A corpus-based validation study of the universal processing hypothesis in English relative clause formation

2005 ◽  
Vol 149-150 ◽  
pp. 77-91
Author(s):  
Akihiro Ito ◽  
Junko Yamashita
Keyword(s):  
Computer Program ◽  
Validation Study ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Valid Predictor ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
English Relative Clauses

The present study focuses on spoken and written data in the British National Corpus (BNC). Based on a review of recent studies on English relative clauses, we formulated a Universal Processing Hypothesis (OS >OO>SS> SO) as target hypothesis to be validated using a corpus data approach. A computer program was designed to calculate the frequency of appearance of the four types of relative clauses (OS, OO, SS, and SO). The results indicated this hypothesis to be a valid predictor of frequency of appearance of relative clauses in the domain for written corpus texts. However, it is not supported in context-governed spoken material. Limitations of the present investigation and the direction of future research are also discussed.

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.

Making Sense of Corpus Data

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Levin ◽  
Grace Song
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Government Binding ◽  
Linguistic Account ◽  
National Corpus

This paper demonstrates the essential role of corpus data in the development of a theory that explains and predicts word behavior. We make this point through a case study of verbs of sound, drawing our evidence primarily from the British National Corpus. We begin by considering pretheoretic notions of the verbs of sound as presented in corpus-based dictionaries and then contrast them with the predictions made by a theory of syntax, as represented by Chomsky's Government-Binding framework. We identify and classify the transitive uses of sixteen representative verbs of sound found in the corpus data. Finally, we consider what a linguistic account with both syntactic and lexical semantic components has to offer as an explanation of observed differences in the behavior of the sample verbs.

scholarly journals Teenage swearing in the UK

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Drummond
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Meaning Structure ◽  
Mainstream School ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Linguistic Behaviour ◽  
The Uk ◽  
National Corpus

Abstract This article describes the swearing practices of a group of young people aged 14–16 in the UK. The young people are in a specific context – a Pupil Referral Unit catering for pupils who have been excluded from mainstream school. The study’s narrow focus builds on existing knowledge by providing a level of precision in terms of speaker and context not usually found in swearing research. 13 key words are examined in terms of meaning, structure, frequency, and use between genders. Shit and fuck, as the most common terms, are explored in more detail, with use of the latter compared to existing accounts based on the British National Corpus. Examining the swearing practices of this group of people adds detail to our knowledge of a particular style of English, paves the way for future research into the socio-pragmatic functions of teenage swearing, and helps us to better understand the linguistic behaviour of an often-marginalised section of society.

scholarly journals Relative Clauses in Minangkabau, Indonesian, English Languages (Typology Study)

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-198
Author(s):  
Akmal ◽  
Mulyadi
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Theoretical Studies ◽  
Austronesian Languages ◽  
English Relative Clauses

Minangkabau and Indonesian languages are an Austronesian. In this study, it was focused on the typology study of three different languages, namely: Minangkabau, Indonesian, and English relative clauses. It aimed to find out the differences and the similarities of relative clauses among the three languages. This paper also outlines the Accessibility Hierarchy approach to the facts that describe building on relative clause construction. The data was taken from some conversations with Minangkabaunese friends and feedback from the writer as a native speaker of the language in the analysis as well as taking the findings of recent typological and theoretical studies of Austronesian languages into consideration. From the analysis, it is found that Minangkabau and Indonesian languages are same contsruction and the english is different between Minangkabau and Indonesian languages. In the English, it is also possible to have object focus which called object fronting.  

scholarly journals Subjunctive in Russian relative clauses

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Dobrushina
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Semantic Type ◽  
National Corpus

The paper aims at determining the factors that trigger the choice of subjunctive in relative clauses, where it freely alternates with indicative forms. The factors are established on a basis of frequency of occurrence in Russian National Corpus (www.ruscorpora.ru) and include the referential status of the noun heading the relative clause, the polarity, semantic type and epistemic status of the main predicate and the affirmative vs. interrogative status of the whole sentence.

scholarly journals Raising and matching in Pharasiot Greek relative clauses: A diachronic reconstruction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
METIN BAGRIACIK ◽  
LIEVEN DANCKAERT
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Landing Site ◽  
Functional Structure ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Restrictive Relative Clauses

This paper studies the structure and origin of prenominal and postnominal restrictive relative clauses in Pharasiot Greek. Though both patterns are finite and introduced by the invariant complementizer tu, they differ in two important respects. First, corpus data reveal that prenominal relatives are older than their postnominal counterparts. Second, in the present-day language only prenominal relatives involve a matching derivation, whereas postnominal ones behave like Head-raising structures. Turning to diachrony, we suggest that prenominal relatives came into being through morphological fusion of a determiner t- with an invariant complementizer u. This process entailed a reduction of functional structure in the left periphery of the relative clause, to the effect that the landing site for a raising Head was suppressed, leaving a matching derivation as the only option. Postnominal relatives are analyzed as borrowed from Standard Modern Greek. Our analysis corroborates the idea that both raising and matching derivations for relatives must be acknowledged, sometimes even within a single language.

