<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
True Friend wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:AANLkTim3ggJARqR2ykF-KCLx61GhPw26jRX9Lkc_DNtF@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Good Day to All Copora Members<br>
I am a masters in applied linguistics student, currently working on my
thesis. The topic of research is the use of ditransitive constructions.
To authenticate the results I want to apply statistical techniques on
the research. For example I am trying to see whether there is a
significant difference in the usage of two alternative ditransitive
patterns in PWE (Pakistani Written English, the corpus I am working on
for the research). The alternative ditransitive patterns here mean
Double Object (He gave me a pen) and To Dative (He gave a pen to me). I
am pasting the table here, which contains genre names and frequencies
of all verbs (used ditransitively) in that genre.<br clear="all">
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 144pt;" border="0"
cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="192">
<col style="width: 48pt;" span="3" width="64"> <tbody>
<tr style="height: 15pt;" height="20">
<td style="height: 15pt; width: 48pt;" height="20" width="64">Genre</td>
<td style="width: 48pt;" width="64">D. Object</td>
<td style="width: 48pt;" width="64">To Dative</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15pt;" height="20">
<td style="height: 15pt;" height="20">ALT</td>
<td align="right">0</td>
<td align="right">4</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15pt;" height="20">
<td style="height: 15pt;" height="20">ART</td>
<td align="right">210</td>
<td align="right">344</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</blockquote>
First of all, let me applaud your question. I think too many
linguists are reluctant to ask about their statistics. It's important
for us to know what these things mean and how they work. At UNM we
were required to take at least a semester of statistics, and it helped
tremendously, but I can tell that we just scratched the surface. I try
to check all my tests with a statistician to make sure they're
appropriate. If your university has a statistics clinic, I strongly
recommend a visit.<br>
<br>
I agree with what Adam and Thomas wrote, but I'm going to focus on
a different aspect, relating to the envelope of variation. Here's a
paper I wrote about it!<br>
<br>
<div id="info"> The Envelope of Variation in Multidimensional Register
and Genre Analyses <br>
Author: Grieve-Smith, Angus B.<br>
Source: <a
href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/lang;jsessionid=3gf6v67o36w4f.alexandra"
title="Language and Computers">Language and Computers</a>, Corpus
Linguistics Beyond the Word: Corpus Research from Phrase to Discourse.
Edited by Eileen Fitzpatrick
, pp. 21-42(22)<br>
Publisher: <a
href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi;jsessionid=3gf6v67o36w4f.alexandra"
title="publisher">Rodopi</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/lang/2006/00000060/00000001/art00003?crawler=true">http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/lang/2006/00000060/00000001/art00003?crawler=true</a><br>
</div>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.grieve-smith.com/Academic/AAACL-grvsmth.060225.pdf">http://www.grieve-smith.com/Academic/AAACL-grvsmth.060225.pdf</a><br>
<br>
In this case, correlation tests are not appropriate, because you
would expect the number of tokens to vary with the total number of
words in each genre. Running a correlation test on per-word frequency
counts is also not appropriate, because these are two different
strategies for doing the same thing, and you would expect them to vary
inversely with one another. The writers are describing events where a
thing is being given to a person (or similar). The two constructions
have the same envelope of variation.<br>
<br>
I think you need a better hypothesis. It is unlikely that any two
constructions will occur with comparable frequencies, especially
constructions that have the same conceptual meaning, so if you find
that to be true, it doesn't tell you much. If you are breaking it out
by genre, does that mean that you expect the percentage of
ditransitives to vary with genre? In that case, I think you need to
figure out which genres you would expect to do what, and why. Then you
will have a good hypothesis, and you can find a statistical test based
on that.<br>
<br>
I hope this helps.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:grvsmth@panix.com">grvsmth@panix.com</a>
</pre>
</body>
</html>