[Corpora-List] Frequency of the pronoun I

[Marc Brysbaert]

For what it is worth, in line with what is written below it looks like  
the you/the ratio makes an even cleaner distinction between the  
different types of corpora. There may indeed be various reasons why  
people include lots of Is in their text. m

Source			I/the	you/the
COCA (academic)		0.04	0.02
COCA (newspapers)		0.11	0.06
Google (books)		0.12
COCA (magazines)		0.13	0.11
American blogs		0.31
COCA (fiction)		0.35	0.20
COCA (television programs)	0.39	0.37
Shakespearean plays	1.31
SUBTLEX (film subtitles)	1.36	1.42



Quoting "Alon Lischinsky" <alon.lischinsky at kultmed.umu.se>:

> Richard,
>
>> It is striking how clearly your figures indicate how well that single
> measure works as an indication of corpus character.  Thanks for a useful
> metric.  It might even be used to identify a significant measure of
> subjectivity in the corpus.
>
> Whatever it is that the FIRST_PERSON_PRONOUN/DEFINITE_ARTICLE ratio
> measures, it is certainly not 'subjectivity' in any of its usual senses.
>
> I assume you mean what the OED glosses as '[t]he quality or condition of
> resting upon subjective facts or mental representation; the character of
> existing in the mind only'. However, it is unclear why this should correlate
> with the frequency of explicit self-mention. First-person pronouns (FPPs)
> can feature prominently in starkly objective accounts of past or present
> material processes involving the self:
>
> 'Only time I have brown rice is before training and I was having white rice
> after training, but now I am cutting out most carbs' (
> http://anabolicminds.com/forum/mma/172158-cutting-weight-carbs.html)
>
> At the same time, they can be entirely absent from intensely subjective
> appraisals:
>
> 'As the work developed (and it seemed as if it never would) the music grew
> almost imperceptibly into a spiteful, clattering machine, only to end back
> in the rapturous gossamer of impossibly high and blissful shards of sound.
> There was an encore of some solo Bach ? always welcome, but there?s often
> the feeling that offering an old favourite after some difficult contemporary
> music is something of an apology to the intolerant few who can?t help
> coughing their guts up out of ignorance and boredom.' (
> http://www.musicomh.com/classical/proms/2011-69_0911.htm)
>
> There is no systematic catalogue of the uses and functions of the first
> person plural pronoun that I know of, but there's been quite extensive
> discussion of the topic at Language Log (see
> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3155 for a list of relevant posts),
> and the data suggest nothing like the simple correlation you posit.
>
> Cheers,
>
> A.
>




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