Session 1: Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis and...

LOT Winter School 2018

Contrastive Phraseology

Session 1:

Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis

and Phraseology

Aims of the course

Give an introduction to:

Contrastive analysis and contrastive phraseology.

Gain insight into:

Different approaches to contrastive analysis;

Bidirectional Contrastive Method;

A bottom-up approach to contrastive phraseology.

Do practical corpus-based contrastive phraseology.

Using existing corpora;

Compiling new corpora.

Outline of the course

Day Topic Reading

Mon Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis and

Phraseology

Aijmer 2008;

Johansson 2007, ch. 1;

Ebeling & Ebeling 2013, ch. 1

Tue Approaches to CA and the Bidirectional

Contrastive Method

Ebeling & Ebeling 2013, ch. 2

Wed Hands-on – Using multilingual corpora Ebeling 2014;

Ebeling & Ebeling 2015

Thur Contrastive phraseology: Method and

analysis

Compiling a multilingual corpus

Ebeling & Ebeling 2013, ch. 5;

Ebeling et al. 2013;

Johansson 2007, ch. 2

Fri Hands-on – Compiling and using

multilingual corpora

https://www.lotschool.nl/about/teacher/t/0/204



Today

Introduction to contrastive analysis

Introduction to corpus-based CA

Brief introduction to phraseology

Contrastive Analysis

Contrastive analysis (CA) is the systematic

comparison of two or more languages,

with the aim of describing their similarities

and differences.

(Johansson 2007)

What is CA?

A linguistic enterprise aimed at producing [...] two-valued typologies (a CA is always concerned within a pair of languages), and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared. (James 1980: 3)

A general approach to the investigation of language, particularly as carried on in certain areas of applied linguistics, such as foreign-language teaching and translation. In a contrastive analysis of two languages, the points of structural differences are identified, and these are then studied as areas of potential difficulty in foreign-language learning. (Crystal 1985: 74)

A branch of linguistics that describes similarities and differences among two or more languages at such a level as phonology, grammar, and semantics, especially in order to improve language teaching and translation. (McArthur 1992)

What is CA?

NB: A methodology for language study, not a theory of

language.

Often associated with the study of a pair of languages,

although more than two languages may be involved.

Generally associated with applied linguistics: linguistic

studies aiming to achieve better language

teaching/learning, better translators, better translations,

etc.

Also useful for insights (e.g. testing hypotheses) in

theoretical linguistics.

Terminology

'Contrastive analysis' and 'contrastive

linguistics' are terms generally used

synonymously for cross-linguistic studies

involving a systematic comparison of two

or more languages with a view to

describing their similarities and

differences. (Hasselgård 2010: 98)

Contrasting English and Norwegian

o Lexical similarity: bring vs. bringe

o Lexical difference: bring vs. ta med 'take with'

o Syntactic similarity: inverted word order in interrogative sentences

"Hva har du gjort idag, Herman?“ (LSC1)

"What have you done today, Herman?"

o Syntactic difference: Do periphrasis

"Jeg spiller ikke på døde hester." (LSC2)

*"I bet not on dead horses."

"I don't bet on dead horses."

o Phraseological similarity: throw in the towel vs. kaste inn håndkledet

o Phraseological difference: make a mistake vs. gjøre en feil 'do a mistake'

These may be more or less obvious areas of

contrast between languages. Greater awareness

of the less obvious ones will increase our

understanding of the individual languages and will

provide a better platform for us as language

learners and language researchers.

The objective of CA

Language comparison is of great interest in a

theoretical as well as an applied perspective. It

reveals what is general and what is language

specific and is therefore important both for the

understanding of language in general and for the

study of the individual languages compared.

(Johansson & Hofland 1994: 25)

Why embark on contrastive linguistics? (Lauridsen 1996: 63-64)

Language pedagogy

The comparison of languages in order to prepare language teaching materials or

explain foreign language learner performance (interlanguage analysis)

Cross-linguistic analysis

(a) The analysis of the expression of non-language-specific categories in two or more

languages, eg the semantic category of modality as it is expressed grammatically or

lexically in different languages.

(b) The analysis of linguistic categories in two or more languages which become

apparent only as a result of a contrastive analysis, eg the progressive aspect as it is

expressed lexically in Danish, discovered as a result of a contrastive analysis of

English and Danish.

