scholarly journals Different Approaches to Enantiosemy in English

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1 (21)) ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Hasmik Kajberuny ◽  
Tamara Hakobyan
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

Our interest in this article is to investigate different approaches to enantiosemy in English. In the coverage of a variety of viewpoints introduced in the present article, reference is made to well-established traditional and most recent perspectives and approaches provided by both European and Russian scholars with the view of elucidating different principles of classification. The data for the analysis are extracted from different dictionaries and British National Corpus in order to find distinct motivated meanings between opposite senses in the semantic structure of enantiosemic words. The analysis of the data enables us to reveal some regularities of antonymic relations which make it possible to regard them as special cases of polysemy in English. For this reason we consider it crucial to disclose integral and differentiating semes, as well as different potential semes, which give rise to different associations.

scholarly journals Semantic Modulation of the English Verbs of Leaving in Terms of the Space of Sets (On the Example of the Verbs Leave, Depart)

2020 ◽  
pp. 323-330
Author(s):  
A.S. Dautova
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Semantic Group ◽  
Surrounding World ◽  
Research Hypothesis ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Linguistic Reality

The article presents the experience of studying the semantic structure of the English verbs with the meaning of leaving. The author focuses on the problem of modulating the meaning of the English verbs “leave”, “depart” and their transition into another lexical and semantic group. The urgency of the study lies in addressing the category of space as one of the basic linguistic forms of conceptualization and interpretation of extra-linguistic reality, which man operates in the process of cognition, interpretation of the surrounding world. The problem of research is solved by describing the modulation of meaning in terms of the concept of space of sets, as one of the factors contributing to the change of meaning. The verification of the research hypothesis is based on the analysis of lexicographical data sources of the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Modern American English.

scholarly journals On Semantic Patterns of “Kill–Verbs” in Modern English

2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2 (11)) ◽  
pp. 51-61
Author(s):  
Robert Khachatryan
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
The Way ◽  
Causative Verbs

The article aims to reveal the semantic structures of the causative verbs in modern English, particularly with reference to the characteristics of the verbs meaning “to kill” and the way of expressing the main meaning of “to cause to die”. More precisely, the present article highlights the semantic features of these verbs that condition their causative nature. The article focuses on the investigation of only those verbs meaning “to cause to die” that are more frequent in speech, particularly the verbs to kill, to murder, to assassinate, to execute and to massacre. The linguistic data are borrowed from the British National Corpus.

I was sat there talking all night: a corpus-based study on factors governing intra-dialectal variation in British English

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
ULRIKE STANGE
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Relative Frequency ◽  
Standard Form ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
Dialectal Variation ◽  
British English ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
And Gender ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Empirical Analyses

When it comes to intra-dialectal variation, the factors governing the choice between functionally equivalent variants still require an exhaustive analysis. The construction be sat/be stood with progressive meaning alternates with the standard form be sitting/be standing in a number of British English dialects. The present article investigates to what extent the Complexity Principle (see Rohdenburg 1996) and horror aequi (see Rohdenburg 2003) influence the choice between so-called pseudo-passive and progressive constructions. Empirical analyses of spoken data in the British National Corpus reveal that this variation phenomenon is common in dialects of Northern and Southwest England, and to a lesser degree in the Midlands and in London. Moreover, we find considerable differences in the distribution of these pseudo-passives regarding their relative frequency and the number of dialects that make use of them. Drawing on a total of 106 occurrences for the construction be stood vs be standing and 366 for be sat vs be sitting, the article evaluates how far the principles above can be considered as statistically significant determinants of intra-dialectal variation. To this end, it will be essential to test for other factors potentially influencing the choice of dialectal variants, such as age and gender.

“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.

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