University of Macau / Faculty of Arts and Humanities. / Department of English

<p>In this corpus-based study, the two verb pairs arise and rise and awake and wake are investigated. The paper focuses on seven research questions that are related to the meanings of the verbs in question, the semantic specialisations of those verbs, and the semantic relation</p><p>of the specific verb pair constituents. Furthermore, tendencies of language change are investigated, and an attempt is made to generalise over the influence of the prefix a- on those</p><p>tendencies.</p><p>The results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis show that the verbs awake and wake are more synonymous than the verbs arise and rise. It seems as if due to this difference, the two verbs arise and awake are subject to different processes of language change that take</p><p>their development into different directions. The observations made about the characteristics of the prefix a- that is involved in the two verbs arise and awake are often ambiguous and inconclusive. Therefore, the influence of this prefix on the processes of language change needs to be analysed further by investigating more word pairs distinguished by the absence or presence of the prefix a-.</p>

<p>Abstract</p><p>The aim of this essay is to establish whether or not the word foxy can serve to illustrate gender differences and gender stereotypes in English. The analysis is conducted by using one American English corpus and one British English corpus in order to make a comparison of the two English varieties. Apart from the comparative study, foxy is examined and categorized according to gender and a number of features to help answering the research questions which are:</p><p>• What difference in meaning, if any, does the word foxy carry when used for males, females and inanimate things?</p><p>• Can the word foxy serve to illustrate gender stereotypes in English?</p><p>• Are there any differences regarding how foxy is used in American English compared to British English?</p><p>Throughout the essay previous studies are presented, terms and tools that have been used are defined and argued for. One of the conclusions drawn in this study is that there is a significant difference in meaning when foxy is used in American English compared to British English. There are, however, also differences concerning the use of foxy when referring to males, females and inanimate things.</p><p>Keywords: Collocation, corpus studies, foxy, gender, language, linguistics, semantic prosody, stereotypes.</p>

本文旨在探討現代漢語近義詞「買賣」、「交易」、「貿易」的異同，透過它們的搭配現象以及語意韻律的表現來進行討論。本文的語料來自「中央研究院漢語平衡語料庫」，根據搭配詞本身與「買賣」、「交易」、「貿易」的句法及語意關係來做為搭配詞的判斷，接著對於搭配詞的句法行為、語意功能以及框架要素再去做近一步的探討。 「買賣」、「交易」、「貿易」的前後搭配詞在句法上經常做名詞使用，在語意功能及框架要素方面，「買賣」及「交易」經常呈現交換者(exchanger)以及交換品(theme)兩個要素，「貿易」主要凸顯的是交換者(exchanger)。在語料裡，大部分的框架要素都呈現在前置搭配詞，主要有交換者(exchanger)、交換品(theme)、處所(location)、時間(time)、方式(manner)、頻率(frequency)；後置搭配詞有交換者(exchanger)、交換品(theme)、處所(location)、時間(time)、方式(manner)、頻率(frequency)、組織(organization)、條例(regulation)。在語意韻律方面，「買賣」及「交易」傾向和負面語意的前置搭配詞出現，而「貿易」則是有較多負面的後置搭配詞。透過共現行為及語意韻律的分析，本文系統性地呈現了「買賣」、「交易」、「貿易」的相似與相異處。 / This thesis explores three near-synonymous transaction words in Mandarin Chinese, maimai, jiaoyi, and maoyi. These three words are defined in a circular manner in the dictionary, and their meanings are not distinguishable. The present study aims to detect the similarities and differences among them via the examination of their collocational behaviors and semantic prosody. The data are extracted from Sinica Corpus, and the left-sided and right-sided collocates based on their syntactic and semantic relation to the node words are identified. Then, the collocated words are discussed in terms of their syntactic behaviors, semantic functions, and frame elements. The collocates of maimai, jiaoyi, and maoyi frequently function as nouns on both sides. The semantic functions and frame elements of both maimai and jiaoyi frequently express exchanger and theme in their instances, while for maoyi, exchanger and manner make up the majority of its frame elements. Most frame elements are profiled in the collocates. On the left side, there are exchanger, theme, location, time, manner and frequency. On the right side, there are exchanger, theme, location, time, manner, frequency, organization, and regulation. As for semantic prosody, most collocates are neutral. The left-sided collocates of maimai and jiaoyi tend to be negative words. Regarding the right-sided collocates, maoyi has more negative collocates than maimai and jiaoyi. With the collocational behaviors and semantic prosody analyzed, the study presents the similarities and differences of the three synonymous words in a systematic way.

Abstract The aim of this essay is to establish whether or not the word foxy can serve to illustrate gender differences and gender stereotypes in English. The analysis is conducted by using one American English corpus and one British English corpus in order to make a comparison of the two English varieties. Apart from the comparative study, foxy is examined and categorized according to gender and a number of features to help answering the research questions which are: • What difference in meaning, if any, does the word foxy carry when used for males, females and inanimate things? • Can the word foxy serve to illustrate gender stereotypes in English? • Are there any differences regarding how foxy is used in American English compared to British English? Throughout the essay previous studies are presented, terms and tools that have been used are defined and argued for. One of the conclusions drawn in this study is that there is a significant difference in meaning when foxy is used in American English compared to British English. There are, however, also differences concerning the use of foxy when referring to males, females and inanimate things. Keywords: Collocation, corpus studies, foxy, gender, language, linguistics, semantic prosody, stereotypes.

