Technology and phraseology
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Michael Stubbs
Abstract
From the 1700s onwards, important linguistic concepts and methods were developed and forgotten, then re-invented, sometimes much later, when the intellectual climate had changed and/or when technology had advanced. Examples include work on concordances (1700s: Cruden, Ayscough), on collocations (ca 1930 to 1950: H. E. Palmer, Firth), on KWIC concordances (1950s: Luhn), on lexical patterns (1960s: Sinclair), and on phrase frequency (1970s: Allén). Only with hindsight is it clear how the study of concordance data led to the model of phrasal meaning proposed by Sinclair in the 1990s. After discussion of these historical developments, I use the interactive PIE data-base designed by Fletcher (2003–2007) to generate data on recurrent multi-word units of meaning. Finally, I outline more extensive research programmes in empirical semantics.
Abstract
From the 1700s onwards, important linguistic concepts and methods were developed and forgotten, then re-invented, sometimes much later, when the intellectual climate had changed and/or when technology had advanced. Examples include work on concordances (1700s: Cruden, Ayscough), on collocations (ca 1930 to 1950: H. E. Palmer, Firth), on KWIC concordances (1950s: Luhn), on lexical patterns (1960s: Sinclair), and on phrase frequency (1970s: Allén). Only with hindsight is it clear how the study of concordance data led to the model of phrasal meaning proposed by Sinclair in the 1990s. After discussion of these historical developments, I use the interactive PIE data-base designed by Fletcher (2003–2007) to generate data on recurrent multi-word units of meaning. Finally, I outline more extensive research programmes in empirical semantics.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
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Part I. Setting the scene
- Technology and phraseology 15
- Corpus-driven approaches to grammar 33
- Valency – item-specificity and idiom principle 49
- Fowler’s Modern English Usage at the interface of lexis and grammar 69
- The psycholinguistic reality of collocation and semantic prosody (1) 89
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Part II. Considering the particulars
- The lexicogrammar of present-day Indian English 117
- The semantic and grammatical overlap of as and that 137
- The historical development of the verb doubt and its various patterns of complementation 153
- The grammatical properties of recurrent phrases with body-part nouns 171
- A corpus-based investigation of cognate object constructions 189
- Revisiting the evidence for objects in English 211
- Lexico-functional categories and complex collocations 229
- Polysemy and lexical priming 247
- Local textual functions of move in newspaper story patterns 265
- Loud signatures 289
- Index 317
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Setting the scene
- Technology and phraseology 15
- Corpus-driven approaches to grammar 33
- Valency – item-specificity and idiom principle 49
- Fowler’s Modern English Usage at the interface of lexis and grammar 69
- The psycholinguistic reality of collocation and semantic prosody (1) 89
-
Part II. Considering the particulars
- The lexicogrammar of present-day Indian English 117
- The semantic and grammatical overlap of as and that 137
- The historical development of the verb doubt and its various patterns of complementation 153
- The grammatical properties of recurrent phrases with body-part nouns 171
- A corpus-based investigation of cognate object constructions 189
- Revisiting the evidence for objects in English 211
- Lexico-functional categories and complex collocations 229
- Polysemy and lexical priming 247
- Local textual functions of move in newspaper story patterns 265
- Loud signatures 289
- Index 317
