/p/-driven geminate devoicing in Japanese: Corpus and experimental evidence

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shigeto Kawahara ◽  
Shin-ichiro Sano
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Theoretical Modeling ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Objective Evidence ◽  
Corpus Data

AbstractIn Japanese loanwords, voiced geminates can be devoiced in the presence of another voiced obstruent (e.g., /doggu/ → /dokku/ ‘dog’). This devoicing pattern has been studied extensively in the recent phonological literature in terms of theoretical modeling as well as from the perspective of experimentation and corpus studies. Less well-known is the observation that /p/ may cause devoicing of geminates as well (e.g., /piramiddo/ → /piramitto/ ‘pyramid’), although to date no objective evidence has been offered to confirm this observation. The current study thus attempts to test this observation objectively by way of a corpus study and two phonological judgment experiments. The results generally support the idea that /p/ can cause devoicing of geminates in Japanese loanwords; in other words, /p/ may trigger Lyman’s Law in causing devoicing of geminates. In addition to this descriptive discovery, throughout the paper we discuss intriguing task effects in phonological experimentation, by comparing the corpus data and the results of the two judgment experiments. Although our aim is primarily descriptive, we offer some analytical possibilities for the /p/-driven devoicing of geminates at the end of the paper.

The L2 syllabus: corpus or contrivance?

Corpora ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Shortall
Keyword(s):  
Natural Frequency ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Frequency Data ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Real Language ◽  
Corpus Data

Corpus linguists have argued that corpora allow us to present lexical and grammatical patterns to language learners as they occur in real language, thereby exposing the learner to authentic target language (Mindt, 1996; Biber et al., 2002; Sinclair, 2004). And there is now a growing body of empirical research into how corpus studies can benefit ELT materials design and development (Ljung, 1990, 1991; Römer, 2004, 2005). This study investigates how the present perfect is represented in a spoken corpus and in ELT textbooks. The objective is to see whether corpus frequency data can make textbook present perfect presentation represent reality more accurately, and also whether there are sometimes pedagogic aims that may override frequency considerations. Results show that textbooks fail to represent adequately how present perfect interacts with other verb forms to create hybrid tenses such the present perfect passive. Textbooks also over-represent the frequency of structures such as the present perfect continuous. Adverbs such as yet and already are much more frequent in textbooks than in the corpus. Textbook writers seem to deliberately exaggerate the frequency of such adverbs, and arguably use them as tense markers or flagging devices so that learners will expect to see present perfect when they see yet and already. This suggests that disregard for natural frequency data may be justifiable if pedagogic considerations of this kind are taken into account. So, while corpus data provides important and useful frequency data for the teaching of grammar, pedagogic objectives may sometimes require that frequency data is disregarded.

Frequency effects in the L2 acquisition of the catenative verb construction – evidence from experimental and corpus data

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Azazil
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Abstract Schema ◽  
Frequent Variant ◽  
Corpus Data

AbstractThis paper investigates frequency effects in the L2 acquisition of the catenative verb construction by German learners of English from a usage-based perspective by presenting findings from two experimental studies and a complementary corpus study. It was examined if and to what extent the frequency of the verb in the catenative verb construction affects the choice of the target-like complement type and if the catenative verb construction with a to-infinitive complement, which is highly frequent in English, is more accurately acquired and entrenched than the less frequent variant with an -ing complement. In all three studies, the more frequent construction with a to-infinitive yielded higher numbers of target-like complement choices. Furthermore, it was shown that the verb’s faithfulness to the construction made a significant prediction of a target-like complement preference. It is argued that a higher faithfulness promotes a target-like entrenchment of the construction and motivates a taxonomic generalisation across related exemplars. Furthermore, the results provide support for the idea that the mental representation of language is comprised of item-specific as well as more abstract schema knowledge, where frequency determines the specificity with which the construction is entrenched.

Punctuation and syntactic structure in obwohl and weil clauses in nonstandard written German

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Schäfer ◽  
Ulrike Sayatz
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
Insight Into

In this paper, we analyze written sentences containing the German particles obwohl (“although”) and weil (“because”). In standard written German, these particles embed clauses in verb-last constituent order, which is characteristic of subordinated clauses. In spoken and – as we show – nonstandard written German, they embed clauses in verb-second constituent order, which is characteristic of independent sentences. Our usage-based approach to the syntax – graphemics interface includes a large-scale corpus analysis of the patterns of punctuation in the nonstandard variants that provides clues to the syntactic structure and degree of sentential independence of the nonstandard variants. Our corpus study confirms and refines hypotheses from existing theoretical approaches by clearly showing that writers mark obwohl clauses with verb-second order systematically as independent sentences, whereas weil clauses with verb-second order are much less strongly marked as independent. This work suggests that similar corpus studies could provide deeper insight into the interplay between syntax and graphemics.

scholarly journals The Old Englishto-dative construction

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUDOVIC DE CUYPERE
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Logistic Regression Analysis ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Linguistic Variables ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Multifactorial Approach