Contrastive lexicographical or terminological work

The creation of bilingual or multilingual dictionaries and databases.

CA may:

Contribute to a better description of the languages compared;

Contribute to the development of better teaching materials;

Reveal new and unknown areas of contrast;

Contribute to advanced multilingual and cross-cultural

competence.

Compare languages on the basis of what?

Introspection?

A bilingual researcher uses his/her intuition (“it would be difficult to establish cross-

linguistic correspondences on the basis of introspection alone. Introspection cannot provide certainty that we have found all the correspondences and it would be difficult to have intuitions about the cases where the semantic overlap is only partial” (Simon-Vandenbergen & Aijmer 2004: 16)

Elicitation? Elicitation tests in different language communities

Study of language learning, first language transfer?

Authentic language? (Text-based studies) Comparable texts (original texts in the languages compared)

Parallel texts (original and translated texts)

Translation is a source of perceived similarities

across languages.

CA and corpora

… there has been a steadily growing realization that cross-linguistic studies cannot rely on introspection or scanty empirical evidence, but must be firmly based on naturally occurring language used in a variety of situations.

(Aijmer & Altenberg 1996)

A corpus can be defined as:

a body of texts in machine-readable form

put together in a principled way

representing authentic language use

for use in linguistic research

After a period when contrastive analysis was rejected by many, there has been a revival, in large measure connected with the new possibilities of contrasting languages using multilingual electronic corpora.

(Johansson 2007: xv)

Corpora for cross-linguistic research

Comparable corpus

Translation corpus

Parallel corpus

Note: the term ‘parallel corpus’ is also used

about the first two.

Comparable corpus (model 1)

A corpus that contains original texts in more than one language and where the texts in each language have been selected according to the same criteria (genre, content, publication date etc.)

Language 1

Genre A

Genre B

Genre C

Genre D

Language 2

Genre A

Genre B

Genre C

Genre D

Language 3

Genre A

Genre B

Genre C

Genre D

Comparable corpus – extreme case

Language 1

President Obama har

ikke vært president i

24 timer ennå, men

har alt tatt sin første

avgjørelse som USAs

mektigste mann.

Han har bedt aktorene

i de militære

domstolene, det

såkalte tribunalet, i

Guantanamo om å be

om en 120-dagers

pause i alle pågående

saker. (Aftenposten)

Language 2

Within hours of taking

office, Obama's

administration filed a

motion to halt the war

crimes trials for 120

days, until his new

administration

completes a review of

the much-criticised

system for trying

suspected terrorists. (The Guardian)

Language 3

Schon wenige

Stunden nach seinem

Amtsantritt hat Obama

einen ersten Schritt

zur Beendigung der

Militärtribunale in

Guantánamo

eingeleitet. Der neue

Präsident wies die

Militärankläger an, in

allen 21 laufenden

Verfahren eine 120-

tägige Aussetzung zu

beantragen. (Frankfurter

Allgemeine)

Comparable corpus – example (FC)

Language 1

For han visste at i

krigen lurte døden, og

noen av mennene

som dro ut ville aldri

vende hjem.

Det hadde han vært

vitne til flere ganger,

og enkene og barna

etter de døde gikk

gråtende omkring

mellom hyttene.

Language 2

The village school for

younger children was

a bleak brick building

called Crunchem Hall

Primary School.

It had about two

hundred and fifty

pupils aged from five

to just under twelve

years old.

Language 3

Sie führten ein

äußerst genügsames,

strenges und hartes

Leben, und ihre

Kinder, Knaben wie

Mädchen, wurden zur

Tapferkeit, zur

Großmut und zum

Stolz erzogen.

Sie mußten Hitze,

Kälte und große

Entbehrungen

ertragen lernen und

ihren Mut unter

Beweis stellen.

GO

EO

Guilt brings us nearer to God.

"Bring in something to eat …

…enough, bring me a taste Sunday.…

…it brings you a smell …

…Schwester Cecilia brachte nichts …

… Leute dazu bringen, sich zu …

… Zeit zurück, oder bringen sie in …

Aber jeder bringt der …

L1

(English originals)

L2

(German originals)

Comparable corpus

GO

EO









Comparable corpus

Comparable corpora

… are not ideal for contrastive analysis. Since it is difficult to guarantee the comparability of texts in different languages, a comparable corpus gives a less clear picture of the correspondences of a lexical item than does a parallel corpus.

