A Study of Direct Speech Complementation with Embedding Verbs: Collostructional Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 83-102
Author(s):  
Aroa Orrequia-Barea
Keyword(s):  
Programming Language ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Relational Analysis ◽  
Complement Clause ◽  
Complement Clauses ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

Non-relational verbs, as opposed to relational ones, cannot replace their complement clause with a complex nominal, meaning that they do not denote a proposition, as the Relational Analysis states. However, direct speech seems to be a proper replacement for the complement clause in the non-relational verb cases. This paper deals with the analysis of some of the most representative taxonomies of embedding verbs using the British National Corpus, to check whether they can occur with direct speech complements; the collostructional analysis, which is a technique of statistical significance; and the programming language R to do it in a computational and automatic way. Thus, the collostructional method will measure the strength between the embedding verbs and their corresponding complement clauses in the direct speech form.  

What dialog is absent from constructed dialog?

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-157
Author(s):  
Christoph Rühlemann
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Basic Function ◽  
Quantitative Comparison ◽  
Direct Speech ◽  
Conversational Storytelling ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods ◽  
Speech Situation ◽  
National Corpus

Abstract This paper is concerned with constructed dialog in conversational storytelling. Based on Clark & Gerrig’s (1990) demonstration theory, its focus is on what is absent from constructed dialog. To determine what is absent, a comparison is made between constructed dialog tokens and utterances in conversation. The inquiry uses both quantitative and qualitative methods. It is based on the Narrative Corpus (NC; Rühlemann & O’Donnell 2012), a corpus of conversational narratives extracted from the conversational component of the British National Corpus (BNC), and its systematic annotation of constructed dialog (that is, direct speech introduced by a quotative and free direct speech without any introducer). The quantitative comparison of verbalizations used in constructed dialog as opposed to verbalizations used in conversational utterances demonstrates that a particular utterance type is significantly missing from constructed dialog: the continuer utterance, whose basic function is to exhibit an understanding that a form of ‘telling’ by another speaker is going on. The qualitative analysis, based on a subset of storytellings from the NC that were re-analyzed acoustically and re-transcribed using Jeffersonian conventions based on the Audio BNC (Coleman et al. 2012), reveals a stark mismatch between the commonness of tellings in talk-in-interaction and their uncommonness in constructed dialog. The absence of continuers from constructed dialog is discussed against the backdrop of indexicality. I argue that continuers share the key properties of indexicals – semantic vacuity and an existential relationship with the ‘thing’ indicated – and can therefore be seen as indexicals themselves. As indexicals, intrinsically connected to the speech situation of their utterance, continuers cannot be included in constructed dialog, which typically occurs in a different speech situation with different interactional parameters. Finally, I offer initial thoughts on the underrepresentation of telling sequences in constructed dialog.

The contribution of constructions to dialogicity and discourse unit delimitation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Βασιλική Γκέκα
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Random Sampling ◽  
American English ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Internal Reliability ◽  
Lexical Prosody ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Frequency Counts ◽  
National Corpus

