Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory

Published by De Gruyter Mouton

Volume 16 Issue 3

December 2020

Issue of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory

Submit manuscript

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available November 30, 2020

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iii

Download PDF

October 21, 2020

Extravagant “fake” morphemes in Dutch. Morphological productivity, semantic profiles and categorical flexibility

Kristel Van Goethem, Muriel Norde

Page range: 425-458

Abstract

Dutch features several morphemes with “privative” semantics that occur as left-hand members in compounds (e.g., imitatieleer ‘imitation leather’, kunstgras ‘artificial grass’, nepjuwelen ‘fake jewels’). Some of these “fake” morphemes display great categorical flexibility and innovative adjectival uses. Nep , for instance, is synchronically attested as an inflected adjective (e.g., neppe cupcake ‘fake cupcake’). In this paper, we combine an extensive corpus study of eight Dutch “fake” morphemes with statistical methods in distributional semantics and collexeme analysis in order to compare their semantic and morphological properties and to find out which factors are the driving forces behind their exceptional “extravagant” morphological behavior. Our analyses show that debonding and adjectival reanalysis are triggered by an interplay of two factors, i.e., type frequency and semantic coherence, which allow us to range the eight morphemes on a cline from more schematic to more substantive “fake” constructions.

Open Access April 28, 2020

Contingency learning and perfective morpheme productivity in L2 Italian: A study on lexeme–morpheme associations with ΔP

Stefano Rastelli

Page range: 459-486

More Download PDF

Abstract

This study utilized unidirectional association score Δ P to track perfective morpheme productivity in longitudinal spoken L2 Italian data. Research questions concerned whether early L2 perfectives were contingent upon telicity of predicates, whether lexeme–morpheme association changed as proficiency increased, and whether distribution of perfectives in the L1 input affected the patterns of morpheme emergence. Results showed that (i) the productive use of the perfective was contingent upon a few, infrequent telic predicates but also upon some actionally underspecified, very frequent general-purpose ones; (ii) a generalized decrease in association scores over time accompanied the productivity of the perfective morpheme; (iii) distribution of perfectives in L2 data did not reflect distribution in the L1 input. The statistical analysis adopted in this study is replicable to other domains where contingency of stem-affix alternations may provide cues for observing the developing L2 grammar

September 27, 2019

Vocabulary complexity and reading and listening comprehension of various physics genres

Milica Vuković Stamatović

Page range: 487-514

Abstract

This study sheds light on the vocabulary complexity of various physics genres and how it affects reading and listening comprehension of the science of physics. We analysed the vocabulary frequency profile of seven physics genres: research articles, textbooks, lectures, magazines, popular books, TV documentaries and TED talks, to determine the presence of general-purpose, academic and technical vocabulary in them, as well as their vocabulary level and variation. The main research question was whether the vocabulary level of these genres could pose an impediment to typical native and non-native speakers of English in terms of their reading/listening comprehension, and, in general, how accessible these genres are vocabulary-wise. The results suggest that typical native speakers will struggle reading physics research and magazine articles, whereas typical non-native speakers will not read/listen to any of the genres at an optimal level, but will be able to read/listen to four of them at an acceptable level.

July 24, 2019

Pluralized non-count nouns across Englishes: A corpus-linguistic approach to variety types

Gerold Schneider, Marianne Hundt, Daniel Schreier

Page range: 515-546

Abstract

This corpus-based study of pluralized non-count nouns ( informations , advices , etc.) uses collocation-derived measures (determiners vs. bare noun and mass quantifiers) to extract potential candidates of non-count nouns in a bottom-up approach from the British National Corpus (BNC), allowing the detection of grammatical categories from distributional features. We then use this token list to retrieve data on pluralization of non-counts from nine annotated components of the International Corpus of English (ICE) . While the distinction between count and non-count nouns is gradient rather than categorical, it is still possible to distinguish between standard and non-standard pluralization of non-counts. Qualitative analyses of our data show that non-standard pluralization of non-count nouns is regularly attested in second-language varieties, including previously unrecorded types; however, it is also occasionally found in first-language varieties. We discuss implications of our corpus results for common explanations of pluralized non-count nouns, such as substrate influence, language learning effects and historical input. By combining a bottom-up corpus-based approach with fine-grained qualitative analyses we can provide a more nuanced view of pluralization of non-counts across ENL and ESL for the investigation of World Englishes.

