Unit 10 Corpora and language studies3

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1、10.9SemanticsWehavealreadytoucheduponsemanticsatthelexicallevelwhenwediscussedsemanticprosody/preferenceandpatternmeaningsinunit10.2.Butcorporaarealsomoregenerallyimportantinsemanticsinthattheyprovideobjectivecriteriaforassigningmeaningstolinguisticitemsandestablishmorefirml

2、ythenotionsoffuzzycategoriesandgradience(seeMcEneryandWilson2001:112-113),asdemonstratedbyMindt(1991).Thissectionconsiderssemanticsinmoregeneralterms,withreferencetothetwofunctionsofcorpusdataasidentifiedabovebyMcEneryandWilson(ibid).Corporahavebeenusedtodetectsubtlesemantic

3、distinctionsinnearsynonyms.Tognini-Bonelli(2001:35-39),forexample,findsthatlargelycanbeusedtointroducecauseandreasonandco-occurwithmorphologicalandsemanticnegatives,butbroadlycannot;yetwhilebroadlycanbeusedasadiscoursedisjunctforargumentationandtoexpresssimilarityoragreement

4、,largelycannot.Gilquin(2003)seekstocombinethecorpus-basedapproachwiththecognitivetheoryofframesemanticsinherstudyofthecausativeverbsGETandHAVE.Thestudyshowsthatthetwoverbshaveanumberoffeaturesincommonbutalsoexhibitimportantdifferences.Forexample,bothverbsareusedpredominantly

5、withananimatecauser.YetwhilewithGETthecauseeismostoftenanimate,thefrequenciesofanimateandinanimatecauseesareverysimilarwithHAVE.Nevertheless,whencauseesareexpressedasanobject(i.e.notdemoted),theproportionofanimatesandinanimatesisreversed,withamajorityofanimateswithGETandapre

6、dominanceofinanimateswithHAVE.WhileTognini-Bonelli(2001)andGilquin(2003)canbeconsideredasexamplesofassigningmeaningstolinguisticitems,Kaltenböck(2003)furtherexemplifiestheroleofcorpusdatainprovidingevidenceforfuzzycategoriesandgradienceinhisstudyofthesyntacticandsemanticstat

7、usofanticipatoryit.Kaltenböckfindsthatboththeapproachwhichtakesanticipatoryittohaveaninherentcataphoricfunction(i.e.referringit)andtheviewthatitisameaningless,semanticallyemptydummyelement(i.e.propit)ashavebeenproposedpreviouslyareproblematicastheyfailtotakeintoaccounttheact

8、ualuseofanticipatoryitincontext.TheanalysisofinstancesactuallyoccurringinIC