-snc-

1 term paper draft

topic #6, polysemous verbs with light and concrete senses, replication study of Mehl (2021), further used Gilquin (2008)

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1.1 init

“If onomasiological frequency measurements do indeed correlate with elicitation tests, potential impact would be immense. Researchers would be able to examine onomasiological frequencies in spoken corpora rather than performing elicitation tests. That possibility would facilitate cognitive research into languages and varieties around the world, without the necessity of in situ psycholinguistic testing, and would also encourage the creation of more spoken corpora.” (Mehl (2021) p.23)

1.2 method

following corpus was used to determine frequencies:

Q.1: Santa Barbara corpus of spoken American English, (UCSB et al. (2005))

the corpus data was downloaded from: https://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.ling.d7/files/sitefiles/research/SBC/SBCorpus.zip

1.2.1 corpus sample

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scb id text lfd light alt
2974 3 242 % I wanted it to be home made Q . 2974 0 make
65343 57 123 … It’s gonna get messed up. 65343 NA a-other
9465 8 567 and then I didn’t and I .. kept making like, 9465 1 make
67928 59 714 And he’s really good at making out .. the budget. 67928 1 make
35078 30 612 … God is continually .. building character. 35078 0 build
61913 53 604 and make the payroll, 61913 1 make
28500 24 25 .. Yeah. 28500 NA a-other

1.2.2 script used:

14015.concrete-abstract_HA.R

1.2.3 process:

1.2.3.1 distribution analysis

cf. (Mehl 2021, 11–14)

ICE.written ICE.spoken SBC.spoken
concrete 68 96 89
light 321 353 381
distribution of lemma /make/ over corpora. ICE data from study.

distribution of lemma /make/ over corpora. ICE data from study.

1.2.3.2 semantic alternatives to make

this contrast includes made up alternatives to /make/ that Mehl defined in his study. we do not account for the context of these alternatives in the corpus texts, i.e. all occurences are counted. Mehl contrasted only these alternate occurences which “are defined as those verbs that occur in the corpus with the same concrete direct objects as make, (take, and give,) and with a roughly equivalent meaning.” Mehl puts these under “onomasiological alternates”. (cf. Mehl (2021) p.13)

## Warning: 'xfun::attr()' is deprecated.
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semantic alternatives
Var1 Freq
build 101
construct 1
create 23
generate 4
make 89
produce 5
proportion of semantic alternatives to concrete /make/ in SBC

proportion of semantic alternatives to concrete /make/ in SBC

proportion of semantic alternatives, only equivalent meaning of alternates

proportion of semantic alternatives, only equivalent meaning of alternates 

## Warning: 'xfun::attr()' is deprecated.
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SLOT1 SLOT2 fS1 fS2 OBS EXP ASSOC COLL.STR.LOGL SIGNIF
137 finish afghan 13 2 2 0 attr 28.51461 *****
654 Filled cookie 1 6 1 0 attr 15.81813 ****
924 create Adam 13 1 1 0 attr 14.17394 ***
928 create rift 13 1 1 0 attr 14.17394 ***
930 record Simpsons 13 1 1 0 attr 14.17394 ***
1337 shovel food 1 34 1 0 attr 12.20185 ***
1338 Unsweeten food 1 34 1 0 attr 12.20185 ***
1476 filling stuff 1 46 1 0 attr 11.58948 ***
1518 create cause 13 2 1 0 attr 11.40296 ***
1519 create committee 13 2 1 0 attr 11.40296 ***
1520 create condition 13 2 1 0 attr 11.40296 ***
1784 bake bread 5 7 1 0 attr 10.48243 **
1862 roll tamale 8 5 1 0 attr 10.19627 **
2626 record trip 13 8 1 0 attr 8.15687 **
3307 record game 13 16 1 0 attr 6.71671 **
semasiological log.like of near synonymes to make

semasiological log.like of near synonymes to make

1.2.3.3 2nd approach collexeme evaluation

semasiological: sum T-score of near synonymes to make

semasiological: sum T-score of near synonymes to make

semasiological: sum T-score of near synonymes to take

semasiological: sum T-score of near synonymes to take

semasiological: p of near synonymes to make

semasiological: p of near synonymes to make

semasiological: p of near synonymes to take

semasiological: p of near synonymes to take

B: references

Gilquin, Gaëtanelle. 2008. “What You Think Ain’t What You Get: Highly Polysemous Verbs in Mind and Language.” https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal:75833.
Mehl, Seth. 2021. “What We Talk about When We Talk about Corpus Frequency: The Example of Polysemous Verbs with Light and Concrete Senses.” Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 17 (1): 223–47. https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2017-0039.
UCSB, John W. DuBois, L. Chafe Wallace, Charles Meyer, Sandra A. Thompson, Robert Englebretson, and Nii Martey. 2005. “Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English Department of Linguistics - UC Santa Barbara.” SBC. https://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/research/santa-barbara-corpus.