Η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή πραγματεύεται το ζήτημα της γλωσσικής έκφανσης της διαλογικότητας και διεπίδρασης στο λόγο (dialogicity and intersubjectivity in discourse). Αναλυτικότερα, ακολουθώντας το γλωσσικό πρότυπο της Γραμματικής των Δομών (Construction Grammar), η μελέτη εστιάζει στις ακόλουθες γλωσσικές δομές (constructions) της Αγγλικής: BELIEVE (YOU) ME, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THINK AGAIN και MIND YOU και επιδιώκει να τεκμηριώσει τη χρήση τους ως δεικτών ενσωμάτωσης της οπτικής γωνίας (perspectivisation markers) που ο Λεκτικός Δράστης/Ομιλητής (Speaker) εικάζει ότι υιοθετείται από τον Λεκτικό Αποδέκτη (Addressee). Ο βασικός ερευνητικός στόχος της παρούσας μελέτης είναι να καταδείξει ότι όλες οι υπό εξέταση δομές αποτελούν μέρος ενός σαφώς εδραιωμένου δικτύου δομών ενσωμάτωσης οπτικής γωνίας στο λόγο (well-entrenched constructional network of dialogic perspectivisation) που συστηματικά εδράζεται στη χρήση ρημάτων διανοητικής κατάστασης (mental state verbs) στην Προστακτική (Imperative). Υιοθετώντας ένα μεθοδολογικό πλαίσιο που συνδυάζει ποσοτικές (quantitative) και ποιοτικές (qualitative) παραμέτρους, η μελέτη αντλεί τα δεδομένα της από τα δυο πιο διαδεδομένα σώματα κειμένων (corpora) της Αγγλικής, το British National Corpus (BNC) και το Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), ακολουθώντας τη μέθοδο της τυχαίας δειγματοληψίας (random sampling). Στη συνέχεια, η συλλεχθείσα εμπειρική βάση δεδομένων και οι επισημειώσεις αυτών (annotations) υπόκεινται σε καταμέτρηση συχνοτήτων (frequency counts) και συνεπακόλουθο έλεγχο στατιστικής σημαντικότητας (statistical significance measurements) και εσωτερικής αξιοπιστίας (internal reliability measurements). Ακολουθώντας το παραπάνω ερευνητικό και μεθοδολογικό πλαίσιο, η μελέτη αρχικά εξετάζει τα εμπειρικά δεδομένα στα γλωσσικά περιβάλλοντα που αυτά εντοπίζονται στοχεύοντας στην πλήρη ανάλυση των επιμέρους μορφολογικών, συντακτικών, σημασιολογικών και πραγματολογικών χαρακτηριστικών τους. Έπειτα, με βάση το γλωσσικό πρότυπο της Γραμματικής των Δομών, τα παραπάνω χαρακτηριστικά κατηγοριοποιούνται σε ιδιοσυγκρασιακά (idiosyncratic) και κληρονομούμενα (inherited). Από την ανάλυση καθίσταται σαφές ότι οι εν λόγω δομές δεν αποτελούν απλές ιδιωματικές εκφράσεις (idioms), παρότι εμφανίζουν υψηλή μη συνθετικότητα (non-compositionality), αλλά συνδέονται άμεσα με άλλες παραγωγικές δομές της γλώσσας. Επιπλέον, εστιάζοντας στην ανάλυση των συμφραστικών πλαισίων (contexts) στα οποία απαντούν οι υπό εξέταση δομές, η μελέτη φέρνει στο φως τη συστηματική συνεμφάνισή τους (co-occurrence) με συγκεκριμένα συμφραστικά στοιχεία (contextual features), όπως ενδεικτικά, τη χρήση αρνητικής και θετικής σημασιολογικής προσωδίας (negative and positive lexical prosody), τη χρήση ενισχυτικών εκφράσεων (intensifying features), κ.ά. Η εξέταση του συμφραστικού πλαισίου αποδεικνύεται καίριας σημασίας και ως προς τη συμβολή των ίδιων των γλωσσικών δομών, καθώς αναδεικνύονται σε κύριους ρυθμιστικούς παράγοντες που συστηματικά οριοθετούν το λόγο σε ενότητες (discourse unit delimitation), οι οποίες ακολουθούν μια συγκεκριμένη διμερή, τριμερή ή τετραμερή εσωτερική «αρχιτεκτονική». Υπό αυτή την έννοια, η μελέτη προτείνει την περαιτέρω διερεύνηση των εν λόγω δομών – και πιθανώς και άλλων που παρατίθενται και ομοιάζουν με αυτές – διακρίνοντας ότι αυτή τους η ιδιότητα τους αναδεικνύει σε δείκτες λόγου (discourse markers). Στο πλαίσιο των ερευνητικών προτάσεων που απορρέουν από τα ευρήματα της παρούσας μελέτης, εντάσσεται και η διερεύνηση επιπλέον γλωσσικών δομών που βασίζονται στη χρήση της Προστακτικής και προσφέρονται τόσο για την εξέταση της ενσωμάτωσης της οπτικής γωνίας όσο και για την κινητροδότηση (motivation) της μη συνθετικότητας στη γλώσσα που οδηγεί στη δημιουργία ιδιωματικών, γλωσσικών εκφράσεων, όπως οι υπό εξέταση δομές.

“That’s well good”: A Re-emergent Intensifier in Current British English

2020 ◽  
pp. 007542422097914
Author(s):  
Karin Aijmer
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
British English ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Time Gap ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Semantic Types ◽  
Over Time ◽  
National Corpus

Well has a long history and is found as an intensifier already in older English. It is argued that diachronically well has developed from its etymological meaning (‘in a good way’) on a cline of adverbialization to an intensifier and to a discourse marker. Well is replaced by other intensifiers in the fourteenth century but emerges in new uses in Present-Day English. The changes in frequency and use of the new intensifier are explored on the basis of a twenty-year time gap between the old British National Corpus (1994) and the new Spoken British National Corpus (2014). The results show that well increases in frequency over time and that it spreads to new semantic types of adjectives and participles, and is found above all in predicative structures with a copula. The emergence of a new well and its increase in frequency are also related to social factors such as the age, gender, and social class of the speakers, and the informal character of the conversation.

scholarly journals Inclusion, Contrast and Polysemy in Dictionaries: The Relationship between Theory, Language Use and Lexicographic Practice

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-340
Author(s):  
Anu Koskela
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
National Corpus

This paper explores the lexicographic representation of a type of polysemy that arises when the meaning of one lexical item can either include or contrast with the meaning of another, as in the case of dog/bitch, shoe/boot, finger/thumb and animal/bird. A survey of how such pairs are represented in monolingual English dictionaries showed that dictionaries mostly represent as explicitly polysemous those lexical items whose broader and narrower readings are more distinctive and clearly separable in definitional terms. They commonly only represented the broader readings for terms that are in fact frequently used in the narrower reading, as shown by data from the British National Corpus.  

