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Rosamund Mood 2010 What can a corpus tell us about lexis? Slide 2 1.)Lexis and the lexicon - The general lexicon - Word formation 2.) Phraseology and phrases - Collocation and patterning - Fixed expressions and idioms 3.) Meaning - Context and meaning - Polysemy - Metaphor, connotation and ideology 4.) Sets and synonyms - Lexical sets - Synonyms - Antonyms and opposites 5.) Lexis in spoken language - Phraseology - Meaning and usage Slide 3 Lexis and the lexicon - The general lexicon - Word formation Slide 4 -Lexis and the lexicon Lexis is the totality of vocabulary items in a language, including all forms having lexical meaning or grammatical function (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/). Lexis can be examined simply through exploring individual lexical items and their behaviour, or by using corpus data to search the lexicon as a whole or to test lexical theory. Slide 5 -The general lexicon What do corpora tell us about the English lexicon? - This information can be gotten from a large reference corpus, since smaller and specialist corpora are likely to show skewings, with too few examples of rarer words. - All corpora do is reveal which words are used in their constituent text and how frequent they are. - In Bank of English corpus, grammatical words appear in high frequency. For example; top ten lemmas are the, be, of, and, a, in, to (prep.), have, to (inf.) and it. Top 100 shows the nouns lemmas as lexical words. Slide 6 There are examples of general words many associated with semi- grammatical functions; deictic uses of year(s), causative and phrasal uses of make. rule rather than the exception. Last year 44 per cent of secretaries placed by a mere ight of fancy just a few years ago, but not any more. government collapsed earlier this year. As an aside, the White House turn negative. Over the past ve years Central London has seen the UKs Hadjout. Beside her slept her two-year-old daughter, Belle, the childs athletics. Few athletes, if any, have made a greater contribution to the details of all staff which will be made available to a range of companies make ILT membership worthless, and making entry so hard and time-consuming than curiosity. Her husbands motives made no difference to the legal act which who are able to participate in trials make up only 5 per cent of the total. Slide 7 This kind of data is replicated in other reference corpora, though exact rank orderings of words and rates of occurrence vary according to corpus composition and lemmatisation policies. The e ect of composition is evident when we consider distribution: even high frequency words may have quite di erent frequencies in di erent types of text. Slide 8 Sinclair defines lemma as: A lemma is what we normally mean by a word. Many words have several actual word forms the verb to give has the forms give, gives, given, gave, giving and to give. Lemmatised frequencies are useful, but equally important are the relative frequencies of individual inections and what these suggest about usage. For instance; in Bank of English, the word fact is eight times as frequent as facts, though corpus data quickly shows why fact is so common: cannot be made to grow elsewhere; in fact Devonshire gardens, full as they are probably fewer would even care. The fact is, we meet so many new people all any drug. The judge said: The mere fact that a customer picks up a bottle of a hiding. There was no denying the fact that players of the calibre of Brian and the insecurities, that are, in fact, the complex characteristics of Slide 9 -Word formation General corpora also provide information about derivation and compounding, helping establish which potential words are actually institutionalised. For example; principal derivatives from the high frequency root colour include colourful, colourless, discolour, colourant, etc. Similarly with words formed with specic morphemes, for example the prex hyper-: among the most frequent in BoE are hypertension, hyperactive, hyperination, hypermarket, hypertext, hyperventilate, hypersensitive. Slide 10 Rare or hapax items often reveal more about creative processes of word formation, with hyphenated forms especially interesting: : thus marginal items such as hyper-accurate, hyper-addictive, hyper- animated, hyper-assertive, hyper-babbling, hyper-bluesmay suggest patterns or motivations for coinage. For compounding, corpora show which formations recur and have specic meanings: watercolour, colourway, colour-blind, colour-fast, colour-washed, colour-coded, hair colour, adjectivals full-colour, two/four-colour (of printing). Slide 11 Phraseology and phrases - Collocation and patterning - Fixed expressions and idioms Slide 12 Phraseology and phrases It is much more interesting to look at words in their corpus contexts than in isolation. The interdependence of words becomes most obvious, showing how the phraseological patternings of words are critically important in relation to meaning as well as usage. A consistent nding in corpus studies has been the extent to which words occur as parts of phraseologies, whether