Ao tentar traduzir um texto específico sobre o tema futebol da língua espanhola para o português brasileiro ou vice-versa, o tradutor se depara com uma infinidade de termos típicos dessa área de especialidade que não constam em muitos dos atuais dicionários e glossários, ou constam de forma limitada, sem abranger muitas das situações reais de uso. Neste trabalho, construímos um glossário bilíngue e bidirecional que contempla os termos futebolísticos mais frequentes no par linguístico espanhol-português, usados rotineiramente na comunicação escrita. Partimos da suposição que a Linguística de Corpus forneceria os meios necessários para tal empreitada. A Linguística de Corpus permite estudar uma língua ou variedade linguística por computador, por meio de evidências empíricas encontradas em um corpus, entendido como um conjunto de dados linguísticos textuais em formato eletrônico e coletado de forma criteriosa. Esta dissertação está dividida em cinco partes. Como introdução, falamos de alguns aspectos históricos das línguas portuguesa e espanhola, da influência do futebol em nossa sociedade, de problemas encontrados em dicionários e glossários, e do potencial das notícias futebolísticas da Internet como referência para a construção do glossário que propomos. Na segunda parte, comentamos a Linguística de Corpus como abordagem e método de investigação, os tipos de corpora e a composição de nosso corpus de estudo, a questão da equivalência na tradução e a forma como selecionamos os termos e seus equivalentes tradutórios, tendo como base a comparação de notícias futebolísticas do Brasil, da Espanha e da Argentina, além da extração e observação de palavras-chave, com a ajuda de ferramentas eletrônicas específicas. Na terceira parte, discutimos as questões terminológicas que envolvem este estudo, especialmente as decisões tomadas para a macro e microestrutura de nosso glossário. Na quarta parte, demonstramos como o glossário pode ser apresentado ao consulente e oferecemos uma amostra de verbetes. Na quinta e última parte, fazemos as considerações finais, em que concluímos que a Linguística de Corpus, como abordagem e metodologia, confirmou-se eficiente para a construção do glossário bilíngue, pois a exploração de corpora especializados permitiu identificar os principais termos futebolísticos e seus equivalentes tradutórios usados na comunicação escrita do jornalismo brasileiro, espanhol e argentino, resultando em uma obra de referência bilíngue específica do futebol com quase quatro mil verbetes; todos com exemplos reais de uso / When trying to translate a specific text on football from Spanish into Brazilian Portuguese or vice versa, the translator is faced with a myriad of footbal-specific terms which are not found in most dictionaries or glossaries, or which are found in a limited way, leaving out many real use situations. In the course of this study, a bilingual and bi-directional glossary was built with the most commonly used football terms in written communication in the Spanish-Portuguese language pair, . My initial assumption was that Corpus Linguistics would provide the necessary means for such a task. Corpus Linguistics enables one to study a language or a language variety using a computer, retrieving empirical evidence found in a corpus, which is defined as a set of texts, compiled according to predefined criteria, in electronic format. This dissertation is divided into five parts. In the introduction, some historical aspects of Portuguese and Spanish are discussed, as well as the influence of football in our society, the problems found in dictionaries and glossaries, and the potential of football news retrieved from the Internet as a basis for building the glossary proposed. In the second part, I argue that Corpus Linguistics is an approach and a method of research, and present the different types of corpora. Then, the question of equivalence in translation is briefly addressed, the content of our corpus of study is explained, as well as the steps adopted to identify the terms and their translation equivalents, through the comparison of football news from Brazil, Spain and Argentina, and by means of the extraction and observation of keywords, with the aid of specific electronic tools. In the third part, I discuss the terminology issues implicated in this study, especially with reference to the decisions taken for the macro- and microstructure of the glossary. In the fourth part, I propose a form of presenting the glossary to the user and provide a sample of entries. In the fifth and last part, I make the final considerations, in which I conclude that Corpus Linguistics, as an approach and a methodology, proved to be effective for the construction of the targeted bilingual glossary, since exploring the specialized corpora made it possible to properly identify the main football terms used in written communication in Brazilian, Spanish and Argentine journalism and their translation equivalents. The result is a bilingual work of reference in the field of football, which contains nearly four thousand entries, all of them with authentic examples of usage.

This study aims to test Robertson’s lexical transfer principle, which posits that Chinese learners use demonstratives (particularly this) and the numeral one as markers of definiteness and indefiniteness. This is tested by analysing Chinese learners’ written production collected from the Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners 2.0 (SWECCL 2.0). The purpose is to understand the variation of article usage by adult Chinese learners of English. More specifically, the study examines to what extent articles, possessive and demonstrative pronouns are used in Chinese learners’ English and how definite and indefinite articles are used by the Chinese learners. Findings suggest that Robertson’s lexical transfer principle was corroborated by the present study. In addition, Chinese learners prefer to use demonstrative determiners, the possessive determiner our, and the numeral one to perform the function of marking definiteness and indefiniteness. In particular, the learners try to use the demonstrative determiners that and this in the anaphoric function instead of the definite article, and the demonstrative determiner those is frequently used in the cataphoric function. What is more, the learners use the numeral one as a marker of indefiniteness, and it is also used as a marker of definiteness in the anaphoric function. Further, the possessive determiner our is used as a marker of definiteness in larger situation uses referring to something unique. To this end, the study is able to show that the definite article is used to perform the function of marking indefiniteness, and in some particular contexts the definite article functions as a Chinese specifier in Chinese learners’ English. Also, the indefinite article is frequently used in quantifier phrases but is rarely used in other functions. There are three main reasons that may explain why Chinese learners use determiners variously. Firstly, the choice of determiners by Chinese learners is influenced by linguistic contexts. Secondly, because of learning strategies, Chinese learners try to ignore the anaphoric function and cataphoric function that they are not yet ready to process in article usage. Thirdly, interlanguage grammar influences the optionality in the use of articles.

