International Journal of Corpus Linguistics - Volume 26, Issue 3, 2021

Abstract

Keyness is a commonly used method in corpus linguistics and is assumed to identify key items that are characteristic of 1 corpus when compared to another. This paper puts this assumption to the test by comparing case study corpora in the fields of genetic, immunological and psychiatric biomedical association studies, using what we refer to as a ‘K-FLUX’ analysis to produce a set of key items. Experts from within these fields are asked to evaluate the extent to which identified key items are characteristic of their discipline. The paper concludes that less than 50% of the items identified by the method are rated as highly characteristic by experts and that this ranges between types of association study. Further, there is difficulty in reaching a consensus over what is deemed to be ‘characteristic’, thus posing a challenge to the ultimate aim of the keyness method. The paper demonstrates the value of supporting corpus linguistic studies with expert assessments to evaluate whether (and which) items can be said to be indicative of a particular field.

Abstract

This article employs a 4-million-word diachronic corpus to examine how the expression of possibility has evolved in Luganda since the 1890s to the present, by focusing on the language’s three main potential markers -yînz-, -sóból- and -andi-, and their historical interaction. It is shown that while the auxiliary -yînz- originally covered the whole modal subdomain of possibility, the auxiliary -sóból- has steadily taken over the more objective categories of dynamic possibility. Currently, -yînz- first and foremost conveys deontic and epistemic possibility. It still prevails in these more subjective modal categories even though the prefix -andi-, a conditional marker in origin, has started to express epistemic possibility since the 1940s, and -sóból- deontic possibility since the 1970s. More generally, this article demonstrates the potential of corpus linguistics for the study of diachronic semantics beyond language comparison. This is an important achievement in Bantu linguistics, where written language data tend to be young.

Abstract

This paper examines five bilingual pragmatic markers: oya, ke, ni, walahi, and ba, loaned from indigenous Nigerian languages into Nigerian English, with a view to investigating their sources, meanings, frequencies, spelling stability, positions, collocational patterns and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data for the study were obtained from the International Corpus of English-Nigeria and the Nigerian component of the Global Web-based English corpus. These were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, using the theory of pragmatic borrowing. The results show that oya, ke, and ni are borrowed from Yoruba, walahi is loaned from Arabic through Hausa and Yoruba while ba is borrowed from Hausa. Oya serves as an attention marker, ke and ni function as emphasis markers, walahi serves as an emphatic manner of speaking marker while ba functions as an attention marker and agreement-seeking marker. The study highlights the influence of indigenous Nigerian languages on the discourse-pragmatic features of Nigerian English.

Abstract

This paper examines the productivity of the subject complement slot in a set of French and Dutch (semi-)copular micro-constructions. The presumed counterpart of productivity, conventionalization in the form of high token frequency, will also be taken into account in the analysis of the productivity complex. On the one hand, it will be shown that prototypical copulas generally have a higher productivity than semi-copulas, although there are some semi-copulas that can rival the productivity of prototypical copulas. On the other hand, it will be demonstrated that high token frequency is in general detrimental to productivity, on the level of the entire subject complement slot and on the level of the different semantic classes. However, the shape of the frequency distribution also seems to play a role: multiple highly frequent types are in my data more detrimental to productivity than one extremely frequent type, although the semantic connectedness of the types in the distribution might also be an explanatory factor.

This article reviews Particle Placement in English L1 and L2 Academic Writing: A Triangulated Learner-Corpus and Experimental Study of Weight Effects

This article reviews Corpus, Discourse and Mental Health