“Historically Informed” Corpus Studies

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 192-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert O. Gjerdingen

Musicians can choose between various “historicist” or “presentist” ways of performing works from the past. Music scholars who study early music sometimes are forced to make similar choices. If one thinks of corpus studies in music as an objective form of counting the “elements of music,” the question of what constitutes an “element” can involve similar historicist/presentist dilemmas. The article examines three historically significant characteristics of European art music—three historicist features—that are not always recognized in presentist corpus studies. For an illustrative example, a comparison is made between how the cadenza doppia in a Bach toccata for organ might be represented in a corpus study as either a two-voice framework or a series of Roman numerals in the tradition of Allen McHose (1947). Because that type of cadence was a commonplace in Bach’s time and in Bach’s compositions, a corpus analysis should be able to detect its multiple occurrences as a core element of the music.

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Schäfer ◽  
Ulrike Sayatz

In this paper, we analyze written sentences containing the German particles obwohl (“although”) and weil (“because”). In standard written German, these particles embed clauses in verb-last constituent order, which is characteristic of subordinated clauses. In spoken and – as we show – nonstandard written German, they embed clauses in verb-second constituent order, which is characteristic of independent sentences. Our usage-based approach to the syntax – graphemics interface includes a large-scale corpus analysis of the patterns of punctuation in the nonstandard variants that provides clues to the syntactic structure and degree of sentential independence of the nonstandard variants. Our corpus study confirms and refines hypotheses from existing theoretical approaches by clearly showing that writers mark obwohl clauses with verb-second order systematically as independent sentences, whereas weil clauses with verb-second order are much less strongly marked as independent. This work suggests that similar corpus studies could provide deeper insight into the interplay between syntax and graphemics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 327
Author(s):  
Sophia H. Sun ◽  
Michael Scott Cuthbert

How are lyrical emotions expressed in music? This paper explores the correlation between affect-carrying lyrics and musical features such as beat strength, duration, pitch height, consonance, and mode. Using computer-aided musicology software music21 and the NRC emotion lexicon, we conduct a corpus study on 1,895 folk and popular song lead-sheets encoded as MusicXML. The study reveals that metrical strength and note lengths are highly correlated with affects, while correlations of pitch height, consonance, and mode are in general less significant, at times contradicting previous research. Measurements of minor vs. major chordal context and tonal certainty, however, reveal certain previously unknown differences among emotional states. The paper uses a larger dataset of observations and gives greater values of significance than has appeared in symbolic corpus analysis of emotions in the past, and includes general discussions and directions for future work.


Corpora ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-349
Author(s):  
Craig Frayne

This study uses the two largest available American English language corpora, Google Books and the Corpus of Historical American English (coha), to investigate relations between ecology and language. The paper introduces ecolinguistics as a promising theme for corpus research. While some previous ecolinguistic research has used corpus approaches, there is a case to be made for quantitative methods that draw on larger datasets. Building on other corpus studies that have made connections between language use and environmental change, this paper investigates whether linguistic references to other species have changed in the past two centuries and, if so, how. The methodology consists of two main parts: an examination of the frequency of common names of species followed by aspect-level sentiment analysis of concordance lines. Results point to both opportunities and challenges associated with applying corpus methods to ecolinguistc research.


Author(s):  
René T. Proyer ◽  
Christian F. Hempelmann ◽  
Willibald Ruch

AbstractThe List of Derisible Situations (LDS; Proyer, Hempelmann and Ruch, List of Derisible Situations (LDS), University of Zurich, 2008) consists of 102 different occasions for being laughed at. They were retrieved in a corpus study and compiled into the LDS. Based on this list, information on the frequency and the intensity with which people recall being laughed at during a given time-span (12 months in this study) can be collected. An empirical study (N = 114) examined the relations between the LDS and the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia), the joy of being laughed at (gelotophilia), and the joy of laughing at others (katagelasticism; Ruch and Proyer this issue). More than 92% of the participants recalled having been laughed at at least once over the past 12 months. Highest scores were found for experiencing an embarrassing situation, chauvinism of others or being laughed at for doing something awkward or clumsy. Gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism were related about equally to the recalled frequency of events of being laughed at (with the lowest relation to katagelasticism). Gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism yielded a distinct and plausible pattern of correlations to the frequency of events of being laughed at. Gelotophobes recalled the situations of being laughed at with a higher intensity than others. Thus, the fear of being laughed at exists to a large degree independently from actual experiences of being laughed at, but is related to a higher intensity with which these events are experienced.