collocational, structural, or both. Slide 13 -Collocation and patterning According to Firth, the term collocation denotes the idea that important to aspect of the meaning of a word are not contained within the word itself. Being least interesting in the case of items with specic meanings, for example a natural-kind entity like aphid: be found on the roots. Lettuce root aphid can overwinter on lettuce roots, by spraying under the leaves with the aphid-specic Rapid insecticide. are produced by this insect. This aphid pest attacks many plants in the livefood one can supply, since aphids, caterpillars and the like will The larvae of this tiny insect eats aphids, thus reducing the number that can insects like red spider, thrips and aphids. At Brisbane Botanic Gardens, Mt Slide 14 Collocational and syntagmatic patterns are more noticeable. For example, the concrete noun refuge show: mythologised home and family as a refuge from a threatening world of change referred to the YMCA library as a refuge for many half-homeless wanderers Our consciences had been our last refuge. Their sanctity was destroyed. relief prior to reaching a place of refuge. In many cases religious persecution for him to leave Boston to seek refuge in England, Anne and he were forced after more Cubans had taken refuge in the Spanish Embassy during the Slide 15 - Fixed expressions and idioms Recurrent collocates, especially when syntagmatically xed, represent some kind of multi-word lexical item. today, Woods said. This golf course is not easy. Birdies are hard to swamped by that silly role. And of course often she had to play it while I of between 80 and 85%. That does, of course, leave a fairly sizeable margin of in some future century? And of course, if we wish to explore our Stef Graf is still on course to retain her title at the womens xed and invariant during the course of therapy. I cannot even predict Slide 16 There is a data for the fixed expressions such for example which is taken from BNC: HIV infection has developed a sore mouth Cancers may grow. For example, there is a skin cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma. If Deed that the covenant will cease if certain conditions occur for example, if you become unemployed or your income falls below a certain obtain higher rate tax relief on his payment. Say, for example, you pay 750 to ACET under Gift Aid. The net rate on the gross amount of the gift. In the above example the gross amount of the gift was 1,000, so the donor give. (Figures correct as at Feb. 1991). An example Let's say that your estate is worth 140,000, net of liabilities a service at all. The work they do is an inspiring example of what loving community care is all about. Governmental organisations support Slide 17 Meaning - Context and meaning - Polysemy - Metaphor, connotation and ideology Slide 18 - Context and meaning Corpus concordances make us aware of how far the meanings of words are derived from context. This interdependence of meaning and context is apparent in the case of semantically depleted words. so that I know that Ive the time to take erm antibiotics and i+ erm not wait It would seem that Nine is taking its rival very seriously indeed. in our work, what will it mean that I take off certain Jewish holy days but send 2300 more men to the Balkans to take part in a future peacekeeping force. mcilroy said: David practises taking penalty kicks for half-an-hour the early 1960s an economic miracle took place in West Germany under the would foment a revolution. Well, it took us a long time, but we nally Slide 19 There is an example for the word look searched on BNC: in hospital unless there is someone at home who can help and look after them. ACET volunteers work as part of a team and for ACET to be asked to work with such people as they look for ways to develop an effective strategy. International Adviser Professor subject; it communicates nothing at all unless someone is there to look at it. In other words, there are no aesthetic objects Romeo is a good choice, and there are many speeches to look over and consider, but think also about the not so familiar Slide 20 - Polysemy Another aspect of word meaning to explore is polysemy: how many di erent senses or uses words have, and how these are distinguished in context. Collocates discriminate by indicating topic and semantic eld, with di erent senses often associated with di erent phraseological patterns and structures. Slide 21 The word see has multiple senses, with a primary distinction between vision and comprehension. In context, these are distinguished through the nature of what is seen physical objects (bodies, trees, a horse, text) or entertainment, and ideas (contrast, ones status, situations): the rest of the family. Yes. I see. And where did you settle in Britain had lunch at Grill & C. then went to see Billy Liar with Albert Finney being 12 The contrast can be clearly seen in the worlds of employers and class gauging local opinion. I dont see it as a national forum, he says. because it is now clear for all to see that he leads two Conservative She glanced out of the window and saw long, thin trees standing in lines supernatural powers such as seeing through solid objects by Slide 22 The adjective: hard have many meanings, but here there are four various meanings. 