This essay uses corpus linguistic methods to study aspects of the novel Vanity Fair by W M Thackeray. The aim is to study the way Thackeray chose to describe his two female protagonists, Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley. This is accomplished by a closer study of keywords in Vanity Fair, created by using a reference corpus consisting of thirteen novels by Victorian authors. These keywords are used to define semantic fields related to the novel. Keywords from the semantic field closest to the protagonists are studied in context. In addition, adjectives that collocate with the names of the protagonists are analyzed to compare the characterization of each woman. The study indicates that Thackeray has used fewer adjectives to describe Amelia than Rebecca, but that he has used these more frequently, which may cause readers to form a stronger mental picture of Amelia’s character sooner than they do for Rebecca’s.

This paper performs a corpus-based critical discourse analysis on the terms“vamp”, “slut”, “prude” and “spinster” and how they are used in context fromthe 1920s to the 2000s. They were categorized according to what attitudeswere connected to them, positive, neutral and negative. An interest was alsotaken in what attributive adjectives were used in context with each term. Theresults showed consistent negative attitudes towards “prude” and “spinster”,while the attitudes towards “Vamp” and “slut” were mixed with negative andpositive.

The present study sets out to shed light on the conceptualization of risk in two different languages, English and Spanish. In order to reveal how risk is perceived in the minds of speakers of the two languages, I undertook a comprehensive cross-linguistic survey of the conceptual metaphors related to risk-taking. This was done through the examination of the conventional collocations of the noun and the verb risk in English, and the noun riesgo and the verb arriesgar(se) in Spanish. In addition, I also focused on the analysis of the idioms that deal with risk and risk-taking in both languages. This contrastive cross-cultural linguistic study of the conceptual field of risk and risk-taking was conducted within the frameworks of corpus linguistics as well as cognitive linguistics, which means that I worked with naturally occurring data gathered from various corpora while using the conceptual theory of metaphor for the analysis of potential conceptual metaphors related to risk.

Pronouns carry considerable importance in language. The speaker’s identity and connection to the audience emerges through the consistent use of certain pronouns (De Fina, 1995). This research is about the use of we, us, and our in political discourse. Specifically, their use will be examined in the inaugural addresses of George W. Bush in 2005 and Barack Obama in 2009. The aim of this research is to examine the frequencies and the co-occurrences of these pronouns and then compare their use in these two speeches. More specifically, how do the pronouns examined affect the message and enhance hearer credibility. This is done by applying (a) a quantitative corpus linguistics analysis and (b) qualitative analysis of the context of use. The results show that there is a difference in frequency of pronoun use; however, the usage of pronouns is rather similar in the two speeches

This essay aims to shed light on the prevalence of the to + adverb + verb and to not + verb split infinitives in American English, both in a historical perspective and in present day usage, and how it varies in different contexts where different levels of formality are expected. Although students are taught to avoid splitting constructions, numerous grammarians and linguists question this prescriptive viewpoint. Two extensive corpora, the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), were used to gather data. The results revealed how the frequency of the split infinitive was, and still is, rising rapidly, and becoming more and more a standard and accepted feature in American English. The most common context in which to find a split infinitive was that of informal spoken language. However, it was in the most formal of settings, that of academic texts, where the largest increase in prevalence of the split infinitive was seen.

