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Correia Saavedra, David
Nom
Correia Saavedra, David
Affiliation principale
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Doctorant
Email
david.correiasaavedra@unine.ch
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Voici les éléments 1 - 7 sur 7
- PublicationAccès libreMeaning differences between English clippings and their source words: A corpus-based study(2023)
; ; Jennifer RainsThis paper uses corpus data and methods of distributional semantics in order to study English clippings such as dorm (< dormitory), memo (< memorandum), or quake (< earthquake). We investigate whether systematic meaning differences between clippings and their source words can be detected. The analysis is based on a sample of 50 English clippings. Each of the clippings is represented by a concordance of 100 examples in context that were gathered from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. We compare clippings and their source words both at the aggregate level and in terms of comparisons between individual clippings and their source words. The data show that clippings tend to be used in contexts that represent involved text production, which aligns with the idea that clipped words signal familiarity with their referents. It is further observed that individual clippings and their source words partly diverge in their distributional profiles, reflecting both overlap and differences with regard to their meanings. We interpret these findings against the theoretical background of Construction Grammar and specifically the Principle of No Synonymy. - PublicationAccès libreA multivariate approach to English Clippings(2021-9-30)This paper addresses the morphological word formation process that is known as clipping. In English, that process yields shortened word forms such as lab (< laboratory), exam (< examination), or gator (< alligator). It is frequently argued (Davy 2000, Durkin 2009, Haspelmath & Sims 2010, Don 2014) that clipping is highly variable and that it is difficult to predict how a given source word will be shortened. We draw on recent work (Lappe 2007, Jamet 2009, Berg 2011, Alber & Arndt-Lappe 2012, Arndt-Lappe 2018) in order to challenge that view. Our main hypothesis is that English clipping follows predictable tendencies, that these tendencies can be captured by a probabilistic, multifactorial model, and that the features of that model can be explained functionally in terms of cognitive, discourse-pragmatic, and phonological factors. Cognitive factors include the principle of least effort (Zipf 1949), an important discourse-pragmatic factor is the recoverability of the source word (Tournier 1985), and phonological factors include issues of stress and syllable structure (Lappe 2007). While the individual influence of these factors on clipping has been recognized, their interaction and their relative importance remains to be fully understood. The empirical analysis in this paper will use Hierarchical Configural Frequency Analysis (Krauth & Lienert 1973, Gries 2008) on the basis of a large, newly compiled database of more than 2000 English clippings. Our analysis allows us to detect regularities in the way speakers of English create clippings. We argue that there are several English clipping schemas that are optimized for processability.
- PublicationAccès libreThe unidirectionality of semantic changes in grammaticalization: an experimental approach to the asymmetric priming hypothesis(2018)
; Why is semantic change in grammaticalization typically unidirectional? It is a well-established finding that in grammaticalizing constructions, more concrete meanings tend to evolve into more schematic meanings. Jäger & Rosenbach (2008) appeal to the psychological phenomenon of asymmetric priming in order to explain this tendency. This article aims to evaluate their proposal on the basis of experimental psycholinguistic evidence. Asymmetric priming is a pattern of cognitive association in which one idea strongly evokes another (i.e. paddle strongly evokes water), while that second idea does not evoke the first one with the same force (water only weakly evokes paddle). Asymmetric priming would elegantly explain why semantic change in grammaticalization tends to be unidirectional, as in the case of English be going to, which has evolved out of the lexical verb go. As yet, empirical engagement with Jäger & Rosenbach's hypothesis has been limited. We present experimental evidence from a maze task (Forster et al. 2009), in which we test whether asymmetric priming obtains between lexical forms (such as go) and their grammaticalized counterparts (be going to). On the asymmetric priming hypothesis, the former should prime the latter, but not vice versa. Contrary to the hypothesis, we observe a negative priming effect: speakers who have recently been exposed to a lexical element are significantly slower to process its grammaticalized variant. We interpret this observation as a horror aequi phenomenon (Rohdenburg & Mondorf 2003). - PublicationAccès libreWhy are grammatical elements more evenly dispersed than lexical elements? Assessing the roles of text frequency and semantic generality(2017)
; Grammatical elements such as determiners, conjunctions or pronouns are very evenly dispersed across natural language data. By contrast, the uses of lexical elements have a stronger tendency to occur in bursts that are interspersed by long lulls. This paper considers two alternative explanations for this difference. First, it could be hypothesised that the more even distribution of grammatical elements is merely an effect of an element’s high text frequency. Alternatively, it could be argued that a more even distribution is a symptom of greater generality in meaning. In order to assess the impact of both frequency and semantic generality, we conducted a corpus-based study that contrasts lexical and grammatical elements in Present-Day English. Our results suggest that evenness of dispersion is chiefly an effect of high frequency. - PublicationAccès libreUsing token-based semantic vector spaces for corpus-linguistic analyses: From practical applications to tests of theoretical claims(2017)
; This paper presents token-based semantic vector spaces as a tool that can be applied in corpus-linguistic analyses such as word sense comparisons, comparisons of synonymous lexical items, and matching of concordance lines with a given text. We demonstrate how token-based semantic vector spaces are created, and we illustrate the kinds of result that can be obtained with this approach. Our main argument is that token-based semantic vector spaces are not only useful for practical corpus-linguistic applications but also for the investigation of theory-driven questions. We illustrate this point with a discussion of the asymmetric priming hypothesis (Jäger and Rosenbach 2008). The asymmetric priming hypothesis, which states that grammaticalizing constructions will be primed by their lexical sources but not vice versa, makes a number of empirically testable predictions. We operationalize and test these predictions, concluding that token-based semantic vector spaces yield conclusions that are relevant for linguistic theory-building. - PublicationAccès libreGive me your name and I'll tell you whether you speak with an accent: The effect of proper names ethnicity on listener expectations(2016-12-5)
; The mastery of a national language tends to be regarded as a key element in foreigners’ integration in Switzerland and as a gateway to equal opportunity. In this article, the limitations of this claim are explored through a study measuring the effect of proper names’ ethnicity on speech perception. A hundred and fifty Swiss respondents had to rate six speakers who were presented as candidates for a job as a communication manager in a Swiss bank. These six speakers spent most of their lives in French-speaking Switzerland and spoke the Standard variety. Our findings indicate that a proper name with an ethnic minority component can result in their bearers being judged as having more foreign accent and as being less suitable for the job. Results are discussed in terms of a discrepancy between cultural nationality and legal citizenship in modern nation-states. This article also shows that studying the effect of proper names, and more generally fine-grained non-verbal cues, on speech perception is a promising research domain in the sociolinguistics of migration, as it provides us with a multi-dimensional appreciation of ethnic identities.