The BE06 Corpus of British English and recent language change

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Baker
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Sampling Frame ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
British English ◽  
Comparable Corpora ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Lexical Items

This paper describes the BE06 Corpus, a one million word reference corpus of general written British English that was designed to be comparable to the Brown family of corpora. After providing a description of the Brown sampling frame, and giving the rationale for building a new corpus, the process of building the BE06 is elaborated upon, with reference to collecting previously published texts from internet sources, defining “British” authors and enabling accessibility of the corpus. Three studies of lexical frequency using BE06 and comparable corpora (LOB, FLOB and BLOB) are then carried out. These involve a comparison of the 20 most frequent lexical items, an examination of pronoun usage, and an investigation of keywords derived from comparing the 1991 FLOB corpus with the BE06. The paper ends with a critical evaluation of the worth of using the same sampling frame for linguistic studies of diachronic variation.

scholarly journals Syntactic complexity in translated and non-translated texts: A corpus-based study of simplification

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. e0253454
Author(s):  
Kanglong Liu ◽  
Muhammad Afzaal
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Pairwise Comparison ◽  
Important Variable ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Complexity Measures ◽  
British English ◽  
Sentence Complexity ◽  
Comparable Corpora ◽  
Main Effect

This study approaches the investigation of the simplification hypotheses in corpus-based translation studies from a syntactic complexity perspective. The research is based on two comparable corpora, the English monolingual part of COCE (Corpus of Chinese-English) and the native English corpus of FLOB (Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English). Using the 13 syntactic complexity measures falling into five subconstructs (i.e. length of production unit, amount of subordination, amount of coordination, phrasal complexity and overall sentence complexity), our results show that translation as a whole is less complex compared to non-translation, reflected most prominently in the amount of subordination and overall sentence complexity. Further pairwise comparison of the four subgenres of the corpora shows mixed results. Specifically, the translated news is homogenous to native news as evidenced by the complexity measures; the translated genres of general prose and academic writing are less complex compared to their native counterparts while translated fiction is more complex than non-translated fiction. It was found that mean sentence length always produced a significant effect on syntactic complexity, with higher syntactic complexity for longer sentence lengths in both corpora. ANOVA test shows a highly significant main effect of translation status, with higher syntactic complexity in the non-translated texts (FLOB) than the translated texts (COCE), which provides support for the simplification hypothesis in translation. It is also found that, apart from translation status, genre is an important variable in affecting the complexity level of translated texts. Our study offers new insights into the investigation of simplification hypothesis from the perspective of translation from English into Chinese.

scholarly journals The Use of American and British Lexis in Brunei English

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Mohamad Nur Raihan
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
School Students ◽  
British English ◽  
Recorded Data ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Power Point ◽  
Casual Speech ◽  
University Undergraduates ◽  
Age Range

In pronunciation, influenced by American English, a shift in Brunei English can be observed in the increasing use of [r] in tokens such as car and heard particularly among younger speakers whose pronunciation may be influenced by American English. In contrast, older speakers tend to omit the [r] sound in these tokens as their pronunciation may be more influenced by British English. However, it is unclear whether American English has influenced the vocabulary of Brunei English speakers as the education system in Brunei favours British English due to its historical ties with Britain. This paper analyses the use of American and British  lexical items between three age groups: 20 in-service teachers aged between 29 to 35 years old, 20 university undergraduates aged between 19 to 25 years old, and 20 secondary school students who are within the 11 to 15 age range. Each age group has 10 female and 10 male participants and they were asked to name seven objects shown to them on Power point slides. Their responses were recorded and compared between the age groups and between female and male data. The analysis is supplemented with recorded data from interviews with all 60 participants to determine instances of American and British lexical items in casual speech. It was found that there is a higher occurrence of American than British lexical items in all three groups and the interview data supports the findings in the main data. Thus, providing further evidence for the Americanisation of Brunei English and that Brunei English is undergoing change.

scholarly journals Compromiser - a notional paradigm

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
pp. 157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carita Paradis
Keyword(s):  
Moderate Degree ◽  
Intensity Scale ◽  
British English ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Degree Modifiers ◽  
English I

On the basis of an investigation of the lexical forms quite, rather, fairly, and pretty in contemporary spoken British English, I postulate that these lexical items form a notional paradigm of compromiser within the category of degree modifiers. Compromisers are cognitive synonyms that occupy the middle of an abstract intensity scale, approximating a mean degree of another word, eg quite / rather / fairly / pretty dirty. They are all polysemous and poly-functional words, whose meanings are determined by a crucial semantic trait ‘to a moderate degree’ on the paradigmatic axis, and by a semantic-syntactic, selection-licensing mechanism on the syntagmatic axis.

scholarly journals Grammaticalization in Emirati Arabic

Arabica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 742-760
Author(s):  
Najib Ismail Jarad
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Basic Concepts ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Grammatical Functions

Abstract This paper is concerned with the process of language change whereby lexical items and constructions, in specific contexts, come to serve new grammatical functions. Emirati Arabic provides us with a wide range of grammaticalization phenomena. The aim of this paper is twofold: to shed light on the basic concepts relating to grammaticalization phenomena and to examine the grammaticalization of a number of constructions in Emirati Arabic, investigating their formation and the changes in their functions. The development of these grammatical constructions follows a grammaticalization pathway identified for a wide range of linguistic items cross-linguistically.

scholarly journals Mock politeness and culture: Perceptions and practice in UK and Italian data

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 463-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Discussion Forums ◽  
National Cultures ◽  
British English ◽  
Cultural Assumptions ◽  
Comparable Corpora ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Online Discussion Forums ◽  
Search Terms

