[Lexicog] Draining corpora

[John Roberts]

Wayne Leman said:

Hello, Patrick. I was referring to the shorter English verb, "drain". Obviously, I need to fieldtest it, but I *think* English speakers conceptualize "drain" as when liquid flows from, rather than into. Of course, if we add the word "into", then we change the conceptualization to be the same as Cheyenne -estovaotse which would be glossed in English as 'drain.'

>From John Roberts
Yes, the verb *drain* without a following preposition/particle means for a liquid (or metaphorical liquid) to flow out of something. You can demonstrate this with the following examples:

They drained the swamp (of/*with water).
The dishes drained on the dish rack (until they were dry/*wet).
He drained his glass (empty/*full).
The steep climb drained her energy (and she couldn't/*could make it to the top).
The battery was drained so they couldn't/*could start the car.
etc.

The Chambers dictionary of synonyms and antonyms also gives the following synonyms for *drain* (v):
1) bleed, discharge, draw off, dry, empty, evacuate, flow out, leak, milk, ooze, remove, strain, trickle. 2) consume, deplete, drink up, exhaust, sap, swallow, tap, use up. And it gives the following antonyms: 1) fill, flood.

John Roberts



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Wayne Leman 
  To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 5:41 PM
  Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Draining corpora


  Hello, Patrick. I was referring to the shorter English verb, "drain". Obviously, I need to fieldtest it, but I *think* English speakers conceptualize "drain" as when liquid flows from, rather than into. Of course, if we add the word "into", then we change the conceptualization to be the same as Cheyenne -estovaotse which would be glossed in English as 'drain.'

  Thanks for your comments,
  Wayne
  -----
  Wayne Leman
  Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language

    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Patrick Hanks 
    To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com 
    Cc: Varvara Karzi ; arum at brandeis.edu 
    Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 9:21 AM
    Subject: [Lexicog] Draining corpora


    Hello Wayne, 

    How reliable are our intuitions? There's nothing odd about English "drain into".

    How reliable is corpus data?

    I work with two corpora  -- the British National Corpus (100 million words)
    and Associated Press 1991-92 (150 million words). 

    There are 1651 occurrences of the verb drain in BNC, which include:

    47   "drain into".
    11   "drain out". (Surprisingly, no occurrences of "drain out of".)
    161 "drain from".

    In AP there are 1318 occurrences of the verb drain, which include:

    53  "drain into".
    43  "drain out (of)".

    The meaning seems to be affected by the choice of preposition -- 
    "tributaries draining into the Colorado River" --  but "the blood drained 
    from his face".  (Where did it drain into - his boots? Wrong question!)

    FrameNet has this verb in the Removing and Emptying frames. Both 
    frames specify frame elements Source - Path - Goal. 

    It may be more accurate to say that in draining we conceptualize the 
    flow from source to goal and that either source or goal or both may be 
    thematized explicitly.


    Patrick

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