scholarly journals What may words say, or what may words not say. A corpus-based approach to linguistic action

2005 ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
Monserrat Martínez Vázquez
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Approach ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Reliable Information ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Communicative Process ◽  
Linguistic Action ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
The Way

In this paper I present an empirical approach to the analysis of the way English speakers conceptualize the communicative process in English. Most linguistic expressions about language in English are surface manifestations of what Reddy termed the "conduit metaphor". Reddy's model implies several interrelated cognitive associations: words are conceived as containers in which speakers introduce their ideas and send them to listeners, who will take these ideas out of these containers. Central to this model is the metaphor words are containers. It has also been claimed that there are other ways of perspectivizing the language process apart from the notion of containment (Vanparys 1995). In fact, Reddy himself notes that there is approximately a 30% of metalanguage not based on the conduit metaphor. The pervasiveness of the container metaphor would reasonably be most directly tested in expressions with the lexeme word. In order to measure what falls inside and outside these containers I carry out a corpus analysis of the lexeme word excerpted from the British National Corpus (BNC). The systematic evidence obtained from a large but delimited corpus gives us more reliable information about the frequency and use of this metaphor than an intuition based analysis or an arbitrary search in multi-source corpora.

scholarly journals Material Critique for Touchstone 3rd Edition: on corpus analysis and spoken grammar

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Entusiastik -
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Free Access ◽  
Lexical Bundles ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

This paper analysed the use of corpus and spoken language features in the English Language Teaching (ELT) coursebook “Touchstone”. The corpus analysis was carried out by using the British National Corpus (BNC) which was chosen for its easy and free access. In doing the spoken language analysis, I refer to McCarthy and Carter’s (2015, p.5) argument which take the grammar of conversation as ‘the benchmark for a grammar of speaking’ by considering features such as ellipsis, heads and teailsm lexical bundles, and vagueness. The analysis indicated that the language used in this coursebook signified a certain level of authentic and natural language, although areas of improvement were also found.

scholarly journals On Semantic Patterns of “Kill–Verbs” in Modern English

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2 (11)) ◽  
pp. 51-61
Author(s):  
Robert Khachatryan
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
The Way ◽  
Causative Verbs

The article aims to reveal the semantic structures of the causative verbs in modern English, particularly with reference to the characteristics of the verbs meaning “to kill” and the way of expressing the main meaning of “to cause to die”. More precisely, the present article highlights the semantic features of these verbs that condition their causative nature. The article focuses on the investigation of only those verbs meaning “to cause to die” that are more frequent in speech, particularly the verbs to kill, to murder, to assassinate, to execute and to massacre. The linguistic data are borrowed from the British National Corpus.

scholarly journals Concept "Star" in English Linguaculture: Notional Features

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1069-1077
Author(s):  
A. A. Bakirova
Keyword(s):  
English Literature ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
White Patch ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Stellar Body ◽  
National Corpus

The article describes the notional features of the concept of star in the English worldview and focuses on those specifics of the representation of the concept that reveal the national consciousness of native English speakers. To describe the structure of the concept, the author analyzed dictionary articles, idioms, and synonyms. The analysis revealed 17 notional signs: a natural luminous body visible in the sky at night; a fixed point of light in the sky; hot balls of burning gas that emits its own light; a planet; fortune / destiny; horoscope; a celebrity; the main person in a film / play; an outstandingly successful person or thing in a group; an object or shape; a figure; a sign of rank / position; a star-shaped ornament or medal worn as a badge of honor or authority; classification of hotels; a white patch on the forehead of a horse or other animal; starfish; a sign of asterisk. The cognitive attributes "stellar body", "fortune / destiny", and "a white patch on the forehead of a horse or other animal" proved to go back to motivating features, which indicates their long-term presence in the language. However, a study of co-occurrence indicated relatively recent cognitive features. Examples were taken from classical English literature and the British National Corpus. A comparative analysis of the actualization of the meanings of the representative word in sentences showed that its conceptual features coincide with the data of explanatory dictionaries.

scholarly journals A Corpus-based Study of the Use of Pause Fillers Among British English Speakers

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (12) ◽  
pp. 09-16
Author(s):  
Dr. Hamad Abdullah H Aldawsari
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
British English ◽  
Gender Influence ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
And Gender ◽  
National Corpus

Many people use pause fillers such as um, erm, and er in order to signal to the other person that they have not finished speaking yet. This paper aims to investigate pause fillers and their relationship with the two sociolinguistic variables of age and gender. The data-driven analysis is based on the British National Corpus (BNC). The results show that the sociolinguistic variables of age and gender influence the use of pause fillers among British English speakers, which is proposed to be linked to the advancement of age and an improved fluency among female speakers.

scholarly journals British ‘Bollocks’ versus American ‘Jerk’: Do native British English speakers swear more – or differently – compared to American English speakers?

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Marc Dewaele
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
British English ◽  
Conceptual Representations ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
American English Speakers ◽  
National Corpus

AbstractThe present study investigates the differences between 414 L1 speakers of British and 556 L1 speakers of American English in self-reported frequency of swearing and in the understanding of the meaning, the perceived offensiveness and the frequency of use of 30 negative words extracted from the British National Corpus. Words ranged from mild to highly offensive, insulting and taboo. Statistical analysies revealed no significant differences between the groups in self reported frequency of swearing. The British English L1 participants reported a significantly better understanding of nearly half the chosen words from the corpus. They gave significantly higher offensiveness scores to four words (including “bollocks”) while the American English L1 participants rated a third of words as significantly more offensive (including “jerk”). British English L1 participants reported significantly more frequent use of a third of words (including “bollocks”) while the American English L1 participants reported more frequent use of half of the words (including “jerk”). This is interpreted as evidence of differences in semantic and conceptual representations of these words in both variants of English.

