A CORPUS LINGUISTICS STUDY OF TRANSLATION CORRESPONDENCES IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN by ALEKSANDAR TRKLJA A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY School of English The University of Birmingham November 2013 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis aims at developing an analytical model for differentiation of translation correspondences and for grouping lexical items according to their semantic similarities. The model combines the language in use theory of meaning with the distributional corpus linguistics method. The identification of translation correspondences derives from the exploration of the occurrence of lexical items in the parallel corpus. The classification of translation correspondences into groups is based on the substitution principle, whereas the distinguishing features used to differentiate between lexical items emerge as a result of the study of local contexts in which these lexical items occur. The distinguishing features are analysed with the help of various statistical measurements. The results obtained indicate that the proposed model has advantages over the traditional approaches that rely on the referential theory of meaning. In addition to contributing to lexicology the model also has its applications in practical lexicography and in language teaching. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisors Professor Wolfgang Teubert and Dr. Paul Thompson for their thoughtful and constructive supervision. I am indebted to Biman Chakraborty, Gabriela Saldanha, Geoff Barnbrook, Mary Snell-Hornby, Nick Groom, Oliver Mason, Pernilla Danielsson, Susan Hunston and my fellow research students for many discussions and useful advices. I also want to thank my family and friends and in particular my wife Barbara N. Wiesinger for her continued support during this long project. Contents List of Tables v List of Figures vi List of Tables in Appendix vii List of Figures in Appendix vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 This thesis 1 1.2 Bilingual lexicography and onomasiological dictionaries 4 1.3 Contrastive corpus studies 8 1.4 Language in use theory of meaning 9 1.5 Research questions 11 1.6 Outline of the thesis 11 CHAPTER 2 PREVIOUS APPROACHES 13 2.1 Introduction 13 2.2 Componential approaches to semantic fields 14 2.2.1 Adrienne Lehrer’s analysis of cooking words 15 2.2.2 Karcher’s study of water words in English and German 20 2.3 Frame Semantics 23 2.4 Corpus approaches to semantic fields 28 2.4.1 Core words in semantic fields 28 2.4.2 Semantic mirrors 31 2.5 Studies beyond single words 35 2.5.1 Contextually defined translation equivalents 35 2.5.2 The Bilexicon project 37 2.6 Conclusion 40 CHAPTER 3 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 41 3.1 Introduction 41 i 3.2 Theory and methodology 42 3.2.1 Language in use theory of meaning 42 3.2.2 Distributional approach 44 3.2.3 Translation correspondences 46 3.2.4 Sublanguages and local grammars 49 3.2.5 Corpus categories and corpus tools 52 3.2.6 Probability and differences between lexical items 56 3.2.7 Conclusion 59 3.3 Corpora 61 3.4 Data analysis procedure 63 3.5 Terms explained and conventions 65 CHAPTER 4 IDENTIFICATION OF TRANSLATION CORRESPONDENCES 67 4.1 Introduction 67 4.2 Identification of the TLD {CAUSE PROBLEM} and {PROBLEM BEREITEN} 67 4.3 Conclusion 75 CHAPTER 5 LEXICAL ITEMS FROM THE TLD {CAUSE PROBLEM} AND {PROBLEM BEREITEN} 77 5.1 Introduction 77 5.2 TLD {CAUSE PROBLEM} 78 5.2.1 Grammar structures 78 5.2.1.1 A local grammar of the lexical items from the TLD {CAUSE PROBLEM} 78 5.2.1.2 Conclusion 87 5.2.2 An intralinguistic analysis of items from the TLD {CAUSE PROBLEM} 88 5.2.2.1 General distribution 88 5.2.2.2 Modifiers of verbal elements 91 5.2.2.3 Modifiers of nominal elements 93 5.2.2.4 Unique collocates 108 5.2.2.5 Conclusion 111 5.2.3 An interlinguistic analysis of the items from the TLD {CAUSE PROBLEM} 115 5.2.3.1 General principles 115 5.2.3.2 Correspondence potential of English translation correspondences 117 5.2.3.2 Conclusion 121 5.3 TLD {PROBLEM BEREITEN} 121 5.3.1 Grammar structures 122 5.3.1.1 A local grammar of the lexical items from the TLD {PROBLEM BEREITEN} 122 5.3.1.2 Conclusion 129 5.3.2 An intralinguistic analysis of the items from the TLD {PROBLEM BEREITEN} 131 ii 5.3.2.1 General distributional differences 131 5.3.2.2 Co-occurrence with modifiers of verbal elements 133 5.3.2.3 Co-occurrence with the modifiers of nominal elements 135 5.3.2.4 Unique collocates 151 5.3.2.5 