(Aijmer 2008: 278)

Translation corpus (model 2)

A corpus that contains the ‘same’ texts in more than one language, in other words a corpus with both original and translated texts.

Original text(s)

Translation, language 1



Translation corpus - example

Foran meg på skrivebordet hjemme i Croydon sitter jeg

med et krøllet prospektkort som er datert Barcelona 26.

mai 1992. (JG3)

Hier auf meinem Schreibtisch in Croydon liegt eine

zerknitterte Ansichtskarte, abgestempelt in Barcelona am

26. Mai 1992. (JG3TD)

On my desk here at home in Croydon is a crumpled picture

postcard from Barcelona, dated 26 May 1992. (JGTE)

Je suis dans ma maison à Croydon. Devant moi, sur mon

bureau, il y a une carte postale froissée datée du 26

mai 1992, Barcelone. (JG3TF)

GT EO





… Unsere Schuld führt uns näher...

"Bring was zu essen ...

… ein Schüsselchen mitbringen.

Kommet Wind auf, trägt er den…

L1

(English originals)

L2

(German translations)

Translation corpus

(unidirectional)

GT EO









Translation corpus

(unidirectional)

The translations ensure that we compare like with like, as a solid

tertium comparationis is present, i.e. "the relationship between a

unit in the source language and its translation in the target

language" (Granger 2010: 5).

However, as it has been claimed that translations "cannot but give

a distorted picture of the language they represent" (Teubert 1996:

247), a combination of translation and comparable corpora is

endorsed ...

Hasselgård & Ebeling (in prep.)

ET

Sister Cecilia brought to light no…

… will-o'-the-wisps make others lose their way.

… back for me, or give it a differ…

… each one of us is going to the .. with..

GO





GT EO









L1

(English originals)

L2

(German translations)

Parallel corpus (model 3)

(aka bidirectional translation corpus)

L2

(German originals)

L1

(English translations)

ET

Sister Cecilia brought to light no…

… will-o'-the-wisps make others lose their way.

… back for me, or give it a differ…

… each one of us is going to the .. with..

GO





GT EO









Parallel corpus (model 3)

(aka bidirectional translation corpus)

In the parallel corpus model, we draw on translation

data to objectively identify corresponding items in the

languages compared. These translation paradigms

(horizontal lines in the model) may form the basis for

further scrutiny in the comparable data (slant line).

Translation paradigm

The translation paradigm provides a ‘rich’

description of what a lexical element or

construction means, and how it functions, by

considering the translations into one or more

languages. (Aijmer 2008: 284)

Parallel corpora

It is difficult to see how any other method

could give such a clear and detailed picture

of the relationship between the languages

and contribute to the language-specific

description of the languages compared. (Aijmer 2008: 280)

(Minimal) mark-up of (parallel) texts

Metadata (i.e. descriptive information about the text,

including information about author, translator, year of

publication, etc.)

Sentence alignment

Sentence alignment (1:1 / 1:2)

<s id=FW1.2.s38 corresp=FW1TD.2.s36>Guilt brings us nearer to God.</s>

<s id=FW1TD.2.s36 corresp=FW1.2.s38>Unsere Schuld führt uns näher zu Gott.</s>

<s id=NG1.1.s80 corresp='NG1TD.1.s81 NG1TD.1.s82'>He saw the need to

bring together the school and the community in which it performed an isolated

function — education as a luxury, a privilege apart from the survival

preoccupations of the parents.</s>

<s id=NG1TD.1.s81 corresp=NG1.1.s80>Er wollte die Schule und die Gemeinde

zusammenbringen.</s>

<s id=NG1TD.1.s82 corresp=NG1.1.s80>Er wollte die isolierte Funktion der

Schule — Bildung als Luxus, als Privileg, das über die dem reinen Überleben

dienenden Beschäftigungen der Eltern hinausging, überwinden.</s>

Sentence alignment (line:line)


He saw the need to bring together the

school and the community in which it

performed an isolated function —

education as a luxury, a privilege apart

from the survival preoccupations of the

parents.

Unsere Schuld führt uns näher zu Gott.

