International Journal of Corpus Linguistics - Volume 24, Issue 4, 2019

Abstract

This article introduces a methodology for the diachronic analysis of large historical corpora, Usage Fluctuation Analysis (UFA). UFA looks at the fluctuation of the usage of a word as observed through collocation. It presupposes neither a commitment to a specific semantic theory, nor that the results will focus solely on semantics. We focus, rather, upon a word’s usage. UFA considers large amounts of evidence about usage, through time, as made available by historical corpora, displaying fluctuation in word usage in the form of a graph. The paper provides guidelines for the interpretation of UFA graphs and provides three short case studies applying the technique to (i) the analysis of the word its and (ii) two words related to social actors, whore and harlot. These case studies relate UFA to prior, labour intensive, corpus and historical analyses. They also highlight the novel observations that the technique affords.

Abstract

Situated at the interface of several sub-disciplines (corpus linguistics, World Englishes, variationist sociolinguistics), this study investigates patterns of adjectival amplification (very good, so glad, pretty cool) in the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE). It highlights regional distributions/preferences of amplifier-adjective 2-grams and the idiosyncratic status of certain bigrams according to their frequency status. Globally, clear regional preferences in amplification patterns as well as possible trends concerning change are identified. Regionally, L1 varieties contrast starkly with some regions (Africa, Indian subcontinent) but – maybe unexpectedly – not with others (Southeast Asia). The results offer insights into current trajectories of change concerning the investigated amplifiers in certain regions and 2-grams: North American varieties are leading a trend away from very towards so and possibly pretty in the future.

Abstract

This paper introduces an experimental paradigm based on probabilistic evidence of the interaction between construction decisions in a parsed corpus. The approach is demonstrated using ICE-GB, a one million-word corpus of English. It finds an interaction between attributive adjective phrases in noun phrases with a noun head, such that the probability of adding adjective phrases falls successively. The same pattern is much weaker in adverbs preceding a verb phrase, implying this decline is not a universal phenomenon. Noun phrase postmodifying clauses exhibit a similar initial fall in the probability of successive clauses modifying the same NP head, and embedding clauses modifying new NP heads. Successive postmodification shows a secondary phenomenon of an increase in additive probability in longer sequences, apparently due to ‘templating’ effects. The author argues that these results can only be explained as cognitive and communicative natural phenomena acting on and within recursive grammar rules.

Abstract

Phonological analysis increasingly involves the quantification of various lexical and/or usage statistics, such as phonotactic probabilities, the functional loads of various phonemic contrasts, or neighbourhood densities. This paper presents Phonological CorpusTools, a free, open-source software for conducting such phonological analyses on transcribed corpora. The motivations for creating the software are given, along with an overview of the structure of the program, its analysis algorithms, and its applications within phonology.

This article reviews American and British English: Divided by a Common Language?

This article reviews The Role of Corpus Linguistics in the Ethnography of a Closed Community: Survival Communication

This article reviews Representations of Poverty and Place: Using Geographical Text Analysis to Understand Discourse