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1 Corpus Onomasiology: a Study in World Englishes UCL 1 Corpus onomasiology: A study in World Englishes SETH MEHL UCL PhD 2 I, Seth Mehl, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 ABSTRACT This interdisciplinary work bridges corpus linguistics, lexical semantics, and World Englishes. Three methodological arguments are forwarded. First, only via a careful attention to the nature and type of corpus frequency measurements can we derive meaningful information from corpora. This is particularly relevant when comparing corpus frequencies to quantitative data derived via other means, such as lab-based cognitive salience tests. Second, an onomasiological approach is an extremely effective method in corpus linguistics, particularly in studies of lexical semantics. Third, semantic research based on corpora is essential to the study of language in use, including the study of World Englishes. Building on these methodological arguments, this work analyses lexical semantic variation in three highly polysemic verbs – make, take, and give – in the International Corpus of English, representing Singapore, Hong Kong, and Great Britain. This microlinguistic analysis demonstrates the value of the three methodological arguments. The study uncovers previously undiscussed onomasiological regional variation in written and spoken linguistic norms, and concludes that the three verbs exhibit degrees of delexicality which are consistent across regions. These findings challenge some established theoretical frameworks for World Englishes, and the impact for World Englishes as a field is discussed. The study establishes a link between: onomasiological corpus frequencies of each of the words’ senses in speech; and reported cognitive salience measurements for those senses. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Tables ........................................................................................................... 6 Table of Figures ........................................................................................................ 11 Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. 20 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 21 Part 1: Theoretical and methodological arguments ........................................... 26 2. Corpus linguistics ................................................................................................. 27 2.1. Why corpora? ................................................................................................ 27 2.2. Experimental design and statistics: The nature of frequencies...................... 33 2.3. Semasiology and onomasiology .................................................................... 47 3. Lexical semantics ................................................................................................. 59 3.1. What constitutes lexical semantics? .............................................................. 59 3.2. Corpus onomasiology: Identifying semantic alternates ................................ 65 3.3. Corpus polysemy: Identifying discrete meanings ......................................... 69 3.4. Polysemy and corpus frequency: The case of light verbs ............................. 84 4. World Englishes ................................................................................................... 94 4.1. Frameworks for World Englishes.................................................................. 94 4.2. Approaches to World Englishes .................................................................. 107 4.3. World Englishes and lexical semantics ....................................................... 111 Section 2: Application and experimentation ................................................... 121 5. Methods .............................................................................................................. 122 5.1. Regions ........................................................................................................ 122 5.2. Corpora ........................................................................................................ 127 5.3. Words and meanings ................................................................................... 134 5.4. The methods summarized ............................................................................ 136 6. Make ................................................................................................................... 145 6.1. Literature review and hypothesis ................................................................ 145 6.2. Findings ....................................................................................................... 160 7. Take .................................................................................................................... 208 7.1. Hypothesis ................................................................................................... 208 7.2. Findings ....................................................................................................... 216 8. Give .................................................................................................................... 253 8.1. Hypothesis ................................................................................................... 253 5 8.2. Findings ....................................................................................................... 259 9. Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 287 9.1. The lexis: make, take, and give ................................................................... 287 9.2. Impact: World Englishes ............................................................................. 292 9.3. Impact: Cognitive Linguistics ..................................................................... 299 9.4. In closing ..................................................................................................... 321 Appendix ................................................................................................................ 326 Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 341 Primary Sources ................................................................................................. 341 References .......................................................................................................... 341 6 TABLE OF TABLES Table 1: Categorization of English varieties in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Great Britain, according to Kachru (1985) and Schneider (2007) ....... 123 Table 2: Text types in the International Corpus of English. Numbers in parentheses indicate number of 2,000-word texts of each type in the corpus ................................................................................................... 129 Table 3: Instances of make in ICE-Singapore, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB ............ 162 Table 4: Instances of Concerete/Delexical Ambiguity for make in ICE-SIN, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB .......................................................................... 174 Table 5: Instances of make with two concrete Direct Objects, two delexical Direct Objects, and two abstract Direct Objects in ICE-SIN, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB. ......................................................................................... 176 Table 6: Alternates for concrete make, as evidenced in ICE-SIN, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB ................................................................................................. 179 Table 7: Verbs with the sense ‘Produce (Concrete, Non-Food)’ occurring with the highly frequent concrete Direct Object product in ICE-SIN, ICE- HK, and ICE-GB. Numbers in parentheses represent the number of instances of each verb in each corpus. ................................................. 185 Table 8: Abstract Direct Objects of make in ICE-SIN, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB. These constructions were originally categorized as representing the sense ‘Produce (Abstract)’, but that sense proved not to be an internally coherent category. Numbers in parentheses represent number of occurrences of each construction in each corpus. ................................ 197 Table 9: Instances of take in ICE-Singapore, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB .............. 217 Table 10: Instances of take with the sense Attribute (Abstract) and Attribute (Concrete) in ICE-SIN, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB. ................................... 223 Table 11: Instances of take with the sense Transfer (Concrete); with the combined senses Transfer (Concrete) and Adopt (Assume Ownership); and with the sense Adopt (Assume Ownership, Concrete) in ICE-SIN, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB. ......................................................................... 230 7 Table 12: Alternates for concrete take, as evidenced in ICE-SIN, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB ................................................................................................. 236 Table 13: Direct Objects of take with the sense ‘Adopt/Assume’ in ICE-SIN, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB .......................................................................... 242 Table 14: Instances of give in ICE-Singapore, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB ............ 260 Table 15: Instances of give with three types of coordinated Direct Object in ICE-SIN, ICE-HK, and ICE-GB .........................................................
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