Er wollte die Schule und die Gemeinde

zusammenbringen. Er wollte die isolierte

Funktion der Schule — Bildung als Luxus,

als Privileg, das über die dem reinen

Überleben dienenden Beschäftigungen der

Eltern hinausging, überwinden.

Using parallel corpora for research

Particularly well suited for studies of lexis / lexico-grammar (or studies that can take lexis as their starting point), but also lends itself well to the study of (frequent) patterns (in a bottom-up approach).

The methodology is not tied to any particular theoretical approach (SFL, cognitive linguistics, pattern grammar, lexis-driven approach à la Sinclair + traditional grammar…)

Broad range of phenomena have been (are being) investigated, e.g. the use of individual verbs (bli, få, take, see), modality, particular syntactic constructions, connectives, discourse relations, phraseology.

Some limitations

You can only search for something that is explicit in the text (applies to corpus linguistics in general);

The (small) size of parallel corpora restricts studies of less frequent items / constructions;

Faulty and less successful translations.

Ways around the limitations?

Manual “searches” in running text, e.g. for Theme, subjects;

Identify typical (and searchable!) expressions;

Go for a bottom-up approach;

Errors in the translation: Weed out? Ignore translations that occur only once, or in only one text?

Arguments against using translated texts

in contrastive research

Translations distort the target language because of influence from the source language (translationese);

Translated language is different from original language (translation as a “third-code”);

Translators are unreliable and make mistakes;

Translations differ depending upon the individual translator;

Translations represent an interpretation of the original. This may imply interpreting (losing?) ambiguity and polysemy.

Translationese/Translation effect

• Does NOT include translation mistakes such as:

I feel like shit. -- Jeg føler meg som laken ('I feel like sheet').

• DOES include translation features such as:

Overuse or underuse in translations compared to originals, e.g. vær så

snill ('be so kind' in Norwegian original vs. translated texts (influence

from English please).

A systematic influence on TL from SL. Gellerstam (1986)

Differences between choices in original and

translated texts in the same language. Johansson (2007: 32)

Nevertheless…

Some of this criticism "can be met by having many different

translators and a large number of translations as the empirical

foundation for research". Aijmer (2008: 278)

In other words, the translations are "based on the insights of a

large pool of specialist informants, i.e. the translators". Ebeling & Ebeling (2013: 222)

Phraseology

That language to a large extent relies on ‘combinations

of words that customarily co-occur’ (Kjellmer 1991 :

112) is now a generally accepted view in linguistics.

Such combinations are said to constitute the

phraseology, or phrasicon, of a language. (Ebeling & Hasselgård 2015: 2017)

Field of study

Set of lingusitic units studied in the field.

What is phraseology?

"The study of the structure, meaning and use of word

combinations" (Cowie 1994:3168).

More or less fixed ”word combinations”.

The lexico-grammatical pattern belonging to a word.

arms akimbo

heavy rain fish and chips what is more

mind how you go piece of cake

I don't I think that and then he

Phraseology is a field bedevilled by the proliferation

of terms and by conflicting uses of the same term … Cowie (1998: 210)

N-grams Phraseological Units

Restricted collocations Chunks

Frames

Sentence stems

Patterns

Lexical bundles

Fixed expression

Idioms Prefabs Clusters

Recurrent word combinations Collocations

Fixed phrases Multi-word units

Phraseology as defined and studied in

this course

Lexico-grammatical context of lexical items

Specified items as starting point

Pattern: a recurrent multi-word combination that

functions as a semantic unit.

Unspecified items (N-grams) as starting point to identify

and select patterns for research

(n-gram = a contiguous sequence of n items in naturally occurring

text)

Approach to phraseology

Frequency-based / Distributional

Bottom-up/inductive approach, identifying items that do not necessarily fit predefined linguistic categories.

Many of these traditionally considered outside the limits of phraseology (i.e. may be "free combinations").

Idiom principle (strings of co-selected words that constitute single choices).

Contrastive Analysis and phraseology

Contrastive analysis (CA) is the systematic

comparison of two or more languages, ...

(Johansson 2007)

Contrastive phraseology is the systematic

comparison of word-combinations across

languages.

