Evidence for four basic noun types from a corpus-linguistic and a psycholinguistic perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-48
Author(s):  
Dorothea Brenner ◽  
Peter Indefrey ◽  
Christian Horn ◽  
Nicolas Kimm
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistic

Prescribing French: A corpus-linguistic approach to official terminology in French newspapers

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Gyula Zsombok
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Dynamic Approach ◽  
French Academy ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Linguistic Approach ◽  
Lexical Fields ◽  
Do So

ABSTRACT In France, English is often perceived as a negative influence on the language in the eyes of purist institutions like the French Academy. Terminological commissions have been established to replace foreign expressions with French terminology that is regularly published in the Journal officiel de la République française. Although the Toubon Law of 1994 prescribes the use of this terminology in government publications, speakers are merely encouraged to do so. This article investigates the variation between English lexical borrowings and their prescribed equivalents in a large newspaper corpus containing articles from 2000 to 2017 in order to see whether formal written language complies with the purist recommendations. Time is treated with a new dynamic approach: the probability of using a prescribed term is estimated three years before and three years after official prescription. Fifty-four target terms are selected from the lexical fields of computer science, entertainment industry and telecommunication, including emblematic prescribed words such as courriel and mot-dièse. The analysis reveals that prescription is only effective when it follows already attested use. Furthermore, conservative newspapers show higher proportions of recommended terminology, especially as compared to newspapers specializing in technology.

Proverbial homogeneity: A cross-linguistic examination of Korean and Indonesian

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Sang-Oak Lee
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Frequency Data ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Frequency Structure ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Last Two Millennia

This study explores the use of keywords in proverbs in Korean, English, Chinese, and Indonesian. The study applies the traditional corpus linguistic tools of frequency and ranking to the keywords found in proverbs in an attempt to characterize the proverbs of these languages. The frequency data show that English proverbs are dominated by abstract keywords like “love, God, age, foolishness, wisdom, poverty, good, evil, and truth.” On the other hand, Chinese proverbs are dominated by more “action oriented” and “pragmatic concern” keywords such as “heart, time, talk/say, act/do, words, method, and knowledge,” showing a clear divergence from the frequency structure of English proverb keywords. Surprisingly, Korean proverb keywords, just like the English keywords, are also found to share very little in common with Chinese, a longstanding neighbor which has strongly influenced the cultural life of Korea over the last two millennia. Instead, the data show that the proverb keyword structure most resembles that of Indonesian, both having material/physical terms dominating the keywords and both sharing three common top-ranking keywords: water, dog, and cow.

Arab women in news headlines during the Arab Spring: Image and perception in Germany

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 515-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zahra Mustafa-Awad ◽  
Monika Kirner-Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
University Courses ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Linguistic Approaches ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
News Headlines

This article reports on the first stage of a research project on German university students’ conceptualization of Arab women and to what extent it is affected by the latters’ representation in the Western press during the Arab Spring. We combined discourse analysis and corpus-linguistic approaches to investigate the relationship between lexical items used by the students to express their attitudes toward Arab women and those featuring in news headlines about them published in British, American, and German news media. Results show that the portrayal of Arab women in Western news headlines has a clear impact on German students’ opinions of them. The findings also show that our participants tend to be aware of this effect, which could be partly due to their familiarity with discourse analysis as students of linguistics. These results have implications for incorporating media education systematically in general university courses.

Vorlesung und Hörsaal als Symptomwörter für Geschichte und Gegenwart der deutschen Sprache

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 556-595
Author(s):  
Wolf Peter Klein
Keyword(s):  
Academic Language ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Lecture Hall ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
Science And Society ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Epochal Change ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Standard ◽  
The One

Abstract The article starts with the etymology of the words Vorlesung („lecture“) and Hörsaal (“lecture hall”). On the one hand, it turns out that the two expressions are deeply anchored in the history of the old Latin scientific language. They transmit Latin structures and perspectives in German neologisms. On the other hand, the two words arose exactly at the time when the sciences were moving from Latin to German, thus distancing themselves from the traditional forms of Latin scholarship. In this light, they exemplify an epochal change in the history of the German language, but at the same time they represent a great European continuity. Against this background, the two words can be interpreted as symptomatic words associated with the Enlightenment’s confident outlook on the future relationship between science and society. Further corpus linguistic surveys also show how productively the two words appear in word formation processes. In particular, these surveys show by way of example that and how German standard language has benefited from the emergence of German academic language.

What Russian University Stands for: Analyzing Socially Embedded Vision and Values

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 491-506
Author(s):  
Valeria Chernyavskaya ◽  
Olga Kamshilova
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Mission Statements ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Analytical Methodology ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Core Mission ◽  
New Research ◽  
Linguistic Methods

Summary The present investigation is a response to the discourse analytical methodology expanded by corpus linguistic techniques. Within a discursive approach the university’s identity is seen as existing in and being constructed through discourse. The research interest is in how ideology and the obligation models set by the state construct the university’s self-image and university-based research as its core mission. The study is generally consistent with current trends in social constructivism where identity is considered as the process of identity construction rather than a rigid category. It is presumed that key factors are developed within a definite socio-cultural practice, which then shape the concept of collective identity. Detecting and analyzing such factors on the basis of Russian realities and modern Russian university is becoming a new research objective. The focus of the given article is on how certain values can be foregrounded in texts representing university strategies to the public. The research employs corpus linguistic methods in discourse analysis. The organization of the paper is as follows. First, it outlines the socio-political context in which the transformation of academic values and organizational principles of Russian national universities are embedded. Second, it discusses corpus findings obtained from an original research corpus which includes mission statements posted on the websites of Russian national research and federal universities. Conclusions concerning the university mission statements reflect ongoing transformations of the universities’ role in the society. The rhetoric of the statements is declarative and foregrounding new values. The linguistic data analysis shows their socially constructive nature as they build a framework for currently relevant uniformed ideas and concepts.

Syntax from and for discourse II: More on complex sentences as meso-constructions

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beate Hampe ◽  
Stefan Th. Gries
Keyword(s):  
Multinomial Regression ◽  
Complex Sentence ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Adverbial Clause ◽  
Temporal Adverbial

Abstract This paper presents a direct continuation of preceding corpus-linguistic research on complex sentence constructions with temporal adverbial clauses in a cognitive and usage-based framework (Diessel 2008; Hampe 2015). Working towards a more systematic construction-based account of complex sentences with before-, after-, until- and once-clauses in spontaneously spoken English, Hampe (2015) hypothesised that the morpho-syntactic realisations of configurations with initial adverbial clauses systematically diverge from those of configurations with final ones as a reflection of the specific functionality of each and that usage properties that are found across instantiations with a coherent functional load are retained in the schematisations creating constructions. This paper employs a multinomial regression in order to test to which extent each of eight closely related complex-sentence constructions with either initial or final before-, after-, until- and once-clauses can be predicted from the realisation of a few key morpho-syntactic properties of the respective adverbial and matrix clauses involved. The results support an analysis of complex-sentence constructions as meso-constructions that are not only specific about the subordinator and the positioning of the adverbial clause, but also retain “traces” of characteristic usage properties.

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