In Present-day English (PDE), theto-dative construction refers to clauses likeJohn sold/offered/mentioned/gave the books to Mary, in which a ditransitive verb takes a Recipient that is expressed as ato-Prepositional Phrase (to-PP). This study examines theto-dative construction in Old English (OE). I show, first of all, that this construction was not rare in OE, in contrast to what has been suggested in the literature. Second, I report on two corpus studies in which I examined the ordering behaviour of the NP and theto-PP. The results of the first study suggest that the same ordering tendencies already existed in OE as in PDE: both the NP-to-PP and theto-PP-NP orders were grammatical, but the NP-to-PP was the most frequently used one. However, in OE, theto-PP-NP was more common than in PDE, where its use is heavily restricted. My second corpus study is informed by the multifactorial approach to the English dative alternation and uses a mixed-effects logistic regression analysis to evaluate the effects of various linguistic (verbal semantics, pronominality, animacy, definiteness, number, person and length) and extra-linguistic variables (translation status, time of completion/manuscript) on the ordering of NP andto-PP. The main finding is that, generally speaking, the same factors that motivate the dative alternation in PDE were involved in OE as well. No evidence was found for the influence of verbal semantics nor of the extra-linguistic variables. Finally, I argue against the view thattowas semantically reanalysed from a Goal to a Recipient marker from OE to ME. Building on evidence that the Recipient use oftowas already embryonically present in OE, I make the case that this semantic change was far more gradual than traditionally assumed.

Why worser is better: The double comparative in 16th- to 17th-century English

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Schlüter
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Present Article ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Diachronic Development

In Early Modern English, double comparatives were often encountered in both spoken and written language. The present article investigates the redundantly marked comparative worser in relation to its irregular, but etymologically justified, counterpart worse. My aim is to examine the diachronic development of the form as well as its distribution in the written language of the 16th and 17th centuries. Two detailed corpus studies are used to reveal the set of parameters underlying the variation between worse and worser, which include system congruity, semantics, and standardization effects. However, the focus here is on the tendency to maintain an alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, known as the Principle of Rhythmic Alternation. This prosodic principle (which has been argued to be particularly influential in English) turns out to be responsible for most of the results obtained in the analysis of the corpus data.

scholarly journals Corpus of Usage Examples: What Is It Good For?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timofey Arkhangelskiy
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Reference Grammar ◽  
Text Corpora ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Good For ◽  
Word Senses

Lexicography and corpus studies of grammar have a long history of fruitful interaction. For the most part, however, this has been a one-way relationship. Lexicographers have extensively used corpora to identify previously undetected word senses or find natural usage examples; using lexicographic materials when conducting data-driven investigations of grammar, on the other hand, is hardly commonplace. In this paper, I present a Beserman Udmurt corpus made out of "artificial" dictionary examples. I argue that, although such a corpus can not be used for certain kinds of corpus-based research, it is nevertheless a very useful tool for writing a reference grammar of a language. This is particularly important in the case of underresourced endangered varieties, which Beserman is, because of the scarcity of available corpus data. The paper describes the process of developing the Beserman usage example corpus, explores its differences compared to traditional text corpora, and discusses how those can be beneficial for grammar research.

scholarly journals Assessing morphologically motivated transfer in parallel corpora

Target ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Defrancq ◽  
Gudrun Rawoens
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Positive Transfer ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Language Family ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Parallel Corpora ◽  
Literal Translation ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Process Oriented ◽  
Oriented Research

Abstract This paper proposes a new way of identifying and analysing positive transfer on the basis of corpus data. Taking stock of process-oriented research into what is called ‘literal translation’, transfer is defined as an instance in which a translator is primed into using a target language item that is formally similar to the source item to be translated, when alternatives are available. In order to measure the extent to which morphological transfer is present in translation, a study is conducted on translations of negative prefixes in parallel corpora of French, Swedish and Dutch. The corpus study revealed that (1) transfer is by far the main translation option translators choose in all corpora involved, (2) transfer is more frequent when translators have the opportunity to use a cognate prefix in the other language, (3) transfer is more frequent between languages belonging to the same language family. The results of the study contradict the generally acknowledged fact that transfer is more likely from a language which is culturally dominant to a language which is not.

Corpus data

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 119-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalila Ayoun
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Explanatory Account ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Magazine Articles ◽  
Language Learnability

The present corpus study analyzes 5,016 contextualized DPs drawn from 34 current newspaper and magazine articles to test the so-far unsubstantiated claim that the input provides abundant and clear evidence of the grammatical gender of French nouns. Findings show that 49.76% of noun tokens are not gender-marked; 9.01% of nouns lack a gender-marked determiner, but are modified by a gender-marked adjective; while 41.22% of nouns have a gender-marked determiner. Detailed qualitative and quantitative analyses provide a descriptive and explanatory account of gender-marked contexts and second language learnability implications are discussed. The lack of readily available word-external clues explains why the acquisition of French grammatical gender is notoriously difficult (e.g., Ayoun 2007).

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