A great deal of evidence based on a great many instances: A usage-based comparative corpus study of two English nominal constructions

TY - JOUR

T1 - A great deal of evidence based on a great many instances

T2 - 6th UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference

AU - Jensen, Kim Ebensgaard

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - In a reference grammar of English for Danish students, Hjulmand & Schwarz (2015: 137) state that, when translating from Danish, “'en hel del' is a good/great deal of in front of uncountable nouns, but a good/great many in front of countable nouns in the plural”.This claim calls for empirical support. With significant distributions of countnouns vs. non-count nouns, a study of COCA suggests that the claim holds up atleast for American English. However, the claim ultimately belongs to what Harder (2015; see also Gregory 1967) calls incomplete accounts. In the perspectiveof usage-based linguistics, such a claim would leave out informationpotentially useful to Danish learners of English. Drawing on principles fromconstruction grammar (e.g. Goldberg 1995; Croft 2001) and variationist cognitive sociolinguistics (Pütz et al. 2014), this paper presents a usage-based comparativecorpus study of the two constructions. Drawing on data from COCA, a distinctivecollexeme analysis (Gries & Stefanowitsch 2004) shows that, not only do the constructionsdiffer in terms of preference for count vs. non-count nouns, they also havedifferent preferences for specific individual nouns and semantic classes ofnouns. Moreover, variety-centered multidimensional scaling analyses andheatmaps indicate that the patterns of use of the constructions displayregister variation. In addition, a lexical richness analysis revealsdifferences in constructional productivity.

AB - In a reference grammar of English for Danish students, Hjulmand & Schwarz (2015: 137) state that, when translating from Danish, “'en hel del' is a good/great deal of in front of uncountable nouns, but a good/great many in front of countable nouns in the plural”.This claim calls for empirical support. With significant distributions of countnouns vs. non-count nouns, a study of COCA suggests that the claim holds up atleast for American English. However, the claim ultimately belongs to what Harder (2015; see also Gregory 1967) calls incomplete accounts. In the perspectiveof usage-based linguistics, such a claim would leave out informationpotentially useful to Danish learners of English. Drawing on principles fromconstruction grammar (e.g. Goldberg 1995; Croft 2001) and variationist cognitive sociolinguistics (Pütz et al. 2014), this paper presents a usage-based comparativecorpus study of the two constructions. Drawing on data from COCA, a distinctivecollexeme analysis (Gries & Stefanowitsch 2004) shows that, not only do the constructionsdiffer in terms of preference for count vs. non-count nouns, they also havedifferent preferences for specific individual nouns and semantic classes ofnouns. Moreover, variety-centered multidimensional scaling analyses andheatmaps indicate that the patterns of use of the constructions displayregister variation. In addition, a lexical richness analysis revealsdifferences in constructional productivity.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - corpus linguistics

KW - monolithism

KW - nominal construction

KW - register variation

KW - usage-based construction grammar

KW - cognitive sociolinguistics

M3 - Journal article

SN - 2046-9144

VL - 4

SP - 249

EP - 272

JO - Selected Papers from UK-CLA Meetings

JF - Selected Papers from UK-CLA Meetings

Y2 - 18 July 2016 through 22 July 2016

ER -