The Effect of Reading on the Acquisition of English Relative Clauses

1996 ◽  
Vol 113-114 ◽  
pp. 263-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yon Ok Lee ◽  
Stephen D. Krashen ◽  
Barry Gribbons
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
The United States ◽  
Length Of Residence ◽  
Pleasure Reading ◽  
Formal Study ◽  
Input Hypothesis ◽  
English Relative Clauses

Abstract 49 adult acquirers of English as a second language took two tests probing restrictive relative clause competence. The amount of reported pleasure reading done by subjects were the only significant predictor of both measures. Neither years of formal study nor length of residence in the United States was a significant predictor. These results are consistent with the input hypothesis.

Processing of the Mandarin polarity item renhe ‘any’

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 630-660
Author(s):  
Hongchen Wu ◽  
Jiwon Yun
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Illusion Effect ◽  
Structural Requirement ◽  
Polarity Item ◽  
Polarity Sensitivity ◽  
Offline Processing ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

Abstract The Mandarin renhe is similar to the English any in terms of polarity sensitivity (Wang 1993; Wang & Hsieh 1996; Kuo 2003; Cheng & Giannakidou 2013; Shyu 2016). However, the following phenomena regarding any in relative clause environments have not been surveyed with respect to renhe: (a) the NPI illusion effect reported in studies like Parker & Phillips (2011; 2016); (b) the subtrigging effect discussed in LeGrand (1975) and Dayal (1998; 2004). We conducted two untimed, offline acceptability judgment experiments and the results suggest that: (i) NPI illusion does not appear in Mandarin in untimed offline processing, (ii) the subtrigging effect of renhe holds, and (iii) renhe can be licensed by certain types of declarative verbs like tongyi ‘agree’ and zancheng ‘approve’. The results confirm the strict structural requirement of the c-commanding relation between a negation licensor and renhe (Wang 1993) and the licensing of renhe in non-veridical contexts (Cheng & Giannakidou 2013), and further suggest additional licensing environments for renhe: relative clauses and declarative verbs. This requires reconsideration of positing non-veridicality as a necessary licensing condition for renhe and calls for future research on how renhe is licensed under these two licensing environments.

Relative Clauses in English conversation

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Fox ◽  
Sandra A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
English Relative Clauses

This paper is a usage-based study of the grammar of that set of English Relative Clauses with which a relativizer has been described as optional. We argue that the regularities in the use of relativizers in English can be seen as systematically arising from pragmatic-prosodic factors, creating frequency effects, resulting in some cases highly grammaticized formats: the more the Main Clause and the Relative Clause are integrated with each other, that is, approach monoclausal status, the more likely we are to find no relativizer used; conversely, the more separate the two clauses are, the more likely we are to find an overt relativizer. These findings have led us to suggest that the more monoclausal combinations have become unitary storage and processing chunks. We thus see these findings as a contribution not only to our understanding of Relative Clauses, but to our understanding of syntactic organization in general and of the nature of the grammatical practices in which speakers engage in everyday interactions.

scholarly journals Polskie zdania względne z wewnętrznym rzeczownikiem – wstępne rozpoznanie

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (9) ◽  
pp. 26-40
Author(s):  
Jadwiga Linde-Usiekniewicz
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Object Language ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Subjective Valuation ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Internal Head

troduced by a special relator który to, which in sentences bearing such clauses obligatorily agrees with the internal head. Such clauses have been hitherto overlooked in most syntactic descriptions of Polish. The inquiry is based on 291 citations obtained from the National Corpus of Polish, analysed for their semantic and syntactic features. The results show that double-headed relative clauses in Polish are marked as explicitly non-restrictive (as opposed to standard relative clauses). While identical internal and external heads need to be separated by a phrase governed by the external head, there is no such constraint on nonidentical internal heads. These may have not only nominal, but also clausal antecedents. In addition, non-identity of internal and external heads allows an introduction of subjective valuation (in the internal head) and a switch from object language to metalanguage or vice versa between the governing clause and the relative clause.

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