This essay is a corpus-based and quantitative study on language change that has occurred during global events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Global events especially affect the English language since it is a global language. In this essay, language change, collocation patterns and semantic prosody are discussed to compare the use of language and investigate whether any changes have occurred during the pandemic. These factors are studied since changes in collocation patterns can give words new meaning and possibly also a new semantic prosody. The collocations that are two or more words that often go together and the frequency of 10 sets of words are studied in particular, since they are often used during the Covid-19 pandemic. The British national corpus (BNC) and the Coronavirus Corpus (CVC) are used in the study to retrieve information on collocational patterns. By using the two corpora, it is possible to investigate the collocations during the pandemic by using CVC, and BNC for a comparison to the collocational use before the pandemic. This is done by using the collocate function in the corpora and investigating the collocates of two words on either side of the node. The major findings from the research reported in this essay show that many of the words have received additional meaning during the pandemic through their collocations, and they are most commonly neutral in semantic prosody.

The public opinion on the favourability towards the police varies greatly in the different populations in the United States. This is a corpus linguistic study that investigates a possible change in semantic prosody of the word cop. The study also investigates the distribution of the keyword in the different subcorpora to see if it has driven an overall change in the semantic prosody. The source is the Corpus of Historical American English, dating from 1800 to 2009. The Corpus of Historical American English is divided into four subcategories that have a median of 51% fictional material throughout the corpus. The four subcategories in the corpus are fiction, news, popular magazines, and non-fictional books. The data are divided into two categories, the first one being the positive/neutral category and the second category being the negative category. Neutral/positive is when cop is used with neutral or positive connotations and the negative is when cop is used with negative connotations. The period studied is that of 1859 to 2009 and this time span is divided into four periods to be more manageable. The distribution of the word in the subcorpora shows that the cop is used mostly in fictional material. The results show that the use of cop in contextual positive or neutral situations increase during the time span. To further this matter additional studies on cop in other corpora from America and other parts of the speaking world would benefit the knowledge on the noun’s semantic prosody and to further knowledge in the public opinion on the police. / Befolkningens attityd i de Förenta staterna varierar kraftigt mellan olika grupperingarna inom landet. Detta är en korpuslingvistisk studie som undersöker en möjlig semantisk prosodisk förändring hos ordet cop. Studien utgår ifrån Corpus of Historical American English som dateras mellan 1800 – 2009. Den semantiska prosodin undersöks genom att dela in träffarna i två kategorier, användning i neutral/positiv semantisk prosodi och användning i negativ semantisk prosodi. Studien undersöker även distributionen av ordet i korpusens underkorpus för att se om distributionen kan ha en koppling till semantisk prosodi. Underkorpusen är skönlitteratur, nyheter, populärmagasin och icke skönlitterära böcker. Tidsperioden som undersöks är 1859 – 2009 och denna period delas in i fyra mindre, mer hanterbara perioder. Resultatet visar att cop använts i en majoritet av skönlitterära texter i korpusen. Undersökningen visar att det finns en majoritet av negativ semantisk prosodisk användning under period 1 och 2. Period 3 skiftar lite mellan kategorierna men från 1940 hamnar cop i neutrala/positiv majoritet och Period 4 har en stark positiv semantisk prosodisk trend. Studien visar att cop har genomgått en förändring i ordets semantiska prosodi från negativ till neutral/positiv. För att utöka kunskapen kring detta ämne skulle fler undersökningar i fler korpus från de Förenta staterna och resten av den engelsktalande världen behöva göras. Detta skulle öka kunskapen kring ordets semantiska prosodi och kunna ge viss insikt i den offentliga attityden gentemot polisväsendet.

<p>This corpus based investigation deals with the present-day usage of and the semantic relation between the two verbs rise and arise. Concordance lines containing various forms of the two verbs in question have been taken from six different (sub)corpora and were examined in view of their collocational and semantic characteristics. The basic aims were to investigate the nowadays status of the verbs rise and arise and whether they (still) can be regarded as synonyms. The results show that both verbs can sometimes be used synonymously. Their general semantic relation appeared to be near-synonymy. Furthermore, both verbs seem to have developed a semantic specialisation, which is regarded a counterargument for the thesis that the verb arise is on the verge of dying out.</p>

The purpose of this study is to investigate the possible differences in the way American and Swedish journalists writing in English use maximizers, i.e. intensifying adverbs. In order to fulfill the purpose, information about how maximizers are used in two different sub-corpora, namely SWENC (The Swedish-English Corpus) and TIME (Time Corpus of American English) is collected. The data in SWENC has been collected from various websites where the crucial criterion was that the authors of the articles must have Swedish as their first language. The data from TIME has been collected from Time Magazine’s online corpora which is freely available on the Internet. The results show that there are some differences in the way Swedes and Americans use maximizers. The number of tokens for each maximizer does not differ to a great extent between the two corpora. However, there are larger deviances in the use of collocations and semantic prosody. The conclusion drawn from this is that there are indeed some differences in how American and Swedish journalists writing in English use maximizers, although they are not very many.

In this corpus-based study, the two verb pairs arise and rise and awake and wake are investigated. The paper focuses on seven research questions that are related to the meanings of the verbs in question, the semantic specialisations of those verbs, and the semantic relation of the specific verb pair constituents. Furthermore, tendencies of language change are investigated, and an attempt is made to generalise over the influence of the prefix a- on those tendencies. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis show that the verbs awake and wake are more synonymous than the verbs arise and rise. It seems as if due to this difference, the two verbs arise and awake are subject to different processes of language change that take their development into different directions. The observations made about the characteristics of the prefix a- that is involved in the two verbs arise and awake are often ambiguous and inconclusive. Therefore, the influence of this prefix on the processes of language change needs to be analysed further by investigating more word pairs distinguished by the absence or presence of the prefix a-.