Options
Clipping in a cross-linguistic perspective
Titre du projet
Clipping in a cross-linguistic perspective
Description
This project studies shortened words such as 'prof' for 'professor' or 'exam' for examination. In linguistics, these words are known as clippings. How do speakers coin new clipped words? Why do speakers of English shorten 'laboratory' to 'lab', while speakers of French shorten 'laboratoire' to 'labo'? These questions have not received full answers in existing linguistic work. The research in this project will try to uncover the regularities that underlie speakers' behavior when they produce shortened variants of existing words. Based on a large database of shortened words in English and French, the project will create a computational model that allows us to understand what factors play a role in clipping. The point of departure for this research is the hypothesis that clipping follows predictable tendencies, that these tendencies can be described statistically, and that the features of that model can be explained in terms of psychological and linguistic factors. In order to test the validity of this model, the project will carry out experimental studies in which speakers will be asked to shorten existing words. The performance of the statistical model will be compared systematically to what the speakers do. This comparison will allow us to gain a deeper understanding of how clipping works as a linguistic phenomenon.
Chercheur principal
Statut
Ongoing
Date de début
1 Janvier 2020
Date de fin
31 Décembre 2023
Organisations
Identifiant interne
42824
identifiant
3 Résultats
Voici les éléments 1 - 3 sur 3
- 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 libreCorpus linguistics meets historical linguistics and construction grammar: how far have we come, and where do we go from here?(2024-03-23)This paper aims to give an overview of corpus-based research that investigates processes of language change from the theoretical perspective of Construction Grammar. Starting in the early 2000s, a dynamic community of researchers has come together in order to contribute to this effort. Among the different lines of work that have characterized this enterprise, this paper discusses the respective roles of qualitative approaches, diachronic collostructional analysis, multivariate techniques, distributional semantic models, and analyses of network structure. The paper tries to contextualize these approaches and to offer pointers for future research.
- PublicationMétadonnées seulementAn electronic database of English clippings(2024-04-12)
; ; Rains, Jennifer