1. Corpus
2. Chunks
3. Frequent Words
4. Collocations
5. Forbidden Words
6. Idioms
7. Language and the Internet
8. Strategies to improve Vocabulary
Friday, November 26, 2010
Corpus Linguistics
Corpus linguistics is the study of language as expressed in samples (corpora) or "real world" text. This method represents a digestive approach to deriving a set of abstract rules by which a natural language is governed or else relates to another language. Originally done by hand, corpora are now largely derived by an automated process.
The corpus approach runs counter to Noam Chomsky's view that real language is riddled with performance-related errors, thus requiring careful analysis of small speech samples obtained in a highly controlled laboratory setting[citation needed].
The problem of laboratory-selected sentences is similar to that facing lab-based psychology: researchers do not have any measure of the ethnographic representativity of their data.
Corpus linguistics does away with Chomsky's competence/performance split[citation needed]: adherents believe that reliable language analysis best occurs on field-collected samples, in natural contexts and with minimal experimental interference. Within corpus linguistics there are divergent views as to the value of corpus annotation, from John Sinclair advocating minimal annotation and allowing texts to 'speak for themselves', to others, such as the Survey of English Usage team (based in University College, London) advocating annotation as a path to greater linguistic understanding and rigour.
Source: Wikipedia.org
CORPORA
AMERICAN NATIONAL CORPUS (ANC)
BERGEN CORPUS OF LONDON TEENAGER LANGUAGE (COLT)
BRITISH ACADEMIC SPOKEN ENGLISH CORPUS (BASE)
BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS (BNC)
CAMBRIDGE AND NOTTINGHAM CORPUS OF DISCOURSE IN ENGLISH (CANCODE)
CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL CORPUS (CIC)
COLLINS WORDBANKS ONLINE ENGLISH CORPUS
6 Online Corpus
What can we use Corpus with our students for?
Mainly to keep them updated about common colloquial language: idioms, collocations, slang, reduced forms which they may need as they encounter real English in movies or songs. Also, to make a research project.
The corpus approach runs counter to Noam Chomsky's view that real language is riddled with performance-related errors, thus requiring careful analysis of small speech samples obtained in a highly controlled laboratory setting[citation needed].
The problem of laboratory-selected sentences is similar to that facing lab-based psychology: researchers do not have any measure of the ethnographic representativity of their data.
Corpus linguistics does away with Chomsky's competence/performance split[citation needed]: adherents believe that reliable language analysis best occurs on field-collected samples, in natural contexts and with minimal experimental interference. Within corpus linguistics there are divergent views as to the value of corpus annotation, from John Sinclair advocating minimal annotation and allowing texts to 'speak for themselves', to others, such as the Survey of English Usage team (based in University College, London) advocating annotation as a path to greater linguistic understanding and rigour.
Source: Wikipedia.org
CORPORA
AMERICAN NATIONAL CORPUS (ANC)
BERGEN CORPUS OF LONDON TEENAGER LANGUAGE (COLT)
BRITISH ACADEMIC SPOKEN ENGLISH CORPUS (BASE)
BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS (BNC)
CAMBRIDGE AND NOTTINGHAM CORPUS OF DISCOURSE IN ENGLISH (CANCODE)
CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL CORPUS (CIC)
COLLINS WORDBANKS ONLINE ENGLISH CORPUS
6 Online Corpus
What can we use Corpus with our students for?
Mainly to keep them updated about common colloquial language: idioms, collocations, slang, reduced forms which they may need as they encounter real English in movies or songs. Also, to make a research project.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Idioms
An idiom (Latin: idioma, “special property”, f. Greek: ἰδίωμα — idiōma, “special feature, special phrasing”, f. Greek: ἴδιος — idios, “one’s own”) is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made.[1] There are estimated to be at least 25,000 idiomatic expressions in the English language.[2]
In linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of speech contradicting the principle of compositionality; yet the matter remains debated. John Saeed defines an “idiom” as words collocated that became affixed to each other until metamorphosing into a fossilised term.[3] This collocation — words commonly used in a group — redefines each component word in the word-group and becomes an idiomatic expression. The words develop a specialized meaning as an entity, as an idiom. Moreover, an idiom is an expression, word, or phrase whose sense means something different from what the words literally imply. When a speaker uses an idiom, the listener might mistake its actual meaning, if he or she has not heard this figure of speech before.[4] Idioms usually do not translate well; in some cases, when an idiom is translated into another language, either its meaning is changed or it is meaningless.
Source: Wikipedia
Idioms are: A set expression of two or more words that means something other than the literal meanings of its individual words. Adjective: idiomatic.
Examples and Observations:
"Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint."
(Don Marquis)
"Fads are the kiss of death. When the fad goes away, you go with it."
(Conway Twitty)
"American idioms drive me up the hall!"