Open Access June 7, 2019

Entrenchment inhibition: Constructional change and repetitive behaviour can be in competition with large-scale “recompositional” creativity

Vittorio Tantucci, Matteo Di Cristofaro

Page range: 547-579

More Download PDF

Abstract

This paper addresses creativity as inhibition of repetitive behaviour. We argue that entrenchment and constructional change can be in competition with large-scale creative attempts of recomposition of constructions’ internal constituency. After undergoing chunking, the recurrent usage of a construction may be significantly counterbalanced with new attempts of entrenchment inhibition (viz. inhibition of entrenchment). These are cases where speakers opt for more compositional and less predictable ways to express a similar meaning of a conventionalised form. We focus on the constructionalisation of noun–participle compounds (e.g. snow-covered ) in the Historical Corpus of American English. During the second part of the twentieth century, speakers increasingly inhibit the usage of conventionalised noun phrase–past participle forms in favour of more compositional strategies involving the same internal constituents. This entails that constructional change not only affects the meaning of the chunk that undergoes constructionalisation but also the way speakers creatively rediscover its internal constituency. These results additionally aim to inform research in cognitive architectures and artificial intelligence, where creativity is often merely considered as a problem-solving mechanism rather than a potential process of inhibition of automatised behaviour.

February 13, 2020

Reconceptualizing register in a continuous situational space

Douglas Biber, Jesse Egbert, Daniel Keller

Page range: 581-616

Abstract

Corpus-based methods for the quantitative linguistic description of registers are well established. In contrast, situational analyses of registers have been based on qualitative descriptions of categorical situational characteristics. In the present study, we address this inconsistency by describing the variation among texts and registers in a continuous (quantitative) situational space. We describe “registers” as categorical constructs – culturally recognized categories of texts – but propose that they should be described in continuous terms. Such descriptions allow quantitative comparisons of registers, as well as analysis of the extent to which a register is well-delimited in terms of its situational characteristics. Applying this analytical framework, we also explore a deeper issue: the possibility that some texts are not instantiations of any culturally-recognized register category. Both issues are tackled through analysis of a corpus of web documents. We first identify quantitative situational dimensions of variation, employing the methods of multi-dimensional (MD) analysis. We then describe how the situational characteristics of texts and registers can be analyzed in a continuous MD space. And finally, we propose analysis of situational text types – categories that are statistically well-defined in their situational characteristics – as an approach to describing all texts, including texts that do not belong to a culturally recognized register category.

April 16, 2019

On classification trees and random forests in corpus linguistics: Some words of caution and suggestions for improvement

Stefan Th Gries

Page range: 617-647

Abstract

This paper is a discussion of methodological problems that (can) arise in the analysis of multifactorial data analyzed with tree-based or forest-based classifiers in (corpus) linguistics. I showcase a data set that highlights where such methods can fail at providing optimal results and then discuss solutions to this problem as well as the interpretation of random forests more generally.

About this journal

Objective
Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory (CLLT) is a peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality original corpus-based research focusing on theoretically relevant issues in all core areas of linguistic research, or other recognized topic areas. It provides a forum for researchers from different theoretical backgrounds and different areas of interest that share a commitment to the systematic and exhaustive analysis of naturally occurring language. Contributions from all theoretical frameworks are welcome but they should be addressed at a general audience and thus be explicit about their assumptions and discovery procedures and provide sufficient theoretical background to be accessible to researchers from different frameworks.

Topics

Corpus Linguistics
Quantitative Linguistics
Phonology
Morphology
Semantics
Syntax
Pragmatics

Article formats
Research Articles

> Information on submission process