Passive constructions in English and Chinese

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Xiao ◽  
Tony McEnery ◽  
Yufang Qian
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
British English ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Contrastive Linguistics ◽  
Corpus Data

This article combines the corpus-based and contrastive approaches, seeking to provide a systematic account of passive constructions in two typologically distinct languages, namely British English and Mandarin Chinese. We will first explore, on the basis of written and spoken corpus data, a range of characteristics of passives in the two languages including various passive constructions, long vs. short passives, semantic, pragmatic and syntactic features as well as genre variations. On the basis of this exploration, passive constructions in the two languages are contrasted in a structured way. Methodologically, this study demonstrates that comparable monolingual corpora can be exploited fruitfully in contrastive linguistics.

Tiger Woods as a linguistic role model?

English Today ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-61
Author(s):  
Brian Poole
Keyword(s):  
Role Model ◽  
British English ◽  
The Media ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Tiger Woods

ABSTRACTInternational sports stars are often required to speak to the media after their performances. When Tiger Woods does so, it is noticeable that he makes use of the formulaic expression ‘I feel/felt like I’ as a means of introducing descriptions of, or generalizations about, his actions or motivations. Drawing on corpus data, this paper offers some observations about this expression in relation to its use by speakers (and to a lesser extent writers) of both American and British English, and also investigates the apparent disparity in frequency between instances of ‘she’ and ‘he’ when it is used.

scholarly journals Images of scales

Jezikoslovlje ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84
Author(s):  
Gašper Ilc ◽  
Frančiška Lipovšek
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Lexical Selection ◽  
Lexical Analysis ◽  
Idiomatic Expressions ◽  
Cultural Properties ◽  
Contrastive Linguistics ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Polarity Sensitive

The paper investigates the syntactic, semantic, and cultural properties of minimizers and maximizers from a contrastive perspective. Minimizers and maximizers are scalar constructions whose function is to strengthen the speaker’s (negative) assertion by pointing to the minimal (minimizers) or the maximal (maximizers) point on a pragmatic scale. The syntactic analysis reveals that these items are predominantly sub-clausal (V+NP/PP or NP/PP), and polarity sensitive, requiring the presence of a polarity licenser. The lexical analysis identifies three possibilities with regard to lexical selections in the two languages: a complete, partial, and a non-existent lexico-semantic overlap. Furthermore, the corpus data indicate that there is considerable variation in the lexical items appearing in minimizers and maximizers (e.g., give a damn/shit/toss/fuck/monkey’s/fig/rat’s ( arse , ass, fart)/hoot). Even though minimizers and maximizers in both languages involve the metaphor more is up, less is down / good is up, bad is down and part-for-whole metonymy, the analysis shows that the lexical selection in the two languages diverges due to different cultural conceptualisations and cultural background. The observation and results of the analysis presented herein aim at contributing to a better understanding of idiomatic expressions from the viewpoint of contrastive linguistics, cultural studies, and cultural conceptualisation.

Temporal adverbials and the present perfect/past tense alternation

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin Werner
Keyword(s):  
Cluster Analysis ◽  
Hierarchical Cluster Analysis ◽  
Hierarchical Cluster ◽  
Phylogenetic Networks ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
British English ◽  
Cultural Proximity ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
The Difference

Specification by certain temporal adverbials has been shown to be one of the typical triggers of the present perfect in British English. Often, however, L2 varieties display different patterns of temporal co-occurrence, especially using the simple past tense. This study is based on corpus data from twelve components of the International Corpus of English and analyzes the distribution between present perfect and past tense for a number of co-occurring temporal adverbials. In addition, it establishes three measures of similarity across the varieties (hierarchical cluster analysis, phylogenetic networks and a distribution-based measure). On the basis of 6 353 adverbials in total, this paper suggests (1) that there is a L1–L2 divide, (2) that the difference between “traditional” and “transplanted” L1 varieties is less pronounced, (3) that L2 varieties allow more variation, which indicates that in these varieties, the present perfect is partly used as a tense (sensu Quirk et al. 1985), and (4) that some temporal adverbials are less categorically attached to either present perfect or past tense than others. Finally, some conclusions with regard to the importance of geographical and socio-cultural proximity of certain varieties can be drawn.

