Transcript phrase be on the brink of

ENG 626
CORPUS APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE STUDIES
language teaching (2)
dictionary
Bambang Kaswanti Purwo
[email protected]
[Hunston, Ch. 5, 101; Adolphs, Ch. 7, 97]
motivation for using a corpus approach
▪ offer a description of actual language in use
▪ capture contextual properties in relation to linguistic forms
the study of authentic texts has revealed inconsistencies of
the use of lexical n grammatical structures
in corpora vs. in traditional language textbooks
corpus-based English dictionaries, e.g.
▪ Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
▪ Cambridge Advanced Learner’ Dictionary
▪ Collins COBUILD Learner’s Dictionary
▪ Macmillan English Dictionary
corpus-based English grammar books, e.g.
▪ Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English
[Hunston, Ch. 5, 101; Adolphs, Ch. 7, 97]
emphasis on collocation and phraseology
tendencies in dictionaries written using corpora:
highlight collocation and phraseology
(Ellis 1997, as quoted in Adolphs 2006:97)
▪ speaking natively is speaking idiomatically using frequent
and familiar collocations
▪ the job of the language learner to learn these familiar
word sequences
asking for a light from a stranger
(Newmark’s examples, as quoted in Keith Johnson 1981:1)
[a structurally competent student]
▪ Have you fire?
▪ Do you have illumination?
▪ Are you a match’s owner?
[Hunston Ch. 5, 99]
• frequency
» [using tag corpora] compare frequency of the same word
in terms of POS: as a noun and as a verb
▪ GORGE [n] ‘a valley with steep sides’
▪
[v] ‘eat greedily’
▪ GORGE [n] four times as frequent as GORGE [v]
 put the [n] sense before the [v] sense
» compare the frequency of some words in the two modes
▪ BET, MEAN, THINK more frequent in spoken than
in written English (I bet, I mean, I think)
▪ NEED more frequent than REQUIRE in both written and
spoken English
▫ [in spoken English] NEED is more frequently used
▫ [in written English] REQUIRE is more frequently used
different ways dictionaries provide descriptions of
the meaning of the word brink
▪ word definition: brink ‘as far as one can go without being
in a condition or situation’ (Longman 1987)
▪ the phrase be on the brink of ‘to be almost in a new and
very different situation’: Karl is on the brink of a brilliant
acting career (Longman 1995)
▪ the phrase + reference to the emotive nature of the
situation you might be on the brink of: ‘If you are on the
brink of something, usually something important, terrible,
or exciting, you are just about to do it or experience it’
(COUBILD 1995)
“central vs. typical” use of on the brink of
▪ a bad situation rather than a good one
The economy is teetering on the brink of collapse …
Failure to communicate had brought the two nations to
the brink of war.
 teeter + on
collocation:
bring + to
dilemma for a dictionary writer:
how to be selective from a wealth of information?
brink is used in a variety of phrases
▪ the most frequent phrase: on the brink of
▪ the most frequent verb before: BE, TEETER, STAND,
be poised, HOVER
▪ the second most frequent phrase: to the brink of,
preceded by verbs such as BRING, TAKE, DRIVE, PUSH
▪ the phrases are typically followed by nouns indicating
something bad
the problem:
too much info to be dealt with in a brief dictionary entry
▪ Longman 1995 and COBUILD 1995 choose the most
frequent phrase for their definition
▪ COBUILD 1995 tries to deal with the other phrases in
examples, hoping the learner will extrapolate
▫ what is essential (the phrase on the brink of, to the brink of)
▫ what is useful (the verbs teetering and has brought)
phraseology – particularly important
in the case of very frequent words
 fairly fixed phrases
e.g. day most frequently in one day, the other day, some day
phraseology in relation to grammatical words
▪ many instances of a – in phrases such as come to a head
rather than occurring as an alternative to the or another DET
[Hunston Ch. 5, 105-6]
meaning and pattern
▪ resource for vocabulary building
the word treated as part of a phrase
rather than in isolation
▪ words with similar behaviors tend to have similar meanings
N + for ‘a reaction or feeling towards someone or something’
admiration, disdain, dislike, love, regards, respect, sympathy
▫ feeling of intense wanting: appetite, craving, desire,
hunger, need, thirst
▫ ‘looking or asking for’: bid, demand, quest, search
▪ share a pattern, share an aspect of meaning
▫ V n to n (e.g. conceded victory to the ruling party)
‘something to do with giving’: accord, administer, allocate,
allot, arrogate, assign, award, bequeath, bring, cede,
commit, concede, contribute, dedicate, delegate, deliver,
dispense, distribute, etc.
