1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
  4. Volume 22, Issue 3
  5. Article
Volume 22, Issue 3
  • ISSN 1384-6655
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9811
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to ascertain the degree to which lexical diversity, density and creativity in everyday spoken British English have changed over a 20-year period, as a function of age and gender. Usage patterns of four verb-forming suffixes, -, -, - and -, were compared in contemporary speech from the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 Sample (Spoken BNC2014S) with its 20-year old counterpart, the BNC1994’s demographically-sampled component (the Spoken BNC1994DS). Frequency comparisons revealed that verb suffixation is denser in the Spoken BNC2014S than in the Spoken BNC1994DS, with the exception of the - suffix, the use of which has decreased, particularly among female and younger speakers in general. Male speakers and speakers in the 35–59 age range showed the greatest type diversity; there is evidence that this peak is occurring earlier in the more recent corpus. Contrary to expectations, female rather than male speakers produced the largest number of neologisms and rare forms.

© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.04law
2017-11-23
2023-09-26

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.04law
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Androutsopoulos, J., & Georgakopoulou, A.
    (2003) Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi:  10.1075/pbns.110
     https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.110 [Google Scholar]
  2. Argamon, S., Koppel, M., Fine, J., & Shimoni, A. R.
    (2003) Gender, genre, and writing style in formal written texts. Text, 23(3), 321–346. doi:  10.1515/text.2003.014
     https://doi.org/10.1515/text.2003.014 [Google Scholar]
  3. Baayen, R. H.
    (2008) Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using RCambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:  10.1017/CBO9780511801686
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511801686 [Google Scholar]
  4. Baker, P.
    (2010) Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Barbieri, F.
    (2008) Patterns of age-based linguistic variation in American English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 12(1), 58–88. doi:  10.1111/j.1467‑9841.2008.00353.x
     https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2008.00353.x [Google Scholar]
  6. Bauer, L.
    (1983) English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:  10.1017/CBO9781139165846
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139165846 [Google Scholar]
  7. Bauer, L., Lieber, R., & Plag, I.
    (2013) The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:  10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198747062.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198747062.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  8. Biber, D.
    (1995) Dimensions of Register Variation: A Cross-linguistic Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:  10.1017/CBO9780511519871
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519871 [Google Scholar]
  9. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E.
    (1999) The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. BNCweb (CQP-Edition) (Version 4.3)
    BNCweb (CQP-Edition) (Version 4.3) (2013) Retrieved fromhttps://bncweb.lancs.ac.uk/ (last accessedOctober 2016).
  11. British National Corpus (Version 3) (BNC XML Edition)
    British National Corpus (Version 3) (BNC XML Edition) (2007) Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. Retrieved fromwww.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ (last accessedOctober 2016).
  12. Brezina, V., & Meyerhoff, M.
    (2014) Significant or random? A critical review of sociolinguistic generalisations based on large corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 19(1), 1–28. doi:  10.1075/ijcl.19.1.01bre
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.19.1.01bre [Google Scholar]
  13. Butler, J.
    (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York, NY: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Cameron, D.
    (2007) The Myth of Mars and Venus. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Chambers, J. K.
    (2013) Patterns of variation including change. InJ. K. Chambers & N. Schilling (Eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. (2nd ed.) (pp.297–322). Oxford: Blackwell. doi:  10.1002/9781118335598.ch14
     https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118335598.ch14 [Google Scholar]
  16. Cheshire, J.
    (2001) Sex and gender in variationist research. InJ. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill & N. Schilling-Estes (Eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (pp.423–443). Oxford: Blackwell.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Dixon, R. M. W.
    (2014) Making New Words: Morphological Derivation in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:  10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712367.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712367.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  18. Dunning, T.
    (1993) Accurate methods for the statistics of surprise and coincidence. Computational Linguistics, 19(1), 61–74.
     [Google Scholar]