(Ziva David in NCIS)
"I worked the graveyard shift with old people, which was really demoralizing, because the old people didn't have a chance in hell of ever getting out."
(Kate Millett)
Kirk: If we play our cards right, we may be able to find out when those whales are being released.
Spock: How will playing cards help?
(Captain James T. Kirk and Spock in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 1986)
"If natural language had been designed by a logician, idioms would not exist."
(Philip Johnson-Laird, 1993)
"Idioms, in general, are deeply connected to culture. . . . Agar (1991) proposes that biculturalism and bilingualism are two sides of the same coin. Engaged in the intertwined process of culture change, learners have to understand the full meaning of idioms."
(Sam Glucksberg, Understanding Figurative Language. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001)
"Shakespeare is credited with coining more than 2,000 words, infusing thousands more existing ones with electrifying new meanings and forging idioms that would last for centuries. 'A fool's paradise,' 'at one fell swoop,' 'heart's content,' 'in a pickle,' 'send him packing,' 'too much of a good thing,' 'the game is up,' 'good riddance,' 'love is blind,' and 'a sorry sight,' to name a few."
(David Wolman, Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling. Harper, 2010)
"Idioms vary in 'transparency': that is, whether their meaning can be derived from the literal meanings of the individual words. For example, make up [one's] mind is rather transparent in suggesting the meaning 'reach a decision,' while kick the bucket is far from transparent in representing the meaning 'die.'"
(Douglas Biber et al., Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson, 2002)
"The thought hit me that this was a pretty pathetic way to kick the bucket--being accidentally poisoned during a photo shoot, of all things--and I started weeping at the idiocy of it all."
(Lara St. John)
Source: http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/idiomterm.htm
More Info
In linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of speech contradicting the principle of compositionality; yet the matter remains debated. John Saeed defines an “idiom” as words collocated that became affixed to each other until metamorphosing into a fossilised term.[3] This collocation — words commonly used in a group — redefines each component word in the word-group and becomes an idiomatic expression. The words develop a specialized meaning as an entity, as an idiom. Moreover, an idiom is an expression, word, or phrase whose sense means something different from what the words literally imply. When a speaker uses an idiom, the listener might mistake its actual meaning, if he or she has not heard this figure of speech before.[4] Idioms usually do not translate well; in some cases, when an idiom is translated into another language, either its meaning is changed or it is meaningless.
Source: Wikipedia
Idioms are: A set expression of two or more words that means something other than the literal meanings of its individual words. Adjective: idiomatic.
Examples and Observations:
"Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint."
(Don Marquis)
"Fads are the kiss of death. When the fad goes away, you go with it."
(Conway Twitty)
"American idioms drive me up the hall!"
(Ziva David in NCIS)
"I worked the graveyard shift with old people, which was really demoralizing, because the old people didn't have a chance in hell of ever getting out."
(Kate Millett)
Kirk: If we play our cards right, we may be able to find out when those whales are being released.
Spock: How will playing cards help?
(Captain James T. Kirk and Spock in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, 1986)
"If natural language had been designed by a logician, idioms would not exist."
(Philip Johnson-Laird, 1993)
"Idioms, in general, are deeply connected to culture. . . . Agar (1991) proposes that biculturalism and bilingualism are two sides of the same coin. Engaged in the intertwined process of culture change, learners have to understand the full meaning of idioms."
(Sam Glucksberg, Understanding Figurative Language. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001)
"Shakespeare is credited with coining more than 2,000 words, infusing thousands more existing ones with electrifying new meanings and forging idioms that would last for centuries. 'A fool's paradise,' 'at one fell swoop,' 'heart's content,' 'in a pickle,' 'send him packing,' 'too much of a good thing,' 'the game is up,' 'good riddance,' 'love is blind,' and 'a sorry sight,' to name a few."
(David Wolman, Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling. Harper, 2010)
"Idioms vary in 'transparency': that is, whether their meaning can be derived from the literal meanings of the individual words. For example, make up [one's] mind is rather transparent in suggesting the meaning 'reach a decision,' while kick the bucket is far from transparent in representing the meaning 'die.'"
(Douglas Biber et al., Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson, 2002)
"The thought hit me that this was a pretty pathetic way to kick the bucket--being accidentally poisoned during a photo shoot, of all things--and I started weeping at the idiocy of it all."
(Lara St. John)
Source: http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/idiomterm.htm
More Info
Collocations
Within the area of corpus linguistics, collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. The term is often used in the same sense as linguistic government.
Collocation defines restrictions on how words can be used together, for example, which prepositions are used with ("governed by") particular verbs, or which verbs and nouns are typically used together. An example of this (from Michael Halliday) is the collocation strong tea. While the same meaning could be conveyed through the roughly equivalent powerful tea, the fact is that tea is thought of being strong rather than powerful. A similar observation holds for powerful computers, which is preferred over strong computers.
