26.683, Diss: English; Morphology, Sociolinguistics, Text/Corpus Linguistics: Säily: 'Sociolinguistic Variation in English Derivational Productivity...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-26-683. Mon Feb 02 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.683, Diss: English; Morphology, Sociolinguistics, Text/Corpus Linguistics: Säily: 'Sociolinguistic Variation in English Derivational Productivity...'

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Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2015 14:56:43
From: Tanja Säily [tanja.saily at helsinki.fi]
Subject: Sociolinguistic Variation in English Derivational Productivity: Studies and Methods in Diachronic Corpus Linguistics

 
Institution: University of Helsinki 
Program: Department of Modern Languages 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2014 

Author: Tanja Säily

Dissertation Title: Sociolinguistic Variation in English Derivational
Productivity: Studies and Methods in Diachronic Corpus
Linguistics 

Dissertation URL:  https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/136128

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology
                     Sociolinguistics
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Dissertation Director(s):
Terttu Nevalainen

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation studies how the productivity of word-formation varies across
social groups in the history of the English language. Previous research into
variation and change within the morphological productivity of derivational
affixes has been hampered by the lack of suitable methods for comparing
productivity measures across subcorpora. A further problem has been how to
assess the statistical significance of the differences observed. The latter
issue is also present in comparisons of word frequencies in diachronic corpus
linguistics: previous work has tended to use tests which make the invalid
assumption that words occur randomly in texts. Moreover, the question often
arises whether the change observed is linguistic, stylistic or an artefact of
the corpus. 
The present work explores sociolinguistic variation and change in the
morphological productivity of the nominal suffixes -ness and -ity from Early
Modern English to Present-day English, using materials such as the Corpora of
Early English Correspondence and the British National Corpus. To do this, it
employs robust methods to compare item frequencies over time and across social
categories. Developed in collaboration with computer scientists, the methods
include non-parametric measures of statistical significance as well as
visualisations revealing variability within (sub)corpora and facilitating
exploration. In addition to research into individual linguistic features, the
methods can be used to compare corpora and study genre continuity at the
levels of vocabulary and parts of speech. 
Besides corpus-linguistic methodology, the work contributes to the theory and
description of derivational productivity. Firstly, it shows that each of the
social categories studied - gender, social rank, and register in terms of
participant relations - may have an influence on productivity, gender being
the most consistent factor in the case of -ity. Furthermore, it shows that
while productivity measures based on the frequency of hapax legomena, or words
occurring only once in the corpus, are unusable in small corpora, they do
function as expected in large corpora and remain theoretically valid. These
findings should be taken into account in future research, and it is to be
hoped that future studies will be significantly facilitated by the
methodological contributions presented in this dissertation.







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