Department of Linguistics
Seminars 2007
DICTIONARY RESEARCH CENTRE SEMINAR
The DICTIONARY RESEARCH CENTRE presents a series of seminars on current issues in lexicography on Fridays at 6pm. Staff and postgraduate students are all welcome. The dates for your diary are as follows:
| Topic: | Tense and aspect at the crossroads: the present perfect/preterite distinction in Australian and other varieties of English - Abstract |
| Speakers: | Professor Johan Elsness, University of Oslo |
Date: |
Friday, 9 November |
Time: |
12-1.15 pm |
Location: |
W5C 221 |
Tense and aspect at the crossroads: the present perfect/preterite distinction in Australian and other varieties of English
Like a great many other languages, English has two main verb forms used in references to past time: the periphrastic present perfect (have seen) and the synthetic preterite (saw). The choice between these two verb forms displays a great deal of variation, both between languages and within individual languages. In many languages, including German and French, the present perfect is gaining ground at the expense of the preterite, to the extent that it is now fully possible to say things like Ich habe ihn gestern gesehen and Je l’ai vu hier, combining the present perfect with very definite specification of past time. The situation in English is more complex. Even here the present perfect increased in frequency from its early beginnings in Old English at least until the Early Modern English period. Now there is reason to believe that the English preterite is striking back, and combinations like the one in I’ve seen him yesterday are not supposed to be possible. Also, the distribution between these verb forms is one of the relatively few points of English morpho-syntax where there is a well documented difference between the various national varieties, especially American and British English: it has often been pointed out that the preterite is common in AmE in many cases where the BrE norm prescribes the present perfect. In this talk the focus will be on Australian and to some extent New Zealand English: where do those varieties place themselves within the broad picture of World English when it comes to the choice between the present perfect and the preterite? Evidence will be provided from corpus investigations and from the Feedback column of Australian Style.
All staff and students welcome.
| Topic: | Slipping on superlemmas: phrasal lexical items in speech production. - Abstract |
| Speakers: | Professor Koenraad Kuiper, University of Canterbury |
Date: |
Friday, 19 October |
Time: |
12.00 - 1.00pm |
Location: |
W5C 221 |
Slipping on superlemmas: phrasal lexical items in speech production.
Only relatively recently have theories of speech production concerned themselves with the part idioms and other phrasal lexical items (PLIs) playin the processes of speech production. Two theories of speech production which attempt to account for the accessing of idioms in speech production are those of (Cutting and Bock 1997) and superlemma theory (Sprenger 2003); (Sprenger, Levelt, and Kempen 2006). Much of the data supporting theories of speech production comes either from time course experiments or from slips of the tongue (Bock and Levelt 1994). The latter are of two kinds: experimentally induced (Baars 1992) or naturally observed (Fromkin 1980). Cutting and Bock use experimentally induced speech errors while Sprenger, Levelt & Kempen (2006) use time course experiments. The missing data type that has a bearing on speech production involving PLIs is that of naturally occurring slips. In this study the impact of data taken from naturally observed slips involving English and Dutch PLIs are brought to bear on these theories. The data are taken initially from a corpus of just over 1000 naturally observed English slips involving PLIs (the Tuggy corpus). Our argument proceeds as follows. First we show that slips occur independent of whether or not there are PLIs involved. In other words, speech production proceeds in certain of its aspects as though there were no PLI present. We illustrate these slips from the Tuggy data. Second we investigate the predictions of superlemma theory. Superlemma theory (Sprenger, Levelt, and Kempen 2006) accounts for the selection of PLIs and how their properties enter processes of speech production. It predicts certain activation patterns dependent on a PLI being selected. Each such pattern might give rise to slips of the tongue. This set of predictions is tested against the Tuggy data. Each of the predicted activation patterns yields a significant number of slips. These findings are therefore compatible with a view of PLIs as single units in so far as their activation by lexical concepts goes. These findings are further corroborated by reference a second smaller dataset of slips involving Dutch PLIs (the Kempen corpus).
All staff and students welcome.
| Topic: | South Pacific Englishes - the influence of New Zealand English and the Oceanic substrate languages - Abstract |
| Speakers: | Dr Carolin Biewer, University of Heidelberg |
Date: |
Thursday, 30 August 2007 |
Time: |
10 am |
Location: |
C5A 565 (Forster Room) |
South Pacific Englishes - the influence of New Zealand English and the Oceanic substrate languages
The non-native varieties of English spoken in Fiji, Samoa and the Cook Islands show similarities as well as differences due among other things to the Melanesian and Polynesian substrate influence. Another possible source for differences and similarities of these varieties of English is the fact that - due to its geographical closeness as well as its political and economic influence in that region - NZE may in some of these islands replace the former prestigious American and British varieties and become the new model for the national standard. This talk investigates to what extent Fiji English, Samoan English and Cook Island English can be seen as three distinct varieties of English and which features unite these varieties as "South Pacific English". There will be a special focus on a possible influence of NZE on these varieties. Some preliminary results will be given, these stemming from 5 months of field research which has just been completed.
All staff and students welcome.
| Topic: | Universals in Lexicography and Oxford’s Medieval Latin Dictionary project - Abstract |
| Speakers: | Dr Trevor Evans, appointed to Research Centre in Ancient Cultures. He was previously (2004-7) assistant editor on the Oxford-based Medieval Latin Dictionary project. |
Date: |
Friday, 29 June |
Time: |
6-7.15 pm |
Location: |
W5C 221 |
Universals in Lexicography and Oxford’s Medieval Latin Dictionary project
The British Academy’s Medieval Latin Dictionary (MLD) project, now based in Oxford, began in 1924. Its current objective is to complete the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (OUP for the British Academy, 1975–) by 2011. The latest fascicule (Fasc. X: Pel-Phi) was published in late 2006. In this seminar we shall use the case of the MLD and some specific entries as a hinge for discussion of universals in lexicography, including:
macrostructural issues such as:
• the scope of the language one is engaged in codifying (extent in place and time, socio-cultural variation within it)
• the source material used as a corpus for the language (ensuring range and balance)
• assumed readership and their interests and needs
• constraints on size of dictionary
• challenges of longevity in lexicographical projects
microstructural issues such as:
• selection of headwords, variations in their form
• definitional style and/or use of glosses
• exemplification and extent of it (range of source material shown in examples, bibliographic detail provided)
• stylistic comment and/or labelling of register
• pronunciation
• grammar
• etymology, especially how far back to trace word origins
• inventory of abbreviations used
• constraints of publisher's house style and mode of publication
All staff and students welcome.
| Topic: | The Uses of a Specialized Corpus in Technical Dictionary Making and in Dictionary Evaluation - Abstract |
| Speakers: | Jirapa Vitayapirak, Associate Professor in the Department of Languages King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, THAILAND |
Date: |
Friday, 27 April |
Time: |
6-7.15 pm |
Location: |
W5C 221 |
The Uses of a Specialized Corpus in Technical Dictionary Making and in Dictionary Evaluation
This presentation argues that technical dictionary compilation should be implemented by empirical investigation of technical terms in a specialized corpus, as a basis for specific decision. Drawing upon experimental work done at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Thailand, this paper shows how a specialized corpus can be used in technical dictionary design, and evaluation. The starting point is a corpus of food technology from the target communicative situation. This corpus-based text-processing can provide criteria for the selection of headwords for the food technology dictionary, and authentic contextualization of these items in the examples of usage. The corpus findings in terms of word frequencies, corpus evidence on word combinations and typical usage from the concordance are used to identify the technical terms and to develop entries for a bilingual learners’ dictionary of food technology.
All staff and students welcome.