International Journal of Corpus Linguistics - Volume 28, Issue 2, 2023

Abstract

This study examines usage changes of English-based loanwords and Korean replacement words promoted by the National Institute of Korean Language in a six-year span, using two corpora. It focuses on 18 Korean and anglicized word pairs appearing on the National Institute of Korean Language’s website that purportedly showcase the Institute’s successful efforts to curtail the usage of English words by promoting Korean replacement words. The results indicate that promoting Korean does not necessarily decrease the usage of English, and that the usage of English-based words seems to increase in conjunction with the Korean words. Several Korean words promoted by the National Institute of Korean Language have extremely low frequencies, and some loanwords are being used with various meanings. Commentaries are provided to explain various patterns of observed usage change.

Abstract

The aims of this paper are to detect the most problematic issues related to dialogue act annotation in speech corpora and to define basic categories of dialogue acts. I critically examine and test generic schemes that represent different lines of dialogue act annotation: AMI, DART, ISO 24617–2 and SWBD-DAMSL. It is found that the most problematic issues regarding dialogue act annotation are related to the distinction between the semantic and pragmatic meanings of utterances, the annotation of metadiscourse, and the adequacy and informativeness of the tagset. The identified basic dialogue act categories are information providing, information seeking, actions, social acts and metadiscourse. The findings help improve dialogue act annotation.

Abstract

The theories and methods in corpus linguistics (CL) have had an impact on numerous areas in applied linguistics. However, the interface between CL and multimodal speech-gesture studies remains underexplored. One fundamental question is whether it is possible, and even appropriate, to apply the theories and paradigms established based on textual data to multimodal data. To explore this, we examine how CL can assist investigating lexico-grammatical patterns of speech co-occurring with a recurrent gesture (i.e. the circular gesture). Sinclair’s (1996) unit of meaning model is used to describe the co-gestural speech patterns. The study draws on a subset of the Nottingham Multimodal Corpus, in which 570 instances of circular gestures and their co-occurring speech are identified and analysed. We argue that Sinclair’s unit of meaning model can be extended to include speech-gesture patterns, and that those descriptions enable a more nuanced understanding of meaning in context.

Abstract

This paper explores variation in lexico-grammatical register features across text lengths in a large-scale sample of Reddit comments. Very short texts are known to be problematic for many statistical methods, so understanding their nature is important for the corpus-linguistic study of social media, where most contributions are short. I show that the frequencies of linguistic features change with comment length, even between longer comments, although longer texts are often considered similar in statistical terms. Moreover, I classify the variation found between short comments of different lengths into two main patterns, although other patterns can also be found, and there is variation even within these patterns. Furthermore, I interpret the observed differences in terms of register variation. For example, shorter comments appear to be more casual and less edited in terms of their feature makeup, whereas narrative and informational registers seem to favor longer comments.

Abstract

Automated tools for syntactic complexity measurement are increasingly used for analyzing various kinds of second language corpora, even though these tools were originally developed and tested for texts produced by advanced learners. This study investigates the reliability of automated complexity measurement for beginner and lower-intermediate L2 English data by comparing manual and automated analyses of a corpus of 80 texts written by Dutch-speaking learners. Our quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that the reliability of automated complexity measurement is substantially affected by learner errors, parser errors, and Tregex pattern undergeneration. We also demonstrate the importance of aligning the definitions of analytical units between the computational tool and human annotators. In order to enhance the reliability of automated analyses, it is recommended that certain modifications are made to the system, and non-advanced L2 English data are preprocessed prior to automated analyses.

Abstract

Overlapping bundles, that is, shorter lexical bundles that are totally or partially embedded in longer expressions, may prove problematic in the structural and functional classification of bundles. For example, many studies in the literature focus only on four-word lexical bundles and conduct extensive structural and functional analysis of those bundles. However, most scholars have not considered the fact that some 4-word expressions may be embedded in longer expressions. These longer expressions may not only have a different structure but may also carry out a different functional role. The present study introduces the Lexical Bundle Identification and Analysis Program (LBiaP), a software tool designed to facilitate lexical bundle research with independent observations of each lexical bundle identified. First, we describe complete overlapping, complete subsumption, and interlocking bundles in detail. We then explain how LBiaP deals with these types of bundles when detected.

This article reviews Fundamental Principles of Corpus Linguistics

This article reviews Innovations and Challenges in Grammar