The Vagaries of Frequency

National audienceFrequency is a versatile concept in contemporary linguistic theories. One such theory, Cognitive Linguistics, is a usage-based approach to language that makes no principled distinction between language use and language structure. In Cognitive Linguistics, the more frequently speakers encounter a linguistic unit, the more that linguistic unit is entrenched, i.e. established as a cognitive routine (Langacker, 1987). First-generation usage-based grammars are theory-driven (Lakoff, 1987; Langacker, 1987, 1991). They make extensive reference to the role of repetition in the establishment of linguistic conventions (Bybee, 1985, 2006, 2010; Bybee & Hopper, 2001; Langacker, 1999) but do very little in the way of empirical methods. More specifically, usage-based approaches rely on a definition of frequency that is both intuitive and abstract. According to them, what is decisive to assess entrenchment is not so much the frequency that linguists can measure, but the frequency that speakers perceive in linguistic experience. Recently, a small yet growing community of cognitive linguists have begun to realize that the implications of their own theoretical framework were essentially empirical (Geeraerts, Kristiansen, & Peirsman, 2010; Gibbs, 2007; Glynn, 2010a; Gries, Hampe, & Schönefeld, 2005). Since corpus-linguistics provides a comprehensive array of methods to capture context and knowledge, it has expectedly become central in the investigation of cognitive patterns of usage (Gries & Stefanowitsch, 2006). Traditionally, corpus linguistics explores frequencies of occurrence, frequencies of co-occurrence, and measures of dispersion. More precisely, it makes a monofactorial use of frequency data: one dependent variable is correlated with the behavior of one dependent variable. This is too simple if we approach language holistically and admit that the structure of meaning is based on human experience, and that meaning "involves both conceptual content and the construal of that content" (Langacker, 2008, p. 44). Given that just about anything in language is influenced by several factors at the same time, one challenge that corpus-based Cognitive Linguistics has to address is whether quantitative analysis is possible for the study of usage-based semantics. In this lecture, I address that challenge. I first review recent works that use new usage-based methods to capture semantic relations between near-synonyms (Divjak, 2006a, 2006b, 2010; Divjak & Gries, 2008; Glynn, 2010b) before presenting my own case study. I investigate the use of two English intensifiers: quite and rather. When quite and rather modify attributive adjectives, they can occur in pre-determiner position, an idiosyncratic behavior that other intensifiers do not show: (1) I know it's a fairly / *fairly a difficult question. (2) That's proved to be a quite / quite a difficult question to answer. (3) That is a rather difficult / rather a difficult question to answer. Allerton (1987) observes that, depending on whether the adjective that quite modifies is scalar or absolutive, some restrictions apply, a sign that pre-determiner position is more than just a matter of style or formality: (4) I mean this is quite a good idea / ??a quite good idea actually. (4') This is ??quite an excellent idea / a quite excellent idea. The question that naturally arises is whether there is any difference in meaning between the pre-determiner and pre-adjectival positions of quite and rather. Another question is whether these two intensifiers are synonyms. My working hypothesis is that quite and rather have a semantic component paired with a syntactic component over and above their specification of degree. To test this hypothesis, I propose an original method that combines analytical and multivariate statistics. First, I extract all combinations from the 100M-word British National Corpus (World Edition). Then, I implement a technique known as multiple distinctive collexeme analysis (Gries & Stefanowitsch, 2004) to determine which adjectives are most distinctively attracted to each intensifier depending on the syntactic construction. Finally, I use the frequencies of distinctive adjectives as input for correspondence analysis (Benzécri, 1984; Greenacre, 2007), a multifactorial approach that provides a low-dimensional map of the data by calculating matrices between the rows and the columns of a contingency table using the χ2 test. My results show that: i. adjectives cluster differently depending on (a) the intensifier that modifies them, (b) the syntax of the intensifying construction where they occur; ii. quite constructions and rather constructions cluster differently depending on their syntactic profiles (pre-determiner position vs. pre-adjectival position; intensifier + attributive adjective vs. intensifier + predicative adjective); iii. quite and rather attract semantically distinct adjective classes and are not, as expected, exact synonyms. References Allerton, D. J. (1987). English Intensifiers and their Idiosyncrasies. In R. Steele & T. Threadgold (Eds.), Language Topics: Essays in Honour of Michael Halliday (Vol. 2, pp. 15-31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Benzécri, J.-P. (1984). Analyse des correspondances, exposé élémentaire (Vol. 1). Paris: Dunod. Bybee, J. (1985). Morphology : a study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. Bybee, J. (2006). From Usage to Grammar: The Mind's Response to Repetition. Language, 82(4), 711-733. Bybee, J. (2010). Language, usage and cognition. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Bybee, J., & Hopper, P. (2001). Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Divjak, D. (2006a). Ways of intending: Delineating and structuring near-synonyms. In S. Gries & A. Stefanowitsch (Eds.), Corpora in Cognitive Linguistics (Vol. 172, pp. 19-56). Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Divjak, D. (2006b). Ways of trying in Russian: Clustering behavioral profiles. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 2(1), 23-60. Divjak, D. (2010). Structuring the lexicon : a clustered model for near-synonymy. Berlin; New York: De Gruyter Mouton. Divjak, D., & Gries, S. T. (2008). Clusters in the mind?: Converging evidence from near synonymy in Russian. The Mental Lexicon, 3(2), 188-213. Geeraerts, D., Kristiansen, G., & Peirsman, Y. (2010). Advances in cognitive sociolinguistics. New York, N.Y.: Mouton de Gruyter. Gibbs, R. W. (2007). Why cognitive linguists should care more about empirical methods. In M. Gonzalez-Marquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson & M. J. Spivey (Eds.), Methods in Cognitive Linguistics (pp. 2-18). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Glynn, D. (2010a). Corpus-Driven Cognitive Semantics. An introduction to the field. In D. Glynn & K. Fischer (Eds.), Corpus- Driven Cognitive Semantics. Quantitative approaches. (pp. 1-42). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Glynn, D. (2010b). Synonymy, Lexical Fields, and Grammatical Constructions. A study in usage-based Cognitive Semantics. In H.-J. Schmid & S. Handl (Eds.), Cognitive Foundations of Linguistic Usage-Patterns (pp. 89-118). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Greenacre, M. J. (2007). Correspondence analysis in practice (2nd ed.). Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC. Gries, S., Hampe, B., & Schönefeld, D. (2005). Converging evidence: Bringing together experimental and corpus data on the association of verbs and constructions. Cognitive Linguistics, 16(4), 635-676. Gries, S., & Stefanowitsch, A. (2004). Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on 'alternations'. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 9(1), 97-129. Gries, S. T., & Stefanowitsch, A. (2006). Corpora in cognitive linguistics : corpus-based approaches to syntax and lexis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar (Vol. 1). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R. W. (1991). Foundations of cognitive grammar (Vol. 2): Stanford. Langacker, R. W. (1999). Grammar and conceptualization. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar : a basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press