Volume 15, Issue 2 -

Lakoff (2002 [1996], Moral politics. How liberals and conservative think . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) presents the Theory of Moral Politics (TMR), as based in the roles of metaphor in moral thinking in American Politics. Two distinct methods of data analysis, one social-psychological and one cognitive-linguistic, have been employed to empirically test Lakoff’s assertions on moral reasoning, but have yielded different results. We applied both methods to the same corpus of speeches to determine whether they would yield similar results and could thus be considered to be equally appropriate ways of testing the presence of moral language. We show that the method affects what sort of conclusion can be drawn from research. Consequently, when testing TMR, we recommend that the corpus-linguistic method used is critically evaluated.

This paper argues that Arabic function words (FWs) vary in usage between old and modern Arabic, thus prompting an experimental investigation into their changeability. This investigation is carried out by testing classical Arabic (CA) in Arabic heritage language (AHL) texts – those labeled as archistratum – and the modern standard Arabic (MSA) of Arabic newspaper texts (ANT), each group of which contains randomly collected 5 million (M) word texts. The linguistic theory of the grammar of Arabic FWs is explained through the differences between CA and MSA, despite Arabic FW changes and the unlearnability and/or unusability of some FW constructions between in these two eras of Arabic usage. The dispersion/distribution of the construction grammar (CxG) of FWs and the number ( n ) of word attractions/repulsions between the two distinct eras is explored using the very latest and most sophisticated Arabic corpus processing tools, and Sketch Engine’s SkeEn gramrels operators. The analysis of a 5 M word corpus from each era of Arabic serves to prove the non-existence of rigorous Arabic CxG. The approach in this study adopts a technique which, by contrasting AHL with ANT, relies on analyzing the frequency distributions of FWs, the co-occurrences of FWs in a span of 2n-grams collocational patterning, and some cases of FW usage changes in terms of lexical cognition (FW grammatical relationships). The results show that the frequencies of FWs, in addition to the case studies, are not the same, and this implies that FWs and their associations with the main part of speech class in a fusion language like Arabic have grammatically changed in MSA. Their constructional changes are neglected in Arabic grammar.

Bridging relations are used when the identity of a discourse-new entity can be inferred via lexical relations from an antecedent (e. g. a cake … the slice) or non-lexically via reference to world knowledge or discourse structure (e. g. a war … the survivors). Such relations are marked in English via the definite article, which is considered a difficult feature of the English language for L2 learners to acquire, particularly for L1 speakers of article-less languages. This paper provides an Integrated Contrastive Model (e. g. Granger 1996) of the L1 and L2 production of definite article bridging relations using L2 English learner corpus data produced by native Mandarin and Korean speakers at four L2 proficiency levels, alongside comparative native English data. The data is taken from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE, Ishikawa 2011, 2013), totalling just under 400,000 words with over 1500 bridging NPs identified. Results suggest subtle but significant differences between L1-L2 and L2-L2 groupings in terms of the frequency of particular bridging relation types and lemmatised wordings identified in the data, although there was little evidence of pseudo-longitudinal development. Such differences may suggest an effect of L1-L2 linguistic relativity, influencing the selection of relational links between given/new discourse entities during L2 production.

In the first volume of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory , Gries (2005. Null-hypothesis significance testing of word frequencies: A follow-up on Kilgarriff. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1(2). doi:10.1515/cllt.2005.1.2.277. http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/cllt.2005.1.issue-2/cllt.2005.1.2.277/cllt.2005.1.2.277.xml: 285) asked whether corpus linguists should abandon null-hypothesis significance testing. In this paper, I want to revive this discussion by defending the argument that the assumptions that allow inferences about a given population – in this case about the studied languages – based on results observed in a sample – in this case a collection of naturally occurring language data – are not fulfilled. As a consequence, corpus linguists should indeed abandon null-hypothesis significance testing.

This paper discusses the debatable hypotheses of “Translation Universals”, i. e. the recurring common features of translated texts in relation to original utterances. We propose that, if translational language does have some distinctive linguistic features in contrast to non-translated writings in the same language, those differences should be statistically significant, consistently distributed and systematically co-occurring across registers and genres. Based on the balanced Corpus of Translational English (COTE) and its non-translated English counterpart, the Freiburg-LOB corpus of British English (FLOB), and by deploying a multi-feature statistical analysis on 96 lexical, syntactic and textual features, we try to pinpoint those distinctive features in translated English texts. We also propose that the stylo-statistical model developed in this study will be effective not only in analysing the translational variation of English but also be capable of clustering those variational features into a “translational” dimension which will facilitate a crosslinguistic comparison of translational languages (e. g. translational Chinese) to test the Translation Universals hypotheses.

Over the past years, multifactorial corpus-based explorations of alternations in grammar have become an accepted major tool in cognitively oriented corpus linguistics. For example, prototype theory as a theory of similarity-based and inherently probabilistic linguistic categorization has received support from studies showing that alternating constructions and items often occur with probabilities influenced by prototypical formal, semantic or contextual factors. In this paper, I analyze a low-frequency alternation effect in German noun inflection in terms of prototype theory, based on strong hypotheses from the existing literature that I integrate into an established theoretical framework of usage-based probabilistic morphology, which allows us to account for similarity effects even in seemingly regular areas of the grammar. Specifically, the so-called weak masculine nouns in German, which follow an unusual pattern of case marking and often have characteristic lexical properties, sporadically occur in forms of the dominant strong masculine nouns. Using data from the nine-billion-token DECOW12A web corpus of contemporary German, I demonstrate that the probability of the alternation is influenced by the presence or absence of semantic, phonotactic, and paradigmatic features. Token frequency is also shown to have an effect on the alternation, in line with common assumptions about the relation between frequency and entrenchment. I use a version of prototype theory with weighted features and polycentric categories, but I also discuss the question of whether such corpus data can be taken as strong evidence for or against specific models of cognitive representation (prototypes vs. exemplars).

Adopting quantitative corpus-based methods, this paper focuses on the alternative negative constructions in Korean, [ an V] and [V anhda ]. Logistic regression analyses for a mixed-effects model were carried out on data drawn from the Sejong Korean Corpus. Certain features of the verb or adjective in negative constructions significantly affect the use of the two negative constructions. A relevant factor is register/medium (spoken or written), among other significant interactions of factors. Furthermore, the fact that frequency is consistent with other relevant factors, together with certain diachronic facts of Korean, supports the claim that frequency of use plays an important role in linguistic changes. Another finding is that, notwithstanding noticeable differences between spoken and written language, the factors influencing the use of the two negative constructions in Korean are largely similar in the spoken and written registers.