Topic 3
Section outline
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Techniques for collecting data (Mini-projects)
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Types of linguistic data, arranged according to their degree of naturalness/monitoring (Krug, Schlüter & Rosenbach 2013: 6)
(Krug, Manfred, Schlüter, Julia & Rosenbach, Anette (2013) "Introduction: Investigating language variation and change." In: Manfred Krug & Julia Schlüter (eds.) Research Methods in Language Variation and Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1-13.)
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(1) Never walk backward.
(2) Never walk backwards.
Different preferences for backward and backwards in British and American English and changes between the 1960s and 1990s.
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(1) Never walk backward.
(2) Never walk backwards.
Different preferences for backward and backwards in British and American English and changes between the 1960s and 1990s.
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(1) Never walk backward.
(2) Never walk backwards.
Different preferences for backward and backwards in varieties of English world-wide.
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(1) The instructor gave each participant three tasks.
(2) The instructor gave three tasks to each participant.
Retrieving abstract construction types from a parsed corpus.
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(1) I'm going to see the doctor.
(2) I'm gonna see the doctor.
Any changes in the frequency of the construction and in the percentage of contraction between older and younger speakers?
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(1) I want to see the doctor.
(2) I wanna see the doctor.
Any changes in the frequency of the construction and in the percentage of contraction between older and younger speakers?
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(1) I was introduced to a pretty nurse.
(2) I was introduced to a pretty ugly nurse.
Disambiguating different word classes with the help of Part-of-Speech tags; comparing percentages across different text types.
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(1) I was introduced to a pretty nurse.
(2) I was introduced to a pretty ugly nurse.
Disambiguating different word classes with the help of Part-of-Speech tags; comparing percentages across different text types.
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(1) I was introduced to a pretty nurse.
(2) I was introduced to a pretty ugly nurse.
Disambiguating different word classes with the help of Part-of-Speech tags; comparing percentages across different text types.
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(1) The guide sold/offered each tourist three tickets.
(2) The guide sold/offered three tickets to each tourist.
Retrieving abstract construction types from a parsed corpus; comparing the behaviour of different verbs.
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(1) I got married when I was 18.
(2) I should have got/gotten married before I left Mexico.
Development of the get V-ed construction and the competition between got and gotten
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(1) Never walk backward.
(2) Never walk backwards.
Different preferences for backward and backwards in varieties of English world-wide.
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Keywords are defined as words that occur significantly more often in one text than they do in another.
With modern corpus software, it has become fairly easy to compile keyword lists. For a keyword analysis with AntConc, we compare a specialized corpus against a reference corpus. The resulting keyword list could give us, for example, a glimpse of the thematic focus of the text.In this task you will:
- Create a keyword list of a corpus with AntConc
- Analyse the resulting list
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The concordance tool is probably the most basic and the most powerful function in corpus programs.It can be used for a variety of different corpus techniques - e.g. to explore in which context a verb is primarily used.In this task you will:
- Familiarize yourself with the concept of part-of-speech tags and their use in corpus queries
- Use the concordance function in AntConc to explore the context of the verb "to love" in two different corpora
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Keywords are defined as words that occur significantly more often in one text than they do in another.
With modern corpus software, it has become fairly easy to compile keyword lists. Comparing two keyword lists can yield all sorts of interesting results.
In this task you will:
- Compare two keyword lists against each other
- Come up with a meaningful system for categorizing the entries
- Analyse both keyword lists
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(1) However, I believe this is but a drop in the ocean. (BNC GXG 4982)
(2) The proceeds from such sales are a drop in the bucket . (COCA 4012269)
Do the corpora hint at one of the idioms being distinctly British or American?
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(1) There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing.
(2) Another one makes himself poor, but has great riches.
The transition from the 3rd pers. sg. inflection -th to -s in two different verbs.
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(1) He was a young man of one and twenty years of age.
(2) He was a young man of twenty and one years of age.
(3) He was a young man of twenty-one years of age.
The transition from unit-and-ten to ten-before-unit in the history of English.
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Investigate the possibilities for research offered by the database
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... meseemeth I have done you good service.
She beseemeth afar the fairest lady that ever I looked upon.
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abdominizer, abhesive, abortuary, acerola, acetylator, achy-breakyOrigins and subject areas of neologisms in English
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The English language has a notoriously big lexicon.
Loans from Latin: plant, wine, kitchen, cheese, dish, street, mile, pound, inch, mill, cheap
Loans from French: cattle, pocket, catch, launch, pinch, marriage, demand, judge, parish, furious
Which donor languages have contributed loanwords and at what times? -
bemean, big, bihalven, blacken, clapNew words or new senses of established words first attested in King Horn, Havelok, Guy of Warwick and Ywain and Gawain
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Is it
Horn fond sittinde Arnoldin ...
or
Horn fond sittinge Arnoldin ... ? -
The dialectal distribution of -and(e), -ind(e), -end(e) etc. vs. -ing(e), -yng(e) etc. in Middle English
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The allophones of the phoneme /l/:
- clear [l]: prevocalic (e.g. look, list, relieve)
- dark [ɫ]: final and all other positions (e.g. still, windmill, mold, wild)
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While in rhotic accents /r/ is pronounced in every position, the pronunciation of /r/ in non-rhotic accents (e.g. RP) is restricted to a prevocalic context (+ linking-r & intrusive-r).
(1) car: /kɑː/ (non-rhotic) vs. /kɑːr/ (rhotic)
(2) port: /pɔːt/ (non-rhotic) vs. /pɔː(ə)rt/ (rhotic)
but
(3) tree: /triː/ (rhotic & non-rhotic)
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The pronunciation of /θ/ poses a challenge for many EFL and ESL speakers alike.
Analyse the pronunciation of <th> in an excerpt of spoken Maltese English.
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You would most likely order chips in Great Britain and fries in America.
But what would you order in a former British colony in the era of globalisation? Would you spell it realise or realize? Would you go to the cinema or go to the movies?
Design a short questionnaire to evaluate British or American influence on the participant's vocabulary. -
If designed properly, questionnaires can be a powerful tool to obtain very specific information for your studies."If you want to know how good people are at something, then asking them to tell you how good they are may not be as effective as testing them. But, if you want to know what they think or believe about something, or what they do in situations that you cannot observe, asking them may be the obvious approach" (Wray & Bloomer 2006: 152).Design a short questionnaire on a linguistic phenomenon of your choice and illustrate the pros and cons of different question types (e.g. yes/no questions vs. open questions).
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"The word is on the tip of my tongue, but it won’t come to me …"
Induce this phenomenon in speakers and analyse it to learn about how we retrieve words from the mental lexicon.
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Are the following real words or not?juld, sprenk, spluce, plize, merket, crox, smarg
What determines participants’ decision speed?
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Are the following real words or not?dluet, prink, sultk, plize, jbutr, crowl, msarg
What determines participants’ decision speed?
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The word like in sentences like the following induces a local ambiguity:(1) James knew that kids like Hannah because she enjoys playing with other children.(2) James knew that kids like Hannah enjoyed playing with other children.Do readers show easier comprehension when like is used in its more frequent sense?
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When listening for a target word in a sentence under distracting conditions, does the mother tongue or the target language act as a stronger distractor?