scholarly journals A Character-Based Constructional Approach to Chinese Imperfective Aspect Markers 在Zai and 着Zhe

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-79
Author(s):  
Liulin ZHANG
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Semantic Networks ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Aspect Markers

在zai and着zhe are commonly recognized imperfective aspect makers in Mandarin Chinese, though there are noticeable differences between their distributions and functions. By resorting to origins, historical evolutions, and corpus data for the meanings and functions of these two characters, it can be observed that they are both polysemies displaying semantic networks organized around a central sense respectively and the characters 在 and 着 are distinct form and meaning pairings. 在 is a construction indicating presence within a certain range while 着generally denotes ‘reach to’. Related to their basic meanings, 在 and 着 exhibit some constraints respectively when marking imperfective aspect. From this character-based constructional account, 在’s and 着’s qualifications as Chinese imperfective aspect markers are theoretically arguable.

A corpus-driven description of when-adverbial in Nigerian and British Englishes

Glottotheory ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayowa Akinlotan
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Structural Variation ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Distributional Analysis ◽  
British English ◽  
Functional Factors ◽  
New Varieties ◽  
Corpus Data

Abstract Syntactic alternation allows us to understand how structural variation, including crucial factors relevant to their meaning and interpretation, operates linguistic varieties. Empirical evidence from such syntactic alternation study can provide insights into how new varieties differ from the established ones. The present study aims at increasing contributions that show the nature of syntactic alternation from new Englishes such as Nigerian English, and how they differ from established varieties such as British English. Taking when adverbial construction in Nigerian English as a reference point (When Trump realised his reelection loss, he changed his political expectations versus Trump changed his political expectations when he realised his reelection loss), the study shows the extent to which previously tested factors influence the ordering of the construction and how they differ from findings reported in British English. Relying on corpus data, together with descriptive distributional analysis, the study shows that, unlike British English in which functional and cognitive factors strongly influence structural patterning, functional factors outweigh cognitive factors in Nigerian English.

The Complex History of Have Gotten in American English

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
Lieselotte Anderwald
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Side Effect ◽  
American English ◽  
British English ◽  
Perfect Form ◽  
Text Types ◽  
History Of ◽  
Corpus Data

This article challenges the accepted opinion that the American English perfect form HAVE gotten is a straightforward historical retention of an earlier British English form. Although HAVE gotten was presumably part of the settler input in North America, it (almost) died out in American English as well, but was then revived in the nineteenth century, as historical corpus data show. Contrary to expectations, this revival was not an innovation from below. Instead, the rise of HAVE gotten was promoted by careful writers who deliberately avoided the highly stigmatized stative HAVE got. This explains why perfect HAVE gotten appears in more formal text types first, and how it became specialized to dynamic contexts only. The morphological Americanism HAVE gotten is thus a curious case of an (unintended) side-effect of marginally successful prescriptivism.1

Swearing in Modern British English: The Case of Fuck in the BNC

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony McEnery ◽  
Zhonghua Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
American English ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
British English ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Morphological Variants ◽  
National Corpus

Swearing is a part of everyday language use. To date it has been infrequently studied, though some recent work on swearing in American English, Australian English and British English has addressed the topic. Nonetheless, there is still no systematic account of swear-words in English. In terms of approaches, swearing has been approached from the points of view of history, lexicography, psycholinguistics and semantics. There have been few studies of swearing based on sociolinguistic variables such as gender, age and social class. Such a study has been difficult in the absence of corpus resources. With the production of the British National Corpus (BNC), a 100,000,000-word balanced corpus of modern British English, such a study became possible. In addition to parts of speech, the corpus is richly annotated with metadata pertaining to demographic features such as age, gender and social class, and textual features such as register, publication medium and domain. While bad language may be related to religion (e.g. Jesus, heaven, hell and damn), sex (e.g. fuck), racism (e.g. nigger), defecation (e.g. shit), homophobia (e.g. queer) and other matters, we will, in this article, examine only the pattern of uses of fuck and its morphological variants, because this is a typical swear-word that occurs frequently in the BNC. This article will build and expand upon the examination of fuck by McEnery et al. (2000) by examining the distribution pattern of fuck within and across spoken and written registers.

