scholarly journals Context-Based Interpretation of Subordinating Conjunctions in Communication

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Aziz Thabit Saeed ◽  
Saleh Al-Salman
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Interactive Communication ◽  
Adequate Knowledge ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Syntactic Constraints ◽  
Lexical Density ◽  
National Corpus

While acknowledging that different conjunctions define different relationships between ideas, this study focuses on the interpretation of four subordinating conjunctions, namely, because, since, for and as in causal clauses. Since the meanings of these conjunctions vary according to context, among other things, they usually pose problems to language users leading to misinterpretations. Not only does this emerge from the fine and minute distinctions in usage between them, but also due to the lack of adequate knowledge of the rules of language use in their metatheoretical framework. This kind of knowledge is crucial in interactive communication, speech acts, pragmatics, logical arguments and multidisciplinary debates. The data for this study were compiled from grammar books, articles, and from the British National Corpus (BNC). The data were analyzed not only to identify the discrete features of each conjunction that would render it different from its synonymous counterparts, but also to understand the kind of knowledge required to determine the choice. The findings of the study reveal that, in addition to the syntactic constraints, the degree of the ‘givenness’ or ‘newness’ of the information that the conjunction introduces, context, degree of formality of the register, and lexical density of the utterance that contains the conjunctions emerged to play a role.

scholarly journals Inclusion, Contrast and Polysemy in Dictionaries: The Relationship between Theory, Language Use and Lexicographic Practice

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-340
Author(s):  
Anu Koskela
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
National Corpus

This paper explores the lexicographic representation of a type of polysemy that arises when the meaning of one lexical item can either include or contrast with the meaning of another, as in the case of dog/bitch, shoe/boot, finger/thumb and animal/bird. A survey of how such pairs are represented in monolingual English dictionaries showed that dictionaries mostly represent as explicitly polysemous those lexical items whose broader and narrower readings are more distinctive and clearly separable in definitional terms. They commonly only represented the broader readings for terms that are in fact frequently used in the narrower reading, as shown by data from the British National Corpus.  

scholarly journals Extracting Significant Words in Engineering Texts for Specialised Language Descriptions

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 5862-5868
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Visual Representations ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Multivariate Technique ◽  
Technical Vocabulary ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Language Needs ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Potential Tool ◽  
National Corpus

The academic discourse of a specialised language is characterised by specialised and technical vocabulary, and lexicogrammar. Studies on language description suggest the need to explore and determine the specific characteristics of the academic discourse of each specialised language, to serve the language needs of the learners. This study demonstrates an exploration of this discipline specificity by looking at the nouns used in a specialised language - an Engineering English. It attempts to integrate a multivariate technique, i.e. the Correspondence Analysis (CA), as a tool to extract significant nouns in a specialised language for any further language use scrutiny. CA allows visual representations of the word interrelationships across different genres in a specialised language. To exemplify this, an Engineering English Corpus (E2C) was created. E2C is composed of two sub-corpora (genres): Engineering reference books (RBC) and online journals articles (EJC). The British National Corpus (BNC) was used as the reference corpus. 30 key-key-nouns were identified from the E2C, and the frequency lists of the words were retrieved from all the corpora to run the CA. The CA maps of the nouns display how these corpora are different from each other, as well as, which words characterise not only E2C from a general corpus (BNC), but also the different genres in E2C. Thus, CA proves to be a potential tool to display words which characterise not only a specialised corpus from a general corpus, but also the different genres in that specialised corpus. This study promises more informed descriptions of a specialised language can be made with the identification of specific and significant vocabulary for any academic discourse investigations.

scholarly journals Are Synonyms Always Synonymous? A Corpus-assisted Approach to Announce, Declare, and State

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ike Susanti Effendi ◽  
Riska Amalia ◽  
Sakinah Asa Lalita
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Authentic Materials ◽  
Word Combination ◽  
Instrument Analysis ◽  
Data Source ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

<p><em>The study on (near) synonymous word has been of intriguing topic in the recent decades. Scholars have investigated them from diverse perspectives including but not limited to semantics, grammar, and language teaching. However, few of them examine synonymous verbs. This study endeavors to scrutinize ‘announce’, ‘declare’, and ‘state’ by employing descriptive qualitative approach and British National Corpus as data source. Besides, it also attempts to shed pivotal light the pedagogical implication of corpus linguistics to the teaching of word or vocabulary and meaning in use. Sketch Engine is used as instrument analysis by which collocation and concordance analysis were employed to elucidate word combination and contexts to produce meaning. The findings demonstrate that ‘announce’, ‘declare’, and ‘state’ could not be used rudimentary interchangeably since they carry out (slightly) different meaning depending on collocate word and grammatical pattern. This study also corroborated the notion that corpus linguistics plays significant role in foreign language teaching since it offers authentic materials and contextual clue for language use.</em><strong><em></em></strong></p>

scholarly journals Commissive Pragmatics of Elucidative Speech Acts in Modern English

2018 ◽  
pp. 34-38
Author(s):  
M. Stasiv
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Mental Activity ◽  
Speech Activity ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Practical Analysis ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
National Corpus