Contrastive phraseology angle: "similar-looking expressions in

two languages (e.g. all the way – hele veien 'the whole way') may

be associated with different degrees of metaphorical potential and

thereby different conditions of use" (Ebeling et al. 2013)

Preparation for hands-on sessions

http://folk.uio.no/signeo/Winterschool2018/ContrastivePhraseology.html

• Download Tools:

– AntConc

– AntPConc

– Notepad++ (Windows)

– Visual Studio Code (Mac/Windows)

• Download Texts (one of the following folders):

– En-Du

– En-Ge

– …

• Create an account at https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/



https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/

https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/

References and further reading

Aijmer, K. 2008. Parallel Corpora and Comparable Corpora. In Lüdeling, A. & M. Kytö (eds.), Corpus Linguistics. An International Handbook, Vol. 1. Berlin / New York: Walter de Gruyter. 275-292.

Aijmer, K. & B. Altenberg. 1996. Introduction. In Aijmer, K, B. Altenberg, M. Johansson (eds.) Languages in Contrast. Lund: Lund University Press. 11-16

Cowie, A.P. 1981. The treatment of collocations and idioms in learners' dictionaries. Applied Linguistics 2(3): 223–325.

Cowie, Anthony P. 1994. Phraseology. In R.E. Asher (ed.),The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: OUP. 3168–3171.

Cowie, A.P. 1998. Phraseological dictionaries: Some East-West comparisons. In Cowie (ed.), Phraseology. Theory, Analysis, and Applications. Oxford: OUP. 209–228.

Ebeling, J. & S.O. Ebeling. 2013. Patterns in Contrast. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Ebeling, J., S.O. Ebeling, & H. Hasselgård. 2013. Using recurrent word-combinations to explore cross-linguistic differences, In K. Aijmer & B. Altenberg (eds), Advances in Corpus-based Contrastive Linguistics: Studies in honour of Stig Johansson. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 177-199.

Ebeling, S.O. & H. Hasselgård. 2015. Learner corpora and phraseology, In Sylviane Granger; Gaëtanelle Gilquin & Fanny Meunier (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research. Cambridge: CUP, 207-229.

Fiedler, S. 2007. English Phraseology. Tübingen: narr studienbücher.

Gellerstam, M. 1986. Translationese in Swedish novels translated from English. In L. Wollin and H. Lindquist (eds), Translation Studies in Scandinavia. Lund: CWK Gleerup. 88-95.

Granger, S. & M. Paquot. 2008. Disentangling the phraseological web. In S. Granger & F. Meunier, Phraseology. An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 27–50.

Granger, S. 2010. Comparable and translation corpora in cross-linguistic research: Design, analysis and applications. Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University, 2010. Available at: http://sites-test.uclouvain.be/cecl/archives/Granger_Crosslinguistic_research.pdf.

Hasselgård, H. 2010. Contrastive analysis / contrastive linguistics. In K. Malmkjær (ed.). The Routledge Linguistics Encyclopedia. Third Edition. London: Routledge. 98-101.

Hoey, M. 2007. Lexical priming and literary creativity. In M. Hoey, M. Mahlberg, M. Stubbs and W. Teubert (eds), Text, Discourse and Corpora: Theory and Analysis. London: Continuum. 7-29.

James, C. 1980. Contrastive Analysis. London: Longman.

Johansson, S. 2007. Seeing Through Multilingual Corpora. On the Use of Corpora in Contrastive Studies. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Johansson, S. and K. Hofland. 1994. Towards an English-Norwegian parallel corpus. In Fries, U., G. Tottie & P. Schneider (eds.), Creating and Using English Language Corpora. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 25-37.

Lauridsen, K. 1996. Text corpora and contrastive linguistics: Which type of corpus for which type of analysis? In Aijmer, K, B. Altenberg, M. Johansson (eds.) Languages in Contrast. Lund: Lund University Press, 63-72

McArthur, T. (ed.). 1992. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Simon-Vandenbergen, A.-M. and K. Aijmer. 2004. The expectation marker of course in a cross-linguistic perspective. Languages in Contrast 4:1 (2002/2003, published 2004), 13-44.

Teubert, W. 1996. Comparable or parallel corpora? International Journal of Lexicography 9(3): 238–264

http://sites-test.uclouvain.be/cecl/archives/Granger_Crosslinguistic_research.pdf




Session 1: Corpus-based Contrastive Analysis and...

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