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 The Usage of CAUSE in Three Branches of Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Bei Yang ◽  
Bin Chen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Pure Science ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Semantic Prosody ◽  
National Corpus

<p>Semantic prosody is a concept that has been subject to considerable criticism and debate. One big concern is to what extent semantic prosody is domain or register-related. Previous studies reach the agreement that CAUSE has an overwhelmingly negative meaning in general English. Its semantic prosody remains controversial in academic writing, however, because of the size and register of the corpus used in different studies. In order to minimize the role that corpus choice has to play in determining the research findings, this paper uses sub-corpora from the British National Corpus to investigate the usage of CAUSE in different types of scientific writing. The results show that the occurrence of CAUSE is the highest in social science, less frequent in applied science, and the lowest in natural and pure science. Its semantic prosody is overwhelmingly negative in social science and applied science, and mainly neutral in natural and pure science. It seems that the verb CAUSE lacks its normal negative semantic prosody in contexts that do not refer to human beings. The implications of the findings for language learning are also discussed.</p>

Social Differentiation in the Use of English Vocabulary

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rayson ◽  
Geoffrey N. Leech ◽  
Mary Hodges
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
Geographical Region ◽  
Social Differentiation ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Analysis Tool ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Transcription System ◽  
Group A ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

In this article, we undertake selective quantitative analyses of the demographi-cally-sampled spoken English component of the British National Corpus (for brevity, referred to here as the ''Conversational Corpus"). This is a subcorpus of c. 4.5 million words, in which speakers and respondents (see I below) are identified by such factors as gender, age, social group, and geographical region. Using a corpus analysis tool developed at Lancaster, we undertake a comparison of the vocabulary of speakers, highlighting those differences which are marked by a very high X2 value of difference between different sectors of the corpus according to gender, age, and social group. A fourth variable, that of geographical region of the United Kingdom, is not investigated in this article, although it remains a promising subject for future research. (As background we also briefly examine differences between spoken and written material in the British National Corpus [BNC].) This study is illustrative of the potentiality of the Conversational Corpus for future corpus-based research on social differentiation in the use of language. There are evident limitations, including (a) the reliance on vocabulary frequency lists and (b) the simplicity of the transcription system employed for the spoken part of the BNC The conclusion of the article considers future advances in the research paradigm illustrated here.

Creating and using Web corpora

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Thelwall
Keyword(s):  
Search Engine ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Web Crawler ◽  
Commercial Search Engine ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The University ◽  
The Web ◽  
National Corpus

The Web has recently been used as a corpus for linguistic investigations, often with the help of a commercial search engine. We discuss some potential problems with collecting data from commercial search engine and with using the Web as a corpus. We outline an alternative strategy for data collection, using a personal Web crawler. As a case study, the university Web sites of three nations (Australia, New Zealand and the UK) were crawled. The most frequent words were broadly consistent with non-Web written English, but with some academic-related words amongst the top 50 most frequent. It was also evident that the university Web sites contained a significant amount of non-English text, and academic Web English seems to be more future-oriented than British National Corpus written English.

scholarly journals Rivalry or alliance?: the relationship between hyperbole and literal language

2013 ◽  
pp. 285
Author(s):  
Laura Cano Mora
Keyword(s):  
Figurative Language ◽  
Common Pattern ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Literal Expression ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Figurative Expressions

This paper focuses on the relationship between neighbouring literal and figurative expressions, a much under-researched area in figurative language theories. Traditionally it has been assumed that language is used figuratively when a literal expression would be inadequate, thus supporting the view that figurative and literal language replace or substitute each other. In order to question this view and to explore this relationship, a group of hyperbolic adverbs extracted from the British National Corpus and used in naturally-occurring speech was examined. The results show that hyperbole and literal comments seem to extend and complement, rather than replace, each other. This complementation is often achieved through paraphrase or clarification of a preceding remark, whether literal or exaggerated. The analysis also seems to suggest that if speakers need to add some information the most common pattern is a hyperbole followed, rather than preceded, by a literal expression.El presente artículo se centra en el estudio de la relación entre expresiones literales y figuradas adyacentes, cuestión rara vez investigada en las teorías del lenguaje figurado. Tradicionalmente se ha creído que los hablantes utilizamos las figuras cuando el lenguaje literal resulta inadecuado, reafirmando así la idea de que el lenguaje literal y figurado se sustituyen el uno al otro. Con el fin de cuestionar esta visión y explorar dicha relación examinamos un grupo de adverbios hiperbólicos usados en conversaciones reales extraídas del British National Corpus. Los resultados indican que la hipérbole y el uso literal del lenguaje parecen complementarse en lugar de reemplazarse. Con frecuencia dicha complementariedad se consigue a través de la paráfrasis o clarificación de un comentario previo, ya sea literal o exagerado. El análisis a su vez parece sugerir que cuando el hablante siente la necesidad de añadir información el patrón más común es una hipérbole seguida, en lugar de precedida, de una expresión literal.

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