Variation between modal adverbs in British English

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-412
Author(s):  
Daisuke Suzuki
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
British English ◽  
Modal Verb ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Subjective Context ◽  
National Corpus

Abstract This study investigates the use and distribution of the synonymous adverbs maybe and perhaps in order to determine their functional similarities and differences. After extracting usage data from the British National Corpus (BNC), this study explores the following factors by analyzing the target adverbs in a larger context: (i) the kind of register, (ii) the kind of NP chosen as the subject in maybe/perhaps clauses, (iii) the kind of modal verb used in the same clause, and (iv) the position occupied by the target adverbs in a clause. The corpus analysis demonstrates that maybe is more prone to subjective use while perhaps is a more strongly grammaticalized item, and that the factors related to a highly subjective context contribute much to the variation between the adverbs. In addition, I suggest that both maybe and perhaps (in combination with modal verbs or in final position) can be used in an intersubjective context.

Measuring grammatical status in Chinese through quantitative corpus analysis

Corpora ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-342
Author(s):  
Linlin Sun ◽  
David Correia Saavedra
Keyword(s):  
Binary Logistic Regression ◽  
Quantitative Model ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Language Models ◽  
Diversity Measure ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Using Data ◽  
National Corpus

This paper applies a quantitative model developed for measuring grammatical status, using data from the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese (lcmc). The model takes into account four quantitative factors (token frequency, collocate diversity, colligate diversity and deviation of proportions) and uses them as predictors in a binary logistic regression in order to compute a score of grammatical status between ‘0’ (lexical/non-grammatical) and ‘1’ (highly grammatical) for each given element. The results of the lcmc model are then compared to those of a similar study of the British National Corpus (bnc). The comparison suggests that token frequency emerges as one of the most relevant parameters for quantifying degrees of grammatical status in both language models, together with the collocate diversity measure when using a broad window span. On the other hand, the colligational measures (left- or right-based) and the other collocate diversity measures using small spans (left- or right-based) contribute very differently to the two languages due to their typologically distinctive structures.

scholarly journals CONVENTIONAL INDIRECTNESS STRATEGIES ON REQUEST USED BY MALE AND FEMALE SPEAKERS IN SPOKEN BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS

PARADIGM ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Tantri Refa Indriarti ◽  
Yulia R. Mawarni
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
British English ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Request Strategies ◽  
National Corpus

<p>This study aims at analysing conventional indirectness strategies on request used by British English speakers as shown in spoken British National Corpus (BNC). Conventional indirect strategy is often rated as the most polite expression of politeness. In this case, male and female obviously have different strategies for making the request, which may be influenced by some factors. A qualitative approach was employed to conduct this study since the data are the utterances produced by male and female speakers in spoken BNC. The study revealed that there were 187 utterances that contain Conventional Indirectness Strategies on request used by male and female speakers in spoken BNC. Ability conditions was the strategy of conventional indirect request that mostly used by the male and female speakers. Then, the three factors (i.e. gender, age, and social class) have an effect and significant role on the speaker’s choice of strategies employed by British English speakers. As this study is focused on the indirect request strategies, thus it is suggested to the next researchers who are interested in the same study could be expected to conduct the indirect request strategies by adding more factors.</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals A Critical Discourse Analysis: The Representation of ‘Homosexual’, ‘Lesbian’, and ‘Gay’ Collocates Words in Cola and BNC Corpus

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 00018
Author(s):  
Restu Anggi Gustara
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
American English ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

This is a Critical Discourse Analysis of the collocation of ‘homosexual’, ‘lesbian’, and ‘gay’ terms in the corpus data of Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC). By conducting Halliday’s theory, this study aims to find out the representation of three terms, ‘homosexual’, lesbian’, and ‘gay’, also the ideology, from the collocation words. As a combined study between Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics, a qualitative and quantitative data were used. By using corpus analysis as the method, the researcher analyzes the ideology based on the collected collocates words. The result of the analysis shows that ‘homosexual’, ‘lesbian’, and ‘gay’ has a linier relationship. Those three terms are used in different area of public text, which are ‘homosexual’ is more acceptable in academic term and ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ are mostly used in the non-academic term. Even though COCA and BNC show the different amount of their existence, they are share the same collocation: rights, relationship, lifestyle, identity, activist, and couple.

scholarly journals FREQUENT COLLOCATION OF ADJECTIVE-NOUN AND NOUN-ADJECTIVE: CORPUS ANALYSIS

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Fransiska Selvy Wulandari ◽  
Barli Bram
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
American English ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Word Choice ◽  
English Learner ◽  
Brigham Young University ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

This paper investigated frequent collocations used by English learners. Specifically, it is a corpus-based study which focuses on the frequencies of 15 pairs of adjective-noun and noun-adjective collocations. The frequency was examined in two corpora, namely the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus managed by Brigham Young University (BYU-BNC). The collocations are presented in the form of pairs to give the comparisons of frequencies between frequently used collocations and less frequently used ones, as seen in the corpora although they have a similar meaning. The present study aims to help English learners to be familiar with the more appropriate word choice used in their writing and speaking. Keywords: collocation, corpus, COCA, BYU-BNC, English learner  

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