The overarching goal of the dissertation is to illustrate the relevance of learner corpus research to the field of second language acquisition (SLA). The possibility that learner corpora can be useful in mainstream SLA research has a significant implication given that they have not been systematically explored in relation to SLA theories. The thesis contributes to building a methodological framework to utilize learner corpora beneficially to SLA and argues that learner corpus research contributes to other disciplines. This is achieved by a series of case studies that quantitatively analyze individual variation and the role of native language (L1) in second language (L2) development of English grammatical morphemes and explain the findings with existing SLA theories. The dissertation investigates the L2 development of morphemes based on two largescale learner corpora. It first reviews the literature and points out that the L2 acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes that has been believed universal in SLA research may, in fact, vary across the learners with different L1 backgrounds and that individual differences in morpheme studies have been relatively neglected in previous literature. The present research, thus, provides empirical evidence testing the universality of the order and the extent of individual differences. In the first study, the thesis investigates L1 influence on the L2 acquisition order of six English grammatical morphemes across seven L1 groups and five proficiency levels. Data drawn from approximately 12,000 essays from the Cambridge Learner Corpus establish clear L1 influence on this issue. The study also reveals that learners without the equivalent morpheme in L1 tend to achieve an accuracy level of below 90% with respect to the morpheme even at the highest proficiency level, and that morphemes requiring learners to learn to pay attention to the relevant distinctions in their acquisition show a stronger effect of L1 than those which only require new form-meaning mappings. The findings are interpreted under the framework of thinking-for-speaking proposed by Dan Slobin. Following the first study, the dissertation exploits EF-Cambridge Open Language Database (EFCamDat) and analyzes the developmental patterns of morphemes, L1 influence on the patterns, and the extent to which individual variation is observed in the development. Based on approximately 140,000 essays written by 46,700 learners of 10 L1 groups across a wide range of proficiency levels, the study found that (i) certain developmental patterns of accuracy are observed irrespective of target morphemes, (ii) inverted U-shaped development is rare irrespective of morphemes, (iii) proficiency influences the within-learner developmental patterns of morphemes, (iv) the developmental patterns at least slightly vary depending on morphemes, and (v) significant individual variation is observed in absolute accuracy, the accuracy difference between morphemes, and the rate of development. The findings are interpreted with dynamic systems theory (DST), a theory of development that has recently been applied to SLA research. The thesis further examines whether any systematic relationship is observed between the developmental patterns of morphemes. Although DST expects that their development is interlinked, the study did not find any strong relationships between the developmental patterns. However, it revealed a weak supportive relationship in the developmental pattern between articles and plural -s. That is, within individual learners, when the accuracy of articles increases, the accuracy of plural -s tends to increase as well, and vice versa.

Fitness relates to several life aspects, such as health and exercise. Because of its vast popularity, it is often referred to as a ‘fitness trend’ where the body has a central role. Due to technological advances, fitness has found its way into mobile applications and Social Network Sites (SNSs), prompting the linguistic analysis of these environments. This study investigates how female fitness is discussed by female personal trainers (PTs) online. A mixed approach of quantitative methodology (Corpus Linguistics) and qualitative textual analysis (Discourse Analysis) was adopted. Following Baker’s corpus-driven approach (2006), a specialised corpus was compiled with a total of 440 posts (51,779 tokens) from the Instagram accounts of three female professional PTs. Various patterns were presented under four themes: mind and body, physical strength, empowerment, and the FITNESS IS A JOURNEY metaphor. The most salient patterns discussed were health, aesthetics, weight-loss, and body-representation. There was strong evidence of other trends (‘fitspiration’, ‘HAES’, and ‘body positivity’) which promote a positive body image and strength (physical and mental) as a health indicator. In sum, the findings provide a female PT’s perspective on fitness and show how female fitness is promoted by encouraging positive narratives around fitness, the body and ourselves.

<div>Since the 1990s, grammatical complexity is a topic that has received considerable attention in various fields of applied linguistics, such as English for academic purposes, second language acquisition, language testing, and second language writing (Bulté & Housen, 2012). Many scholars in applied linguistics have recently argued that grammatical complexity has primarily been represented by clausal features (e.g., subordinate clauses), and it is important to study grammatical complexity as a multidimensional construct based on both clausal features and phrasal features (Biber, Gray & Poonpon, 2011; Norris & Ortega, 2009). Thus, this dissertation is a corpus-based investigation on how the use of noun phrases is influenced by two situational characteristics of a university context: academic level and first- and second-English language background.</div><div><br></div><div>I built my corpus by extracting 200 essays from British Academic Written English Corpus, which represents academic writing of (1) undergraduate and graduate students and (2) L1 and L2 students. Noun phrase complexity was then operationalized to the 11 noun modifiers proposed in the hypothesized developmental index of writing complexity features in Biber, Gray and Poonpon (2011). The 11 noun modifiers were extracted from the corpus and counted for statistical analysis via a set of Python programs. With a Chi-square test followed by a residual analysis, I found that both academic level and first- and second-English language background influenced noun phrase complexity but in distinct ways. The influence of academic level is primarily associated with three phrasal modifiers (i.e., attributive adjectives, premodifying nouns, and appositive NPs) and two clausal modifiers (i.e., relative clauses and noun complement clauses). The undergraduate corpus includes more of the two clausal modifiers, whereas the graduate corpus has more of the three phrasal modifiers. This suggests that, in these 200 essays, graduate students tend to build more compressed NPs than undergraduate students. However, the influence of first- and second-English language background derives from a much broader range of noun modifiers, including eight noun modifiers (e.g., attributive adjectives, relative clauses, infinitive clauses). More diverse NP patterns with different noun modifiers are in the L1 corpus than in the L2 corpus. Surprisingly, the L2 corpus has more phrasal noun modifiers (i.e., attributive adjectives, premodifying nouns), which has been argued to indicate advanced levels of academic writing. A qualitative analysis on selected essays reveals that some cases of attributive adjectives and premodifying nouns are repeatedly used by L2 students to help content development in their writing. Overall, this dissertation adds an additional piece of evidence on the importance of noun phrase complexity in writing research.</div><div><br></div>