[Corpora-List] Corpus vs Intuition

[CRuehlemann at aol.com]

Dear Mai,
 
Probably the most striking case of where intuition may go wrong (or so it  
has been claimed in the literature) and where corpora are particularly good is  
'semantic prosody', a concept which refers to "a consistent aura of meaning 
with which a form  is imbued by its collocates” (Louw 1993: 157; for a critical 
review of the  concept and more relevant refs see Hunston 2008). The most 
commonly-quoted example of (negative) semantic  prosody is the phrasal verb SET 
in, as in Dry rot set in (BNC).  Sinclair (1991) has shown that the subjects of 
this phrasal verb consistently  refer to unpleasant states of affairs. 
 
Hope this helps.
 
Chris
 
 
Hunston, S. (2008). 'Semantic prosody  revisited.' International Journal of 
Corpus Linguistics 12:2:  249-268
 
Louw, B. (1993).  ‘Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The 
Diagnostic Potential of  Semantic Prosodies.’ In: Baker, M, G. Francis and E. 
Tognini-Bonelli. (eds.). Text  and Technology, pp. 157-192
 
 
Sinclair, J. McH. (1991). Corpus,  Concordance, Collocation. Oxford:  Oxford 
University  Press
 
-------------------------------
Dr. Christoph Rühlemann, 
Ludwig-Maximilians-University,  Munich
 



   
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