2.5 Homework
Follow-up reading: Gries (2009)
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As a follow-up I can warmly recommend the following interview (2009) with Stefan Gries, who is easily one of the most important corpus linguists at the moment (thanks to Helen for the tip).
2.5.1 Task
Our weekly homework will mostly deal with presenting data. We are going learn how to discuss linguistic examples and visualize numbers in graphs and charts.
Linguistic examples
Every linguistic discussion should present and contrast linguistic categories with the help of authentic examples. There are 3 things to consider:
- Examples should be consecutively numbered throughout a text.
- If you refer to a word or phrase inside your main text, it should be in italics (kursiv).
- You should prefer authentic examples over invented examples.
Consecutive means that every example has its unique number starting at (1). If you introduce a new example later in the text, the counter continues. For a demonstration, just look at the previous section of this website. The advantage is that you can refer to examples easily by referencing its number. Another advantage is that you can use keys for cross-referencing rather than a literal number, which allows you to change the order of examples or introduce new examples before existing ones without messing up the numbering. In Latex, there is a package called gb4e, which offers an environment \ex for this purpose. It is a bit more cumbersome in something like Word (search for cross reference), but still possible. You can, of course, also do it manually, but it’s worth learning.
Authentic refers to examples that have actually been produced by a (native) speaker. It is preferable to provide a reference for your example rather than to make it up yourself. Sometimes examples are invented out of convenience or to illustrate uncontroversial structures, but you are on the safer side if you provide an authentic source.
Today’s task is the following:
- Provide a short definition of homonym and illustrate it with examples.
- Contrast it against the concept of polysemy.
Examples should be complete phrases or sentences and respect the conventions listed above. This assignment shouldn’t exceed half a page. Be concise. Send me the assignment via email as a .pdf document. You don’t need to know yet how to search for corpus examples, you can simply use dictionaries or search online for examples.
2.5.2 Tip of the day
Today’s tip is from the category: Things I wish I had learned before my Bachelor Thesis
In short: Tiwilbemba.
Take every .pdf you download and get from your instructors and archive it with a naming scheme you can remember easily. Especially scans from books and collections are an invaluable resource for reasons discussed above.
My suggestion: lastname_year_keyword: e.g. Deignan_2005_Metaphor.pdf
Also…Get the info for a bibliography entry as soon as you read a text. In a future installment of Tiwilbemba I will discuss the benefits of tools like BibTex, Mendeley, Endnote …
~15s invested per text, hours saved in the long run.
References
Gries, Stefan. 2009. What is corpus linguistics? Language and Linguistics Compass 3. 1225–1241. doi:10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00149.x.