Collocations are examples of lexical units. Collocations should not be confused with idioms although both are similar in that there is a degree of meaning present in the collocation or idiom that is not entirely compositional. With idioms, the meaning is completely non-compositional whereas collocations are mostly compositional.
Source: Wikipedia
Collocations
Tell me who you go with and I'll tell you who you are.
What is a collocation?
A collocation is two or more words that often go together. These combinations just sound "right" to native English speakers, who use them all the time. On the other hand, other combinations may be unnatural and just sound "wrong". Look at these examples:
Natural English... Unnatural English...
the fast train
fast food the quick train
quick food
a quick shower
a quick meal a fast shower
a fast meal
Why learn collocations?
Your language will be more natural and more easily understood.
You will have alternative and richer ways of expressing yourself.
It is easier for our brains to remember and use language in chunks or blocks rather than as single words.
How to learn collocations
Be aware of collocations, and try to recognize them when you see or hear them.
Treat collocations as single blocks of language. Think of them as individual blocks or chunks, and learn strongly support, not strongly + support.
When you learn a new word, write down other words that collocate with it (remember rightly, remember distinctly, remember vaguely, remember vividly).
Read as much as possible. Reading is an excellent way to learn vocabulary and collocations in context and naturally.
Revise what you learn regularly. Practice using new collocations in context as soon as possible after learning them.
Learn collocations in groups that work for you. You could learn them by topic (time, number, weather, money, family) or by a particular word (take action, take a chance, take an exam).
You can find information on collocations in any good learner's dictionary. And you can also find specialized dictionaries of collocations.
Types of Collocation
There are several different types of collocation made from combinations of verb, noun, adjective etc. Some of the most common types are:
Adverb + Adjective: completely satisfied (NOT downright satisfied)
Adjective + Noun: excruciating pain (NOT excruciating joy)
Noun + Noun: a surge of anger (NOT a rush of anger)
Noun + Verb: lions roar (NOT lions shout)
Verb + Noun: commit suicide (NOT undertake suicide)
Verb + Expression With Preposition: burst into tears (NOT blow up in tears)
Verb + Adverb: wave frantically (NOT wave feverishly)
Source: English Club
Sample Collocations
Collocations List
Collocations Quizz
Collocation defines restrictions on how words can be used together, for example, which prepositions are used with ("governed by") particular verbs, or which verbs and nouns are typically used together. An example of this (from Michael Halliday) is the collocation strong tea. While the same meaning could be conveyed through the roughly equivalent powerful tea, the fact is that tea is thought of being strong rather than powerful. A similar observation holds for powerful computers, which is preferred over strong computers.
Collocations are examples of lexical units. Collocations should not be confused with idioms although both are similar in that there is a degree of meaning present in the collocation or idiom that is not entirely compositional. With idioms, the meaning is completely non-compositional whereas collocations are mostly compositional.
Source: Wikipedia
Collocations
Tell me who you go with and I'll tell you who you are.
What is a collocation?
A collocation is two or more words that often go together. These combinations just sound "right" to native English speakers, who use them all the time. On the other hand, other combinations may be unnatural and just sound "wrong". Look at these examples:
Natural English... Unnatural English...
the fast train
fast food the quick train
quick food
a quick shower
a quick meal a fast shower
a fast meal
Why learn collocations?
Your language will be more natural and more easily understood.
You will have alternative and richer ways of expressing yourself.
It is easier for our brains to remember and use language in chunks or blocks rather than as single words.
How to learn collocations
Be aware of collocations, and try to recognize them when you see or hear them.
Treat collocations as single blocks of language. Think of them as individual blocks or chunks, and learn strongly support, not strongly + support.
When you learn a new word, write down other words that collocate with it (remember rightly, remember distinctly, remember vaguely, remember vividly).
Read as much as possible. Reading is an excellent way to learn vocabulary and collocations in context and naturally.
Revise what you learn regularly. Practice using new collocations in context as soon as possible after learning them.
Learn collocations in groups that work for you. You could learn them by topic (time, number, weather, money, family) or by a particular word (take action, take a chance, take an exam).
You can find information on collocations in any good learner's dictionary. And you can also find specialized dictionaries of collocations.
Types of Collocation
There are several different types of collocation made from combinations of verb, noun, adjective etc. Some of the most common types are:
Adverb + Adjective: completely satisfied (NOT downright satisfied)
Adjective + Noun: excruciating pain (NOT excruciating joy)
Noun + Noun: a surge of anger (NOT a rush of anger)
Noun + Verb: lions roar (NOT lions shout)
Verb + Noun: commit suicide (NOT undertake suicide)
Verb + Expression With Preposition: burst into tears (NOT blow up in tears)
Verb + Adverb: wave frantically (NOT wave feverishly)
Source: English Club
Sample Collocations
Collocations List
Collocations Quizz
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