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- Volume 25, Issue 1, 2020
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics - Volume 25, Issue 1, 2020
Volume 25, Issue 1, 2020
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Noun phrase complexity in young Spanish EFL learners’ writing
Author(s): María Belén Díez-Bedmar and Pascual Pérez-Paredespp.: 4–35 (32)More LessAbstractThe research reported in this article examines Noun Phrase (NP) syntactic complexity in the writing of Spanish EFL secondary school learners in Grades 7, 8, 11 and 12 in the International Corpus of Crosslinguistic Interlanguage. Two methods were combined: a manual parsing of NPs and an automatic analysis of NP indices using the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Syntactic Sophistication and Complexity (TAASSC). Our results revealed that it is in premodifying slots that syntactic complexity in NPs develops. We argue that two measures, (i) nouns and modifiers (a syntactic complexity index) and (ii) determiner + multiple premodification + head (a NP type obtained as a result of a corpus-driven analysis), can be used as indices of syntactic complexity in young Spanish EFL learner language development. Besides offering a learner-language-driven taxonomy of NP syntactic complexity, the paper underscores the strength of using combined methods in SLA research.
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How much vocabulary is needed touse a concordance?
Author(s): Oliver James Ballance and Averil Coxheadpp.: 36–61 (26)More LessAbstractVocabulary load is a predictor of comprehension and a common concern in relation to learner use of concordances; however, vocabulary load figures for whole texts have limited relevance to learner use of concordances. This paper explores the average vocabulary load of the citations (or lines) in a concordance, reflecting how learners use concordances as reading or reference resources. Non-parametric tests are used to compare the vocabulary loads of citations from three authentic written corpora and a corpus of graded readers. The results indicate that citations from authentic corpora have an average vocabulary load of 4,000–5,000 word families, there are reliable differences in vocabulary load between citations from different corpora, and the magnitude of difference between citations from authentic corpora can be equivalent to the magnitude of difference between authentic corpora and graded reader corpora. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results in relation to language learner use of concordances.
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Electronic supplement analysis of multiple texts
Author(s): Laura Louise Patersonpp.: 62–88 (27)More LessAbstractThis paper adapts O’Halloran’s (2010) electronic supplement analysis (ESA) to investigate debates about UK poverty in online newspaper articles and reader responses to those articles. While O’Halloran’s method was originally conceived to facilitate close reading, this paper modifies ESA for corpus-based discourse analysis by scaling it up to include multiple texts. I analyse (key-)keywords and concordances to compare seven articles from the Mail Online (2010–2015) with their 2354 reader responses generated using the newspapers’ Below the Line (BTL) comments feature. The analysis provides a snapshot of the discourses BTL commenters draw upon when writing about UK poverty. Unemployment, benefits receipt, and single parenthood were repeatedly referred to in the newspaper articles and their comments, but BTL commenters also drew on personal narratives and (fictional) anecdotes to index notions of flawed consumerism, scroungers, and the deserving and undeserving poor.
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Lexical dispersion and corpus design
Author(s): Jesse Egbert, Brent Burch and Douglas Biberpp.: 89–115 (27)More LessAbstractLexical dispersion is typically measured across arbitrary corpus parts of equal size. In this study, we apply DA – a new dispersion index designed for unequal-sized corpus parts – to the British National Corpus (BNC) in a series of cases studies to show that the dispersion of a word is strongly influenced by the corpus units or parts it is measured across. Our results show that dispersion should be measured and interpreted based on corpus units that are linguistically meaningful for a particular research goal. We conclude with recommendations to help researchers select meaningful corpus units for measuring and interpreting lexical dispersion.
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Coussé, E., Andersson, P., & Olofsson, J. (Eds.) 2018. Grammaticalization Meets Construction Grammar
Author(s): Elizabeth Closs Traugottpp.: 116–123 (8)More LessThis article reviews Grammaticalization Meets Construction Grammar
Volumes & issues
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Volume 29 (2024)
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Volume 28 (2023)
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Volume 27 (2022)
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Volume 26 (2021)
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Volume 25 (2020)
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Volume 24 (2019)
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Volume 23 (2018)
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Volume 22 (2017)
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Volume 21 (2016)
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Volume 20 (2015)
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Volume 19 (2014)
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Volume 18 (2013)
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Volume 17 (2012)
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Volume 16 (2011)
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Volume 15 (2010)
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Volume 14 (2009)
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Volume 13 (2008)
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Volume 12 (2007)
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Volume 11 (2006)
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Volume 10 (2005)
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Volume 9 (2004)
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Volume 8 (2003)
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Volume 7 (2002)
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Volume 6 (2001)
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Volume 5 (2000)
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Volume 4 (1999)
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Volume 3 (1998)
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Volume 2 (1997)
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Volume 1 (1996)
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