our aim is to provide segmental, sequential, and syllabic level rankings of spoken English that can serve as the basis for reference and subsequent work by language educators and researchers.

scholarly journals Lose one's life and lose one's job with singular they: two constructions, two regional varieties, many practical aspects of working with mega-corpora

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-162
Author(s):  
Karolina Rudnicka
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
American Variety ◽  
Language Studies ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
British Variety ◽  
National Corpus

The paper compares the usage of singular they with two morphologically similar constructions in British and American English. The constructions in question are lose one’s life and lose one’s job. The results obtained suggest that singular they, at least used with the two constructions in focus of this work, seems to be more widely used in the American variety of English than in the British variety. An additional aim of this work is to present and discuss some practical aspects of working with mega-corpora. The work shows how and where quantitative language studies need to be accompanied by manual and qualitative investigations. The corpora used in this work are the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA).

scholarly journals Five Types Involving the Subjunctive: A Corpora-based Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. p48
Author(s):  
Namkil Kang
Keyword(s):  
Frequency Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Factual Information ◽  
Genre Fiction ◽  
Strong Statement ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Academic Genre ◽  
British People ◽  
National Corpus

The main goal of this paper is to provide a detailed frequency analysis of the five types it is imperative that, it is vital that, it is essential that, it is important that, and it is necessary that within the British National Corpus (100 million, British, 1980s-1993), the Corpus of Contemporary American English (1.0 billion, US, 1990-2019), the Corpus of Historical American English (400 million, US, 1810s-2000s), and the Hansard Corpus (1.6 billion, British Parliament). In this paper, we have examined the frequency of the five types and collected the data. A major point to note is that it is important that was the most preferred by British people, followed by it is essential that, it is vital that, it is imperative that, and it is necessary that, in that order. The BNC clearly shows, on the other hand, that it is important that was the most commonly used one in the spoken genre, magazine genre, newspaper genre, and academic genre. A further point to note is that it is important that was the most preferred by Americans, followed by it is imperative that, it is essential that, it is vital that, and it is necessary that, in that order. The COCA clearly indicates that it is important that was the most widely used one in the blog genre, web genre, spoken genre, fiction genre, magazine genre, newspaper genre, and academic genre. The reason why it is important that was the most preferred by Americans and British people in the academic genre may be that a moderate obligation is suitable for conveying factual information. With respect to the COHA, it is worth noting that it is necessary that was the most preferred by Americans from 1810 to 2000, followed by it is important that, it is essential that, it is imperative that, and it is vital that. As for the HC, it is important that was the most preferred by British politicians, followed by it is essential that, it is vital that, it is necessary that, and it is imperative that. It is worth noting that Americans and British politicians show the similar pattern in the ranking of the five types in that Americans did not prefer a strong statement or the strongest statement, whereas British politicians did not prefer the strongest statement.

scholarly journals Cognitive Operations in Tropes: The Case of Parameterisation

10.29007/5j6z ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Herrero-Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Linguistic Expression ◽  
Cognitive Operations ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

Over the last few years, the study of cognitive operations from both a pragmatic and a cognitive angle (cf. Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera, 2014) has gradually received more and more attention. According to Ruiz de Mendoza & Galera (2014), parameterisation is based on world knowledge and is cued by the linguistic expression, resulting in the fixation of a generic value which is otherwise undefined to a greater or lesser extent, as in John drinks standing for ‘John usually drinks alcohol’ or Something has happened meaning ‘something bad has happened.’Following Herrero (2009), in this paper we attempt to analyse how parameterisation applies in some tropes (overstatement, understatement, euphemism, and dysphemism) by placing constraints on how far the operations that underlie them, strengthening and mitigation, can go.The examples have been extracted from a multi-faced corpus compiled from The British National Corpus, The Corpus of American English, and Google searches.

scholarly journals Aspectual and quantificational properties of deverbal conversion and -ing nominalizations: the power of context

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARIOS ANDREOU ◽  
ROCHELLE LIEBER
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Lexical Aspect ◽  
State Activity ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Using Data ◽  
National Corpus

In this article we explore the range of aspectual and quantificational readings that are available to two kinds of deverbal nominalizations in English, conversion nouns and -ing nominals. Using data gathered from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC), we examine the range of readings available for the conversion and -ing forms of 106 English verbs in context. We distinguish eventive versus referential readings, looking at instances of both count and mass quantification for the two kinds of nominalizations. Within the eventive readings we also distinguish bounded versus unbounded aspectual readings, and within bounded readings two types that we call ‘completive’ and ‘package’. We argue that the quantificational properties and aspectual intepretation of both conversion and -ing nominalizations are not rigidly or even loosely determined by the form of the nominalization, but that the lexical aspect of the base verb (state, activity, accomplishment, achievement, semelfactive) plays some role in circumscribing aspectual readings. We argue that the strongest role in determining quantificational and aspectual readings is played by factors arising from the context in which conversion forms and -ing nominalizations are deployed. The aspectual interpretation of conversion and -ing nominalizations can be influenced by the presence of temporal and quantificational modifiers, by surrounding tenses, as well as by encyclopedic knowledge. We conclude with a consideration of the theoretical implications of our findings.

Swearing in Modern British English: The Case of Fuck in the BNC

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony McEnery ◽  
Zhonghua Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
American English ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
British English ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Morphological Variants ◽  
National Corpus

Swearing is a part of everyday language use. To date it has been infrequently studied, though some recent work on swearing in American English, Australian English and British English has addressed the topic. Nonetheless, there is still no systematic account of swear-words in English. In terms of approaches, swearing has been approached from the points of view of history, lexicography, psycholinguistics and semantics. There have been few studies of swearing based on sociolinguistic variables such as gender, age and social class. Such a study has been difficult in the absence of corpus resources. With the production of the British National Corpus (BNC), a 100,000,000-word balanced corpus of modern British English, such a study became possible. In addition to parts of speech, the corpus is richly annotated with metadata pertaining to demographic features such as age, gender and social class, and textual features such as register, publication medium and domain. While bad language may be related to religion (e.g. Jesus, heaven, hell and damn), sex (e.g. fuck), racism (e.g. nigger), defecation (e.g. shit), homophobia (e.g. queer) and other matters, we will, in this article, examine only the pattern of uses of fuck and its morphological variants, because this is a typical swear-word that occurs frequently in the BNC. This article will build and expand upon the examination of fuck by McEnery et al. (2000) by examining the distribution pattern of fuck within and across spoken and written registers.

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