Author(s):  
Cristina STAN

"Based on two comparable corpora of professional spoken interaction CIVMP2 and ITICMC3 and on the idea that in the past hundred years, the way in which researchers conceived communication has changed, this paper analyzes the ability of speakers to control their behavior, actions and attitudes in the process of communication in the workplace, in an attempt to demonstrate that language is an instrument of doing things. Moreover, based on Fraser's classification (1996), this paper also analyzes two contrastive markers, but and dar, trying to show that they may be seen as equivalent. Following Schiffrin (1987), I began my inquiry by paying attention to their distribution in discourse. Thus, in the corpora I have analyzed, but and its Romanian equivalent dar have the following functions: to express a contrastive value, to continue an idea, to signal the personal correction of the speaker, to insert an objection or a reaction to the previous speech act, to emphasize a discursive idea, an obligation etc. In addition, according to the analysis on the corpora, it could be said that speakers seem to constantly adapt to the conditions imposed by the interactional, social, ideological and cultural requirements of the context, as shown by Măda (2009)."


2021 ◽  

A narrative of decline punctuated by periods of renewal has long structured perceptions of Rome's late antique and medieval history. In their probing contributions to this volume, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars provides alternative approaches to understanding the period. Addressing developments in governance, ceremony, literature, art, music, clerical education and the city's very sense of its own identity, the essays examine how a variety of actors, from poets to popes, addressed the intermittent crises and shifting dynamics of these centuries with creative solutions that bolstered the city's resilience. Without denying that the past (both pre-Christian and Christian) always remained a powerful touchstone, the studies in this volume offer rich new insights into the myriad ways that Rome and Romans, between the fifth and the eleventh centuries, creatively assimilated the past in order to shape the future.


2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Kelly

The early-music revival provoked much heated debate in the second half of the nineteenth century. The leading scholars of the era, Philipp Spitta and Friedrich Chrysander were keen to encourage performances and editions of early music that presented it in the spirit in which it was conceived. This approach met with vociferous opposition from Robert Franz and his supporters, who embraced a Darwinian aesthetic. Although committed to reviving the past, Franz believed that the tastes of nineteenth-century listeners had become too sophisticated to enjoy early music in its original state and modernized it accordingly. The source of the most heated debates was the issue of continuo realization, a topic in which Brahms, through his performing and arranging activities, had a vested interest. Franz, who dismissed the musicologists as artistic philistines, found a difficult adversary in Brahms. Brahms's scholarly inclinations have been well documented, and predictably, his approach to reviving Baroque music reflected a high level of historical awareness. He was, however, first and foremost a creative musician, and as a consequence, aesthetic issues were paramount in his performances and publications. Considerable tensions arose between Franz, and Brahms, and Chrysander, which are explored here in relation to the latter's editions of Handel's Italian duets and trios. The difficulties surrounding continuo practice were not confined to opposition from Franz; even among musicologists there was much disagreement about how the music should be performed. Brahms's approach to continuo realization is considered in this context.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-332
Author(s):  
Ingo Heidbrink

The articles in this Forum are revised versions of papers presented in a roundtable session of the XXII International Congress of Historical Sciences, which was held in Jinan, China, during August 2015. In line with the roundtable format deployed by the congress, a broad proposition was introduced in the opening paper, followed by four responses delivered by experts in the field and a plenary discussion of the issues raised by the speakers. In this session, the proponent, Ingo Heidbrink, discussed the development of maritime history as a historical sub-discipline in relation to the emergence of world (and global) history. Particular attention was afforded to the comparative growth rates of these cognate sub-disciplines, and to the reasons why maritime history has expanded relatively slowly, leading to the emergence of a ‘blue hole’ in our knowledge and understanding of the past. The four respondents then addressed the issues raised by Heidbrink from their own disciplinary and regional perspectives. As Heidbrink’s ‘Concluding Remarks’ indicate, all participants agreed that, in itself, the allocation of a session to this subject on the core programme of the congress was a significant recognition that maritime history is a historical sub-discipline that is of relevance to the wider global community of historians, and not just those who are interested in the interaction of humans and the oceans.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 23-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Meeker-O’Connell ◽  
Coleen Glessner

Over the past decade, clinical trial quality has evolved from an after-the-fact, reactive activity to one focused on the important work of evidence generation from well-designed trials. This article explores the role the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative has played in advancing quality as a core element of clinical trial design, through project work that initially focused on monitoring but evolved into a holistic, prospective, and comprehensive quality by design approach to clinical trial design and conduct.


Beyond Reason ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 87-112
Author(s):  
Sanjay Seth

Showing that history writing is not the simple application of a method to sources bequeathed to us from the past, but rather a code that constructs “the past” in particular ways, this chapter explicates the elements of the code. Modern history treats past objects and texts as the objectified remains of humans who endowed their world with meaning and purpose, while constrained by the social circumstances characterizing their times; this time of theirs is dead, and it can only be represented, not resurrected; the past is only ever the human past, and it does not include ghosts, gods, spirits, or nature. In outlining these core elements of the code of history, it engages with those forms of history writing—the history of art, music, and science—that do not always share all the elements of the code, but for that very reason illuminate all the more clearly what the discipline presupposes.


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