Conclusion 152 5.3.3 An interlinguistic analysis of the lexical items from the TLD {PROBLEM BEREITEN} 156 5.3.3.1 Correspondence potential of the German translation correspondences 156 5.3.3.2 Conclusion 159 CHAPTER 6 IDENTIFICATION OF THE TLD {MANY COLLECTIVES} AND {VIELE KOLLEKTIVA} AND TLSD {MANY PROBLEMS} AND {VIELE PROBLEME} 161 6.1 Introduction 161 6.2 Translation lexical domains {MANY COLLECTIVES} and {VIELE KOLLEKTIVA} 165 6.3 Translation lexical sub-domains {MANY PROBLEMS} and {VIELE PROBLEME} 167 6.4 Conclusion 168 CHAPTER 7 TLD {MANY COLLECTIVES} AND {VIELE KOLLEKTIVA} AND TLSD {MANY PROBLEMS} AND {VIELE PROBLEME} 170 7.1 Introduction 170 7.2 TLD {MANY COLLECTIVES} and TLSd {MANY PROBLEMS} 171 7.2.1 Frequency and the number of collocates 172 7.2.2 Classification of COLLECTIVES 175 7.2.3 Shared collocates 181 7.2.4 Unique collocates 187 7.2.5 Lexical items from the TLSd {MANY PROBLEMS} 188 7.2.6 Correspondence potential 190 7.3 TLD {VIELE KOLLEKTIVA} and TLSd {VIELE PROBLEME} 194 7.3.1 Frequency and the number of collocates 194 7.3.2 Classification of KOLLEKTIVA 197 7.3.3 Shared collocates 201 7.3.4 Unique collocates 206 7.3.5 Lexical items from the TLSd {VIELE PROBLEME} 207 7.3.6 Correspondence potential 209 7.3.7 Conclusion 213 CHAPTER 8 DISCUSSION OF RESULTS AND CONCLUSION 215 8.1 Introduction 215 iii 8.2 Review of findings 217 8.3 Significance of findings 220 8.3.1 Contribution to lexicology 220 8.3.2 Contribution to practical lexicography 224 8.3.2.1 Selection of options 224 8.3.2.2 Bilingual learners’ dictionaries 229 8.3.2.3 Translation dictionaries 236 8.3.3 Contribution to the use of translation in language teaching 238 8.4 Limitations of the study and further research 242 REFERENCES 244 I) APPENDIX A 258 II) APPENDIX B 266 iv List of Tables Table 2.1: The semantic field cooking (adapted from Lehrer, 1974: 31) ................................................. 17 Table 2.2: A semantic and grammatical description of the verb argue (from Boas, 2002: 1367) ........... 25 Table 3.1: Representation of a local grammar of evaluation (adapted from Hunston and Sinclair, 2000: 91) ............................................................................................................................................................ 51 Table 4.1: Typical collocates of the noun <rise> ...................................................................................... 68 Table 5.1: Lexical items from the TLD {CAUSE PROBLEM} ....................................................................... 79 Table 5.2: Grammatical structures for <cause problem> ........................................................................ 80 Table 5.3: Local grammar classes of modifiers that occur with <problem> and <difficulty> .................. 82 Table 5.4: Local grammar structures for lexical items from the TLD {CAUSE PROBLEM} ........................ 88 Table 5.5: Raw frequency of English lexical items in ukWaC ................................................................... 89 Table 5.6: Co-occurrence of verbal elements with the lemmata <problem> and <difficulty> ................ 90 Table 5.7: Co-occurrence of verbal elements with four word forms of the lemmata <problem> and <difficulty> ............................................................................................................................................... 91 Table 5.8: The number of modifiers and frequency of lexical units that collocate with the word form problems .................................................................................................................................................. 98 Table 5.9: Frequency and the number of modifiers for lexical units that collocate with the word form problem .................................................................................................................................................. 104 Table 5.10: The number of modifiers and frequency of lexical units that collocate with the word form difficulties ............................................................................................................................................... 106 Table 5.11: The number of modifiers and frequency of lexical units that collocate with the word form difficulty ................................................................................................................................................. 108 Table 5.12: Distinguishing features for lexical items from the TLD {CAUSE PROBLEM} .......................