Despite a number of studies that deal with the construction of the communicative-and-pragmatic system of the utterances-commissives of different types, today the English elucidative utterances of commissive type and their differentiation into the communicative-and-pragmatic subtypes remain poorly studies and require a thorough analysis at the communicative-and-pragmatic level of their actualization, which explains the relevance of this research. Moreover, the relevance of this issue has been caused by the necessity to clarify the specificity of formation of the commissive speech act in the structure of the analyzed utterance. The object of the study is the English elucidative utterances-commissives. The purpose of this article is to reveal the communicative-and-pragmatic organization of these commissive utterances-acts. The utterances with the key predicates of mental activity, selected from the British National Corpus texts, served as the material of the study. The intent-analysis has been applied for revealing the communicative-and-pragmatic peculiarities of the elucidative utterance of commissive type. The latter has been conducted at different levels – from the pragmemic structure of the key illocutionary predicate to the communicative-and-pragmatic organization of the entire utterance-commissive. This in turn has facilitated the revealing of the micropragmatic and pragmatic parameters of the object of the study. On the basis of the theoretical and practical analysis results the elucidative utterance-commissive is considered as a communicative-and-pragmatic unit of the speech activity aimed at the speaker’s obligative intention realization in the communicative situation of interaction. The results of the study also prove that the commissive pragmatics of the analyzed type of the utterance has been predetermined by the key commissiveness in its principal clause, and its subordinate clause only supplements, specifies it. The key commissiveness of the utterance has been expressed with the key illocutionary predicate in the affirmative form. The latter plays a crucial role in the revealing its commissive pragmatics and the developing an extended communicative-and-pragmatic typology of the elucidative utterances-commissives.

Pragmatic instruction in L2-Russian

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-95
Author(s):  
Daniele Artoni ◽  
Valentina Benigni ◽  
Elena Nuzzo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Instructional Treatment ◽  
Completion Task ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Pragmatic Instruction

Over the last three decades, a growing number of studies have investigated the effects of instruction on the acquisition of pragmatic features in L2. The bulk of this research has focused mainly on the teaching of English as a second/foreign language. However, instructional pragmatic studies in L2-Russian are lacking. The main purpose of our study is to contribute towards filling this gap by analysing the effects of pragmatic instruction on the acquisition of two speech acts by Italian learners of Russian. Furthermore, we aim to explore whether the Multimodal Russian Corpus (MURCO), a multimedia subcorpus of the Russian National Corpus, can be an effective tool for teaching speech acts in L2-Russian. Our research was composed of one experimental group (n = 18) and one control group (n = 11); each was composed of two intact classes of Italian university students at an intermediate level of L2-Russian, who were pre- and post-tested using a written discourse completion task. The experimental group was subjected to a programme of pragmatic instruction – eight thirty-minute MURCO-based lessons devoted to requests and advice, while the control group was taught according to the standard syllabus, that is, with no pragmatic instruction. The results revealed that the use of the target pragmatic features varied significantly in the experimental group, but not in the control group, thus showing a general positive effect of the instructional treatment based on the MURCO corpus. However, some limitations were identified with regard to the usability of this tool by teachers and learners.

“That’s well good”: A Re-emergent Intensifier in Current British English

2020 ◽  
pp. 007542422097914
Author(s):  
Karin Aijmer
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
British English ◽  
Discourse Marker ◽  
Time Gap ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Semantic Types ◽  
Over Time ◽  
National Corpus

Well has a long history and is found as an intensifier already in older English. It is argued that diachronically well has developed from its etymological meaning (‘in a good way’) on a cline of adverbialization to an intensifier and to a discourse marker. Well is replaced by other intensifiers in the fourteenth century but emerges in new uses in Present-Day English. The changes in frequency and use of the new intensifier are explored on the basis of a twenty-year time gap between the old British National Corpus (1994) and the new Spoken British National Corpus (2014). The results show that well increases in frequency over time and that it spreads to new semantic types of adjectives and participles, and is found above all in predicative structures with a copula. The emergence of a new well and its increase in frequency are also related to social factors such as the age, gender, and social class of the speakers, and the informal character of the conversation.

A Corpora-Based Analysis of Rely on and Depend on

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
Namkil Kang
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Information State ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of rely on and depend on in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus. The COCA clearly shows that the expression rely on government is the most preferred by Americans, followed by rely on people, and rely on data. The COCA further indicates that the expression depend on slate is the most preferred by Americans, followed by depend on government, and depend on people. The BNC shows, on the other hand, that the expression rely on others is the most preferred by the British, followed by rely on people, and rely on friends. The BNC further indicates that depend on factors and depend on others are the most preferred by the British, followed by depend on age, and depend on food. Finally, in the COCA, the nouns government, luck, welfare, people, information, state, fossil, water, family, oil, food, and things are linked to both rely on and depend on, but many nouns are not still linked to both of them. On the other hand, in the BNC, only the nouns state, chance, government, and others are linked to both rely on and depend on, but many nouns are not still linked to both rely on and depend on. It can thus be inferred from this that rely on is slightly different from depend on in its use.

scholarly journals The Usage of CAUSE in Three Branches of Science

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Bei Yang ◽  
Bin Chen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Pure Science ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Semantic Prosody ◽  
National Corpus

<p>Semantic prosody is a concept that has been subject to considerable criticism and debate. One big concern is to what extent semantic prosody is domain or register-related. Previous studies reach the agreement that CAUSE has an overwhelmingly negative meaning in general English. Its semantic prosody remains controversial in academic writing, however, because of the size and register of the corpus used in different studies. In order to minimize the role that corpus choice has to play in determining the research findings, this paper uses sub-corpora from the British National Corpus to investigate the usage of CAUSE in different types of scientific writing. The results show that the occurrence of CAUSE is the highest in social science, less frequent in applied science, and the lowest in natural and pure science. Its semantic prosody is overwhelmingly negative in social science and applied science, and mainly neutral in natural and pure science. It seems that the verb CAUSE lacks its normal negative semantic prosody in contexts that do not refer to human beings. The implications of the findings for language learning are also discussed.</p>

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document