Systematic repetition of the first person singular pronoun wo in Mandarin conversation

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jee Won Lee
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
First Person ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Phonological Features ◽  
Interactive Strategies ◽  
Single Speaker ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Mandarin Conversation

While repetition was once thought to be “just a marker of a ‘disfluent’ or ‘sloppy’ speaker,” it has been increasingly recognized as a “human social activity, clearly part of our everyday conduct or behavior” (Schegloff 1987). The present study, using video recorded natural conversation data, aims to describe ways in which native speakers of Mandarin Chinese employ repetition of the first person pronoun wo for interactional moves. Repetition of wo is analyzed in conjunction with other interactive strategies, such as syntactic features, phonological features, pragmatic features, gesture, self-grooming, and gaze, as a way to organize and negotiate stances toward the proposition expressed and the co-participants and at the same time to enable intersubjectivity. By showing that within the speech of a single speaker pronominal repetition acts as a stance marker, this paper provides a new perspective on Chinese pronominal use and enriches our understanding of the functions of “disfluent” language in general.

scholarly journals Sentence-initial I think (that) and I believe (that)

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Dehé ◽  
Anne Wichmann
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Main Clause ◽  
The Other ◽  
British English ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
The One

Sentence-initial pronoun-verb combinations such as I think, I believe are ambiguous between main clause use on the one hand and adverbial or discourse use on the other hand. We approach the topic from a prosodic perspective. Based on corpus data from spoken British English the prosodic patterns of sentence-initial I think and I believe are analysed and related to their interpretation in context. We show that these expressions may function as main clause (MC), comment clause (CC) or discourse markers (DM) and that the speaker’s choice is reflected in the prosody. The key feature is prosodic prominence: MCs are reflected by accent placement on the pronoun, CCs by an accent on the verb, while DMs are unstressed.

scholarly journals The effect of hyperarticulation on speech comprehension under adverse listening conditions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayanthiny Kangatharan ◽  
Maria Uther ◽  
Fernand Gobet
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Acoustic Signal ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
Clear Speech ◽  
British English ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Early Learners

AbstractComprehension assesses a listener’s ability to construe the meaning of an acoustic signal in order to be able to answer questions about its contents, while intelligibility indicates the extent to which a listener can precisely retrieve the acoustic signal. Previous comprehension studies asking listeners for sentence-level information or narrative-level information used native listeners as participants. This is the first study to look at whether clear speech properties (e.g. expanded vowel space) produce a clear speech benefit at the word level for L2 learners for speech produced in naturalistic settings. This study explored whether hyperarticulated speech was more comprehensible than non-hyperarticulated speech for both L1 British English speakers and early and late L2 British English learners in quiet and in noise. Sixteen British English listeners, 16 native Mandarin Chinese listeners as early learners of L2 and 16 native Mandarin Chinese listeners as late learners of L2 rated hyperarticulated samples versus non-hyperarticulated samples in form of words for comprehension under four listening conditions of varying white noise level (quiet or SNR levels of + 16 dB, + 12 dB or + 8 dB) (3 × 2× 4 mixed design). Mean ratings showed all three groups found hyperarticulated speech samples easier to understand than non-hyperarticulated speech at all listening conditions. Results are discussed in terms of other findings (Uther et al., 2012) that suggest that hyperarticulation may generally improve speech processing for all language groups.

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