1.)A05 1325 now to command sympathy, even when the reasons for it are hard to understand. Not everyone who reads the book will be able 2.)A05 1325 It is a self which is proving, for philosophers, hard to prove. But it is a self which readers of the 3.)A05 1326 self which readers of the book can only rarely have found it hard to experience. The novelist referred to himself once as amorphous Roth 4.) KDV 2539 I show you mine will me show me yours? rub off hard skin. No! Kyle! Not Take brilliant but Did you 5.) A08 839 for the best, I said, when I stopped on the hard shoulder that day. I didnt dump them straight away 6.) KP4 2561 Do you find that when you're sitting down on a hard floor and you stand up yeah and your arse hurts for about Slide 23 7.)A0F 3356 it is the people with real talent who generally have a hard time. Why is that? partly common 8.)KBK 4285 [unclear] yes, Geraldine certainly implied that it had been a jolly hard time. Im sure it would be, [unclear] if the 9.)HJD 691 the pair who had baited him and given him such a hard time before Rockies intervention had reserved him, along with his 10.)A0U 538 arses alternately pitying yourself yes and the so-called workers, its my hard work, my money thats been keeping this country 11.)A0V 1074 Joanne doesnt come from a wealthy background and yet, by hard work and determination and not a little goodwill. 12.)KCK 1292 Georgies are hard workers. I mean they are noted for their hard work and it is, it is horrible because they have always Slide 24 -Metaphor, connotation and ideology Systematic studies of metaphor or metonymy may start by searching for a specic item, such as a set of verbs of vision/cognition, or a metaphor-rich word like heart. The following sample omits literal uses, and includes xed expressions (break ones heart, change of heart, take heart) and more generalised allusion to the heart as source of emotions: To see a little kid just breaks your heart. I tell them how brave their welcomed Mr Trimbles change of heart, as did Sinn Fein and the in the group, though Ireland can take heart from their efforts in frustrating Bobb and her record label is a real heart warmer. Her rst single, Dreams, the highest standard comes from the heart, not a textbook. 7 Innovate or die. Slide 25 Connotational meaning seems to depend on intuition and suggestion. For example, a word such as claret denotes a kind of red wine while connoting a certain lifestyle: Bosses said they now sell more claret and champagne than cheap plonk. The is renowned predominantly for claret and Sauternes, it also produces Sainsburys. Classic medium-ranking claret from the nest recent Bordeaux in port and Stilton after duck and claret is not the wisest behaviour for a waiting for me alongside a glass of claret. Sorry, I said to Jack. Ill now advising Mr Chairman on what claret to buy in for his cellar. Claret? Its collocates include bottle, glass, drink; general adjectives such as good, old, classic; wine related items burgundy, bordeaux, champagne, port, cru, decanter; vintage, fruity, ne, full-bodied; foods duck, stilton. As a set, they seem to point to that intuited claret lifestyle. Slide 26 The typical meaning of hard work is generally metaphoric which means someone who is very irritating or has annoying habits 1.)KCP 3457 little character, Benjy! Come here. But er he is hard work you can see he is cos his furs oh. 2.)K97 6225 the girls to bed. Michael says: they can be hard work at night. They stay up for hours watching the Wizard 3.)KB9 2836 right? Eh? Is that right? Rebecca! Youre hard work! Richard! Does this want to teyp up or anything Slide 27 Prosodies and collocation is the use of corpus data to explore ideologically signicant items. novels is a caricature. Not all bourgeois consumers of print read novels; between them did much to dene bourgeois manhood in the nineteenth increasing prosperity, and bourgeois satisfaction, if not complacency. capitalist economic order and of bourgeois society. Although their recipes descended, and denitely not nice, bourgeois, unsoulful Ealing), and images of of this study reects the ideas of bourgeois Western culture, in which the This is reinforced in its collocates (society, culture, family/families, life, values; revolution, ideology, democracy, liberalism, hegemony, class), which in turn suggest discursive associations to be examined. Slide 28 Sets and synonyms - Lexical sets - Synonyms - Antonyms and opposites Slide 29 - Lexical sets Words fall into lexical sets, tting into semantic elds, though these are not always easily identied from corpus data. There is a way to exploring sets is through phraseological frames, looking at what kinds of word occur within a particular slot. For example; (QUANTIFIER)+ NOUN + ago is realised by not just the obvious set of time words but also items considered as periods of time. Slide 30 - Synonyms As it is known, there are no perfect synonyms; that is, words