scholarly journals A Cognitive Study on the Semantic Extensions of GOLD in English

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. p44
Author(s):  
Gao Jinlin
Keyword(s):  
Human Occupation ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Color Value ◽  
Cognitive Study ◽  
National Corpus

Based on the British National Corpus (BNC), this study attempts to analyze the contexts with gold and gold-relevant words. The corpus-based analysis of the contexts shows that the main meaning focuses of GOLD are: Color; Value; Rarity and Stability. The target scopes of GOLD include: Human, Animal, Object, Star, Plant, Place, Sport, Economy, Occupation, Music, Time, Chance, Rules and Ideas. The relationships between the source focuses and the target scopes fall into two levels: types and tendency. The types of relationships are metonymy, metaphor. The tendency shows the application tendency of the source focuses onto the targets. Color tends to describe Stars, Places, Objects, Plants, Animals and Human. Rarity and Value tend to describe Places, Plants, Sports, Economy, Time, Idea and Rules. Stability tends to describe Human, Occupation, Economy and Rules.

scholarly journals Gloomy Images of Yellow and Żółty in a Corpus-Based Cognitive Study

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-421
Author(s):  
Ewa Gieroń-Czepczor
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Reference Points ◽  
Basic Colour ◽  
General Network ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Cognitive Study ◽  
Colour Terms ◽  
Scientific Publishers ◽  
National Corpus

Abstract The paper reports on a comparative corpus-based semantic analysis of one colour term as it is used in two languages: English yellow and Polish żółty. The investigation of central and peripheral meanings, based on analyses of corpus concordances draws upon the methodology and constructs of cognitive linguistics, such as prototype-based categories, domains, conceptual metonymy and metaphor. The first objective of this parallel study is to determine the prototypical reference points for yellow and żółty, followed by descriptions of those motivations and mechanisms of meaning extensions which lead to ‘figurative’ usages. The results are tentatively suggested in the form of a general network of related meanings, the entrenchments of which are established on the basis of frequencies attested in samples of 1,500 citations. The outcomes confirm a conceptual proximity reflected in the semantics of these colour terms, which seems to be - perhaps surprisingly - incongruous with the popular association of yellow/żółty with the sun. As the evidence provided by the British National Corpus and the Polish Scientific Publishers' corpus (PWN) reveals, the central and peripheral readings are inspired by the imagery of autumnal and physiological changes, while the semantics of both yellow and żółty reflect the significant influence of cultural factors, unparalleled in the polysemies of the other five basic colour terms.

“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.

scholarly journals LOVE in English and Polish

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Brożyna Reczko
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Method ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Abstract Concept ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

LOVE in English and PolishThe paper presents a sample contrastive analysis of the linguistic picture of love in English and Polish. The material used in the survey is drawn from lexicographic data, including the British National Corpus and Narodowy Korpus Języka Polskiego [National Corpus of Polish]. The paper focuses on the similarities and differences in conceptualizing the abstract concept of love in the English and Polish languages. An analytical method, developed by Bartmiński and associates, serves as the theoretical basis for the reconstruction of the linguistic picture of the world. MIŁOŚĆ w języku angielskim i polskimNiniejszy artykuł to próba kontrastywnego porównania językowego obrazu świata MIŁOŚCI w języku angielskim i polskim. Materiał badawczy pochodzi głównie ze źródeł leksykograficznych: słowników oraz korpusów (Narodowego Korpusu Języka Polskiego oraz z korpusu języka angielskiego British National Corpus). Celem badania było poszukiwanie podobieństw i różnic w konceptualizacji MIŁOŚCI w tych dwóch językach. Metoda badawcza została zaczerpnięta z prac J. Bartmińskiego i dotyczy rekonstrukcji językowego obrazu świata różnych pojęć.

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