authenticity and typicality
▪ all dictionary writers agree typicality is important
[typical: the most frequent meanings, or collocates, or phraseology of an individual word or phrase]
not all agree absolute authenticity is desirable
▪
▪
(Baugh et al. 1996)
most citations are unsuitable for a learner dictionary
▫ too complex grammatically
▫ contain unnecessary difficult words or idioms
▫ make culture-dependent allusions
or references to specific contexts
Longman 1995, xvi
▫ examples are taken direct from the corpus
▫ some have been changed slightly from the corpus to remove
difficult words
▫ some have been written specially for the entry
Cambridge Learner’s Dictionary (2001)
▪ stresses naturalness and typicality rather than authenticity
COBUILD 1995
▪ make the strongest claim to authenticity itself
▫ the majority of the examples are taken word for word
from one of the texts in the Bank of English
▫ occasionally very minor changes are made
 more successful as dictionary examples
Fox (1987)
▪ invented examples often not reflect nuances of usage
▫ authentic: take aback – typically in passive:
I was taken aback by ….
▫ invented: His reaction took me aback.
▫ not make reference to specific contexts, often over-explicit
www.fti.uab.es/cg.cult.bcn/docs/Presentations/CULT2004_Varantola.ppt
Krista Varantola, The contextual turn in learning to translate
Corpus information is by definition context-bound
▪ Lexical items in corpora do not appear in isolation
▪ Corpora help learners with ‘real language’
▪ Corpora are more cumbersome to use than dictionaries
▪ We need corpus tools to get information from corpora
▪ Corpus information is not validated (peer-reviewed)
the way dictionary information is
▪ Used to have the ideal of context-free,
generally valid information
▪ The electronic format allows more freedom
▪ Greater awareness of the role of the context
▪ More collocational information
▪ More usage examples
▪ Even access to corpus examples
▪
▪
▪
▪
Awareness of semantic prosody
Meaning a much less clear-cut category
Ordering of word senses based on their ‘real’ frequency
Awareness of lexicographic relevance
Problems in present-day dictionaries
▪ Equal prominence given to rare and unusual words and
senses (Rundell)
▪ Lack of pragmatics (right - is used conversationally far
more frequently than in the sense ‘correct’’)
▪ Lack of lexicographic relevance
▪ Number of lines in the entry vs. frequency in use
inarticulacy, inarticulateness appear a total of seven
times
in the BNC, yet they are allocated several lines in a
well-
Dictionary issues cont.
• What is word meaning?
▪ Word meaning is probabilistic
▪ We discern tendencies or preferencies
▪ We need prototype theory and core meanings (Hanks)
• What do we need?
▪ A more phrasally-oriented approach with phraseology
(Cowie)
▪ information on collocational patterns and combinatory
tendencies of prefabricated units
▪ information on variation. “Conversation is a journey”
(Cf. Lakoff and Johnson). Conversation drifts, revolves
around, veers, wanders, moves. (Rundell)
What are corpora good for?
▪ They are not word-oriented.
▪ The searchable unit-size is not fixed in the way it is in
dictionaries
▪ They can be manipulated and dissected
▪ They give information of word use or of the use of
prefabricated chunks and longer stretches of text
▪ […]