  19. Eckert, P.
    (1997) Age as a sociolinguistic variable. InF. Coulmas (Ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics (pp.151–167). Oxford: Blackwell.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Fischer, J. L.
    (1958) Social influences on the choice of a linguistic variant. Word, 14(1), 47–56. doi:  10.1080/00437956.1958.11659655
     https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1958.11659655 [Google Scholar]
  21. Holmes, J.
    (1997) Women, language and identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 1(2), 195–223. doi:  10.1111/1467‑9481.00012
     https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00012 [Google Scholar]
  22. Jegerski, J., & VanPatten, B.
    (2014) Research Methods in Second Language Psycholinguistics. New York, NY: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Kirkham, S., & Moore, E.
    (2013) Adolescence. InJ. K. Chambers & N. Schilling (Eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (pp.277–296). Oxford: Blackwell. doi:  10.1002/9781118335598.ch13
     https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118335598.ch13 [Google Scholar]
  24. Labov, W.
    (1972) Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Laws, J. V., & Ryder, C.
    (under review) Register variation in spoken British English: The case of verb-forming suffixation.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Love, R., Dembry, C., Hardie, A., Brezina, V., & McEnery, T.
    (this issue) The Spoken BNC2014: Designing and building a spoken corpus of everyday conversations. Special Issue ofInternational Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 22(3). doi:  10.1075/ijcl.22.3.02lov
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.02lov [Google Scholar]
  27. Mansfield, P., & Trudgill, P.
    (1994) A sex-specific linguistic feature in a European dialect. Multilingua, 13(4), 381–6. doi:  10.1515/mult.1994.13.4.381
     https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.1994.13.4.381 [Google Scholar]
  28. Marchand, H.
    (1969) The Categories and Types of Present-day English Word-formation: A Synchronic-diachronic Approach (2nd ed.). Munich: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. McEnery, T., & Hardie, A.
    (2012) Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and PracticeCambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Milroy, J., & Milroy, L.
    (1997) Varieties and variation. InF. Coulmas (Ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics (pp.47–64). Oxford: Blackwell.
     [Google Scholar]
  31. Nordberg, B., & Sundgren, E.
    (1998) On Observing Language Change. A Swedish Case Study. FUMS Rapport. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet.
     [Google Scholar]
  32. Office for National Statistics
    Office for National Statistics (2013) Women in the labour market. Retrieved fromwebarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_328352.pdf (last accessedJanuary 2017).
  33. Oxford English Dictionary (OED online)
    Oxford English Dictionary (OED online)Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved fromwww.oed.com/ (last accessedOctober 2016).
  34. Plag, I.
    (1999) Morphological Productivity: Structural Constraints in English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. doi:  10.1515/9783110802863
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110802863 [Google Scholar]
  35. (2004) Syntactic category information and the semantics of derivational morphological rules. Folia Linguistica, 38(3–4), 193–225.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Queen, R.
    (2013) Gender, sex, sexuality, and sexual identities. InJ. K. Chambers & N. Schilling (Eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. (2nd ed.) (pp.368–387). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. doi:  10.1002/9781118335598.ch17
     https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118335598.ch17 [Google Scholar]
  37. Rayson, P., Leech, G., & Hodges, M.
    (1997) Social differentiation in the use of English vocabulary: Some analyses of the conversational component of the British National Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2(1), 133–152. doi:  10.1075/ijcl.2.1.07ray
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.2.1.07ray [Google Scholar]
  38. Schmid, H-J.
    (2011) English Morphology and Word-formation. An Introduction. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Stein, G.
    (2007) A Dictionary of English Affixes: Their Function and Meaning. Munich: Lincom Europa.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. Tannen, D.
    (1991) You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York, NY: Ballantine.
     [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.04law
Loading
A diachronic corpus-based study into the effects of age and gender on the usage patterns of verb-forming suffixation in spoken British English
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22, 375 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.04law
/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.04law
/content/journals/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.04law
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): age; diachronic analysis; everyday spoken language; gender; verb-forming suffixation

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error