which can be used interchangeably in any context. Corpora make it possible to test this by examining collocation, phraseological structure, genre, variety and frequency. Even a few lines show di erences: seek* seems to collocate with both, but take* only with refuge; asylum is more politicised. Another pairing is colourless and drab: Slide 31 Mulcahy and starring a rather colourless Alec Baldwin in the title role of Then the cast seems a trie colourless. And nally the script does lie silicate. X-ray analysis of the colourless crystals reveals ve oxygen and Hermann-Otto Solms, a colourless economist. All these hopefuls on the outside with something colourless? It can be exasperating. As a Youve been very kind, but this colourless understatement made me despair of to gas cant it? And if the gas is colourless, you could say it disappears, but scratch. The downtown I remember drab, Calvinistic, with white men in dark His eyes roamed anxiously around the drab conference room, and he forced his for exotic ingredients during the drab days of rationing you were lucky housewives in the study led a pretty drab existence. On the average, we found he walks past it along the rather drab green corridor. But after enjoying drive home the message of a typically drab memo, chart or graph. Color can cutting a swathe through the grey, drab ordinariness of contemporary music a gash of brilliant colour in our drab surroundings, was our school. There, Slide 32 1.) EG37C2A-0562 manevi tm yaama biimlerine ve deer yarglarna kar kmt. Verili ahlkn 2.) OE39C3A-1415 tar. Ve keza, bu slogana deer vermeli ve anlamaya almalyz; zira, 3.) KB04A2A-1895 her element iin sabit bir deer tamaktadr. Elemente bal bu sabit 4.) IF32D1B-2574 gibi sermaye irad sayyor. Menkul kymet gelirlerine uygulanacak stopaj oranlarysa, ayn 5.) GF10A4A-1841 tercih kabul edilmi; her lke kymet gmrklerine dnmtr. Trkiye'de 1954 ylndan 6.) LF10A1A-1825 byk dler yaanmtr. zellikle menkul kymet fiyatlar Brezilya, Arjantin ve Meksika'da There are two near-synonymous deer and kymet will be searched in terms of differences in meaning. First meaning of deer is to estimate the cost of; judge the worth of something and kymet is value. Slide 33 - Antonyms and opposites Conventional antonyms can also be explored with corpus data, in particular to establish whether they share ranges of reference and phraseological patterns. Happy with its two antonyms, unhappy and sad. There can be a third choice, not happy. getting on with my life. They werent happy that I hadnt returned to school. I Crossin after he said he was not happy with the environmental impact Force. Many of these men are not happy working alongside the American Slide 34 Of other types of oppositeness, one of the most obvious to investigate is gendered pairings, such as man/woman, boy/girl, husband/wife, where collocation often shows up gender stereotyping. Slide 35 Lexis in spoken language - Phraseology - Meaning and usage Slide 36 - Lexis in spoken language In Bank of English, the lexical items in its top 100 include mean, sort, thing, want, all more common than in written English; also discourse markers and phatics yeah, yes, right, well, okay, er, erm, mm, oh. Many are strongly patterned phraseologically, all have important pragmatic functions. Slide 37 - Phraseology AA and good shoes and and buy the things to me that are erm practical they need th that that something that might need to be in use constantly every day and therefore has to be you know a good thing. Erm and not to buy it on silly frivol you know d+ dont spend your money on silly frivolities and BB Mm AA the things that you dont need. I mean its okay to do that providing that youve already taken care of all the other needs. Features include hesitations, repetitions and relexicalisations; the chunked nature of the language is also clear. Slide 38 - Meaning and usage Perhaps the most important and complex aspect of lexis in spoken language is the way in which words and phraseologies full pragmatic functions: meaning e ectively has to be explored in terms of function, as in the case of know. While I know, I dont know, you know are not semantically opaque, they contribute interactionally, indicating hesitation and uncertainty, appealing to shared knowledge or understanding, pre-empting contradiction. With thing, corpus data shows its functions as a proform or vagueness marker, or, in the formula the NOUN is, prefacing a reason, point or new information: Slide 39 something some development thing that will indicate theyve er and FX think October would be a good thing you know because FX said it sets d nished with it. But the only good thing about it was that erm it was lectures say it is the most important thing in the whole lecture course I think and the customer and that sort of thing. Right. How youre the o+ the only thing I would say that and the line-to-line movement of the thing. Erm theres a much more er basic its a very good question. I mean the thing is if you were to kill er the f+ on the er Er thermostat thing? Yeah. Fan. Mm. bit older and whats been the worse thing about getting a little bit older? I