Abstract This paper investigates the extent to which perceptions of cultural variation correspond to actual practice with reference to (national) cultures in Britain and Italy. More specifically, the aspect of im/politeness that is addressed is mock politeness, a subset of implicational impoliteness that is triggered by an im/politeness mismatch. In the first phase of the study, two sets of comparable corpora are employed to investigate perceptions of mock politeness (using search terms such as sarcastic and patronizing) in relation to cultural identities. The first pair of corpora is composed of national newspapers in England and Italy, collected in 2014, and the second set are web corpora. What emerges from this stage is a strong tendency for both the English and Italian corpora to associate (potential) mock polite behaviors such as being ironic with a British cultural identity. In the second stage of the study, I use a corpus of conversational data from British English and Italian online discussion forums, in which mock polite behaviors have been identified and annotated, in order to investigate whether there is any evidence for the cultural assumptions found in the first phase. As will be shown, the analysis reveals both variation in cultural practice and a significant gap between perceptions and practice. In describing and identifying this gap between perceptions and practice, I show both how (anglocentric) academic description has underestimated cultural variation, and, in contrast, how cultural variation is overestimated in lay description.

Deriving the Wug-Shaped Curve: A Criterion for Assessing Formal Theories of Linguistic Variation

2022 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 473-494
Author(s):  
Bruce Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
Frequency Matching ◽  
Sigmoid Curve ◽  
Formal Theories ◽  
Free Variation

In this review, I assess a variety of constraint-based formal frameworks that can treat variable phenomena, such as well-formedness intuitions, outputs in free variation, and lexical frequency-matching. The idea behind this assessment is that data in gradient linguistics fall into natural mathematical patterns, which I call quantitative signatures. The key signatures treated here are the sigmoid curve, going from zero to one probability, and the wug-shaped curve, which combines two or more sigmoids. I argue that these signatures appear repeatedly in linguistics, and I adduce examples from phonology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, phonetics, and language change. I suggest that the ability to generate these signatures is a trait that can help us choose between rival frameworks.

French negation, the Superset Principle, and Feature Conservation

2019 ◽  
pp. 199-227
Author(s):  
Karen De Clercq
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Double Negation ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Syntactic Movement ◽  
Sentential Negation ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Over Time

This chapter provides a nanosyntactic account of negation in French, modelling the change from le bon usage French (BUF) to colloquial French (CF). It is argued that language change is driven by Feature Conservation: the lexical items involved in the expression of sentential negation may change over time, but the features needed remain stable. Furthermore, it is argued that the change from BUF to CF is economy-driven, resulting in bigger lexically stored trees, less spell-out-driven movements and a maximal operationalization of the Superset Principle. In addition, the account shows how negative concord and double negation can be explained as a natural consequence of the interplay of the internal structure of lexical trees and the Superset Principle. Finally, the chapter adds to theoretical discussions within nanosyntax by presenting how the interaction between syntactic movement and spell-out-driven movement may be conceived of.

scholarly journals Why don’t grammaticalization pathways always recur?

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Malte Rosemeyer ◽  
Eitan Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Developmental Pathways ◽  
Distributional Properties ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
Lexical Items

Abstract Many grammaticalization pathways recur across languages. A prominent explanation for this is that the properties of lexical items determine their developmental pathways. However, it is unclear why these pathways do not always occur. In this article, we ask why English did not undergo a cross-linguistically common grammaticalization pathway, finish > anterior. We operationalize this question by testing a theory proposed on results regarding a language that did undergo this change, Spanish, on corpus and experimental data. While English finish constructions are associated with some of the distributional properties of Early Spanish finish, speakers do not show evidence of conventionally associating finish constructions with a particular type of inference crucial for the grammaticalization of the Spanish anterior. We propose that the non-conventionality of this inference blocks the grammaticalization of finish constructions in English, demonstrating that some of the black box of language change currently attributed to chance can be explored empirically.

Construction Grammar as Cognitive Structuralism: the interaction of constructional networks and processing in the diachronic evolution of English comparative correlatives

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS HOFFMANN
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Secondary Role ◽  
The Family ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Processing Effects ◽  
Constructionist Approach ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Correspondence Hypothesis

Following the Uniformitarian Principle, the Performance–Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis (PGCH; Hawkins 2004) predicts a directionality in language change: if the same content can be expressed by two competing structures and one of these is easier to process (see Hawkins 1999, 2004), then the simpler structure will be preferred in performance. Consequently, it will be used more often with a greater range of different lexical items, which increases its type frequency and ultimately leads to it being more cognitively entrenched than its alternative (see Hawkins 2004: 6). As an analysis of the diachronic evolution of the family of English comparative correlative constructions (the more iconiccause–before–effectC1C2 constructionthe more you eat, the fatter you getvs the less iconiceffect–before–causeC2C1 constructionyou get the fatter, the more you eat) shows, however, the PGCH only played a secondary role in the genesis of this set of constructions. In this article, I will present a usage-based constructionist approach that allows researchers to reinterpret the classical Structuralist notion of gaps in the system as gaps in the mental constructional network. This type of Cognitive Structuralist analysis accounts for the presence of the less iconic C2C1 structure (and the absence of the more iconic C1C2 structure) in OE, the genesis of C1C2 structures at the end of the OE period as well as the processing effects predicted by the PGCH once both the C1C2 and the C2C1 constructions were in competition during the ME period.

Competence and performance in language acquisition

1996 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 730-731
Author(s):  
Mark Hale
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
And Performance ◽  
L1 Acquisition

AbstractThe implications of Epstein et al.'s critical evaluation of much of the existing literature on L2-acquisition extends far beyond the domain they discuss. I argue that similar methodological clarification is urgently needed in analyses of the role of UG in L1-acquisition, as well as in discussions in such seemingly “distant” areas as the study of language change.

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