Using intensifier-adjective collocations to investigate mechanisms of change
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Martin Schweinberger
Abstract
This study takes a corpus-based approach to examining co-occurrence patterns of amplifiers and adjectives based on the Irish and the New Zealand components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). The chapter investigates changes in amplifier-adjective-bigram frequencies, to provide insights into the mechanisms underlying lexical replacement. Specifically, the chapter analyses why the replacement of the traditional amplifier (very) by an innovative variant (really) was successful in New Zealand English, but not so in Irish English. Distinctive collexeme analyses show that really attaches to high frequency adjectives (in particular the high-frequency adjective good) in NZE while really does not associate with high-frequency adjectives in IrE. The results suggest that in order for innovative variants to successfully replace traditional variants, successful variants must associate with high frequency adjectives. This leads to an increase in their usage frequency and thus deeper entrenchment. This entrenchment then serves as an advantage in situations where speakers choose between several rivalling innovative variants.
Abstract
This study takes a corpus-based approach to examining co-occurrence patterns of amplifiers and adjectives based on the Irish and the New Zealand components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). The chapter investigates changes in amplifier-adjective-bigram frequencies, to provide insights into the mechanisms underlying lexical replacement. Specifically, the chapter analyses why the replacement of the traditional amplifier (very) by an innovative variant (really) was successful in New Zealand English, but not so in Irish English. Distinctive collexeme analyses show that really attaches to high frequency adjectives (in particular the high-frequency adjective good) in NZE while really does not associate with high-frequency adjectives in IrE. The results suggest that in order for innovative variants to successfully replace traditional variants, successful variants must associate with high frequency adjectives. This leads to an increase in their usage frequency and thus deeper entrenchment. This entrenchment then serves as an advantage in situations where speakers choose between several rivalling innovative variants.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
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I Meaning in time and space
- Digital discourse and its discontents 9
- Text, intertext and meaning 37
- Hic sunt dracones 65
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II Variation in time
- Presenting knowledge of the world 89
- Interpreting the world of late modern English medical writing 113
- A corpus-based analysis of grammarians’ references in 19th-century British grammars 133
- Construing justice 173
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III Variation in space
- Variation in the complementiser choice between if and whether 203
- Using intensifier-adjective collocations to investigate mechanisms of change 231
- There’s different types 257
- Academic prose across countries 283
- A corpus-based study of metadiscoursal boosters in applied linguistics dissertations written in Thailand and in the United States 321
- Patterns and meanings of hedging verbs in English-medium research articles by Chinese and Western scholars 351
- The EMI campus as site and source for a multimodal corpus 377
- Index 403
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Contents V
- Introduction 1
-
I Meaning in time and space
- Digital discourse and its discontents 9
- Text, intertext and meaning 37
- Hic sunt dracones 65
-
II Variation in time
- Presenting knowledge of the world 89
- Interpreting the world of late modern English medical writing 113
- A corpus-based analysis of grammarians’ references in 19th-century British grammars 133
- Construing justice 173
-
III Variation in space
- Variation in the complementiser choice between if and whether 203
- Using intensifier-adjective collocations to investigate mechanisms of change 231
- There’s different types 257
- Academic prose across countries 283
- A corpus-based study of metadiscoursal boosters in applied linguistics dissertations written in Thailand and in the United States 321
- Patterns and meanings of hedging verbs in English-medium research articles by Chinese and Western scholars 351
- The EMI campus as site and source for a multimodal corpus 377
- Index 403
