Transcript Lexical patterning in academic talk

Lexical patterning in
academic talk
Pat Byrd
Georgia State University
[email protected]
http://hpbyrd.com/PatByrd/
Lexical Pattern defined
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Pattern =
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Repeated word or repeated sets of words
Repeated =
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NOT a syntactic pattern
Buta large
speakers/writers in
A repetition of a word
Or a set of words
Repeated by many
corpus
Repeated by many speakers/writers but hard to
find in a particular corpus
Repeated by a single speaker/writer in a corpus
text…and maybe used by others but perhaps that
person’s habit of speech
Types of lexical patterns
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Corpus studies have revealed a wide variety of often repeated
lexical patterns in all types of communication.
These include
 Single word formulas (thanks, okay)
 Two-word collocates (help & people)
 Multi-word sets with internal gaps (in the … place)
 Multi-word sets that need completion (I don’t want to….)
 Invariable multi-word sets (on the other hand)
 Phrasal verbs (look up)
 Prepositional verbs (agree with)
 Multi-word idioms (… give someone a run for … money)
 Names (Georgia State University)
 Technical terminology (degree of freedom)
 Phrase frames (the … of the, it is … to)
Conception of lexical
patterning behind this study
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#1. Language made up of a large lexicon with single
words and multi-word units
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We pull words and sets of words from memory and
combine them using syntactic rules
Word sets often overflow the traditional syntactic
boundaries of subject-predicate
#2. Prospecting ahead …Sinclair and Brazil
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Words are used with other words…when we choose a
word then we are choosing other words that are frequent
with that word
Words come with grammatical expectations. If I start a
statement with “while we” then listeners expect me to
continue on with some verb/predicate that flows from that
starting point
What we wanted to know…
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How do the prosodic chunks and the lexical patterns
interact?
How much of each sample is made up of lexical
patterns?
How do speakers combine the lexical patterns into
longer units?
What types of lexical patterns are found in the
samples? What can teachers of oral communication
make use of this approach to language analysis and
the results of such an analysis?
Process for indentifying lexical
patterns
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Divided the two samples into prosodic chunks
Analyzed the lexical patterning found in each of the prosodic
chunks
 Created a list of lexical bundles in MICASE & checked the two
lectures for appearances of any of the bundles, especially the
high frequency bundles
 Checked collocates based on MICASE
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Used chains of collocates to suggest longer patterns
Used other reference sources when MICASE data didn’t support
recognized or suspected patterns
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COCA corpus (from Brigham Young)
AWL corpus
Google
Dictionaries
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Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners of American English
Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners
Lexical patterns used by the
speakers in the samples
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Formulaic single words
Lexical Bundles
Set or semi-set multiword units that don’t rise
to the frequency level of lexical bundles in the
MICASE corpus
Collocations
MICASE Lexical bundles in the
sample lectures
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Introduction to Biology
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a lot of people
if you look at
in the in the
or something like that
the rest of the
to be able to
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Sports in Ancient Rome
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a little bit of
a lot of different
a lot of the
and then you have
and this is a
and you can see
are a lot of
as you can see
at the beginning of
at the end of
if you look at
in the case of
is going to be
thank you very much
that this is a
the beginning of the
the end of the
the rest of the
there are a lot
this is a very
we were talking about
you have to be
you look at the
Collocation
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Statistically significant relationships between
2 words
Example of collocates that come before the
word theory in the MICASE corpus:
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a, atomic, brain, Darwin’s, economic, evolutionary,
expectancy, have, his, interactionist, my, no, of,
political, quantum, etc.
Strong relationship between lexical words
and function words:
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theory + of, theory + about
Usefulness of collocations
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Show relationships between words that can be
several words apart…and might not be as easy to
notice as adjacent words
Suggest longer patterns as collocations could be
stringing together
Suggest set patterns with special meanings and
uses: my theory is ….
Suggest patterns of use for a word
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Source/origin: Darwin’s theory
Types: brain theory, evolutionary theory
Possible Idioms: my theory
Possible uses in combinations: have a theory
Visualizing lexical patterns in
the MICASE samples
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Worksheets for the two samples
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Sports in Roman history: pages 4-5 in the
handout
Introduction to biology: pages 6-8 in the handout
Tentative results
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Analysis demonstrates the importance of repetition of previously
used wording by both speakers
 These are not words and phrases that have never been used in
these combination but are words and phrases that many
speakers of English use, especially college teachers at the
beginning of terms and the beginnings of particular class
sessions
Over 90% of the words in the samples were involved in lexical
patterning
 They are not putting together their remarks by a free combination
of word to word to word but are combining widely used words
and phrases to create these introductory remarks for these
particular lectures
Prosodic chunks are a happy home for lexical patterns
Number of lexical patterns per
prosodic chunk
60
50
40
Single
2+
Fragment
30
20
10
0
Rome
Biology
Average
Lexical patterns & prosodic
chunks
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A complete chunk is based on prosody rather than
on syntax
Lexical patterns inside [complete prosodic chunks]
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1. a single word: [okay]
2. a whole more or less fixed multi-word set: [what I wanna
do today]
3. patterns that complete other patterns to build prosodic
chunks, prospecting ahead for other patterns required by
vocabulary and grammar:
 [While we] >>> [recover the technology]
 [What I wanna do today] >>>[is>>>to continue
on>>>through our rapid tour]>>>[of Roman history>>>from
the foundation of the city]>>>[down to the reign of
Augustus]
Next steps
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Analyze the lexical patterning in the content
sections of the lectures when the teachers
turn to talking about ancient Rome or biology
Consider how to use lexical patterns and
prosodic chunks in teaching EAP listening
and speaking