Equivalence

1
Equivalence

• Contrastive linguistics

2
Equivalence other types

• Tomasz Krzeszowski
• statistical equivalence
• system equivalence
• semanto-syntactic equivalence
• rule equivalence
• pragmatic equivalence

3
statistical equivalence

• This type of equivalence holds between
• two selected items that have
• maximally similar frequencies of occurrence
  (Krzeszowski 199027).
• However, for two items to be selected as
  candidates for statistical equivalence
• there must be
• some other type of equivalence between them,
• formal or semantic.

4
Most frequent items

• English
• the
• of
• and

• Polish
• sie
• w
• i

5
Most frequent items

• What items?
• Criteria of distinguishing linguistic items
• Vagaries of writing
• Despite vs in spite of
• Vagaries of spelling conventions
• Compounds in German and English
• Donaudampfschiff vs Danuve steam ship
• Articles in Bulgarian
• Moreto vs the sea

6
System equivalence

• holds between two equivalent system elements in
  two different languages,
• e.g. the systems of pronouns, verbs, articles and
  the like.
• the initial assumption of comparability based on
  cognate grammatical terms
• (Chesterman 199832)

7
System equivalence
8
System equivalence
What is a pronoun?

• English
• himself
• herself
• itself
• themselves
• Do it yourself
• V-Pr-Pr-refl
• Yourself
• Pronoun

• Polish
• sie
• siebie
• Zrób to sam
• V-Pr-Adj
• Sam
• Adjective

9
Semanto-syntactic equivalence

• identical deep structure,
• deep structure is seen as semantic, or a semantic
  input structure to syntactic derivations
  (cf.Krzeszowski 1990152).
• Deep structure is dead

10
Rule equivalence

• based on the transformational-generative frame of
  reference,
• where the rules are the rules of
  transformation.
• sentences in different languages may, in their
  process of generation, undergo the same formal
  rules, in which case we have rule equivalence
• (Chesterman 199834).

11
Substantive equivalence

• based on extra-linguistic substance,
• either acoustic / articulatory / auditory for
  phonological studies, or semantic / situational /
  external reality for lexical studies
• (Chesterman 199834).

12
Pragmatic equivalence

• also functional equivalence,
• In contrastive stylistics and sociolinguistics.
• definition
• a linguistic expression X1 in L1 is pragmatically
  equivalent to a linguistic expression X2 in L2 if
  X1 and X2 can be used in the performance of the
  same SA speech act in L1 and L2 relative to the
  corresponding set of pragmatic, contextual and
  socio-cultural factors.
• (Oleksy 198385)

13
Pragmatic equivalence

• Unlike other types of equivalence
• It explicitly said to pertain to texts
• Chesterman 199835
• pragmatic equivalence is a relation between two
  texts in two different languages,
• where the texts evoke maximally similar
  cognitive reactions in the users of these texts
• Krzeszowski 199030

14
Equivalence and linguistics

• initial studies were structural,
  system-equivalence-based
• transformational grammar focused on rule
  equivalence
• generative semantics and case grammar substantial
  equivalence
• the most recent research has been developing in
  the direction of pragmatics

15
Pragmatic equivalence

• It has been variously understood and much debated
  in the literature

16
CA Criticism

• study results had no immediate use in language
  teaching situations
• cf. Fisiak -- Lipinska-Grzegorek -- Zabrocki
  197819.
• CA/CS results are not intended for that use.
• the student can gain information
• about similarities and differences between his
  native language and the foreign language he is
  studying, also warning him about making false
  analogies and about the potential areas of
  interference (ibid.,),
• the teacher essential for development of
  curricula and preparation of teaching materials.

17
New contrastive projects

• Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA)
• cf. Granger 1993, 1996, Kaszubski 2002
• The revival of CA was to a large extent effected
  by the developments in
• Corpus Linguistics (CL)

18
Interlanguage

• interlanguage,
• introduced by Selinker
• is conceptualized as
• a system that has a structurally intermediate
  status between the native and target languages.
  (Brown 1994 203).
• Also called
• Approximate System
• Idiosyncratic dialect

19
Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis

• It can compare
• how non-native and native speakers of a language
  (in this case English, PK.) behave in comparable
  linguistic situations or
• various non-native varieties of English (French,
  German, Chinese, for example) can be collated
  with each other.
• The results could then be examined
• in the light of classic contrastive analysis of
  the native languages.

20
CIA and corpora

• This analysis is done by methods of
• corpus linguistics

21
Corpus linguistics

• corpus linguistics can be described as
• the study of language based on examples of real
  life language use
• McEnery -- Wilson 19961
• Nowadays it means
• computer analyses of large portions of
  computer-readable texts

22
Corpus linguistics

• it is not
• a branch of linguistics in the same sense as
  syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, and so on.
• It is rather a methodology.
• As a methodology,
• corpus linguistics can be used in many (if not
  all) areas of linguistic inquiry

23
Corpus linguistics definition

• a methodology for the inspection of
• linguistic phenomena on the basis of
• samples of real-life texts collected in the form
  of
• corpora.
• Corpus sing. Corpora pl.

24
Corpus

• a finite body of
• machine-readable text,
• sampled in order to be
• maximally representative of the language variety
  under consideration
• McEnery Wilson 199624

25
Corpora tools

• Statistical analysis
• Word (and other item) frequences
• English
• Contextual analysis
• Concordances
• Search patterns in their context. This is an
  analysis that shows search patterns and their
  context in one line (similiar to KWICs). The
  search patterns are in the center of a line, the
  rest consists of the context before and after the
  search pattern.

26
Concordance example
27
ICLE

• The International Corpus of Learner English
  (ICLE),
• centralised in Louvain,
• contains over 2 million words of writing by
  learners of English
• from 14 different mother tongue backgrounds
• Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, German,
  Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish
• 3,640 learner texts
• is the result of collaboration between a large
  number of universities internationally.

28
PICLE Classic error analysis

• On a smaller sub-corpus of 30,000 words.
• The essays have to be corrected manually
• ideally, one would like to rely on editing
  software here
• however, the existing programs are not dependable
  in detecting advanced learner semantic, stylistic
  and other errors).
• In the second stage, the analyst looks
• at the usage and frequencies of syntactic,
  lexical and discursive elements of the text,
• using to his aid software packages
• with frequency and concordancing facilities

29
Classic error analysis example

• Concordances of the word possibility in native
  and non-
• native (French) writing show
• that although the three types of grammatical
  structures present in the native corpus are also
  represented in the non-native one
• 1. ... from the two-fold possibility for joining
  ...
• 2. ... possibility of identification ...
• 3. ... there seems every possibility that the
  present Queen ...
• there is also a fourth, systematic type of
  occurence which is not supported by the native
  corpus nor by any English grammar
• 4. ...students have the possibility to leave ...

30
Foreign-soundingness

• This is at least partially related to
• under- and overrepresentation of certain words,
  expresions and structures in
• non-native production as opposed to the native
  English texts.
• Statistical studies can reveal precisely which
  and what types of structures are used too much,
  too little, or sometimes simply wrong.

31
Foreign-soundingness example 1

• analysis of the occurence of the top 100
  high-frequency words
• taken out of the total vocabulary in all the
  analysed corpora
• suggests that as we move from
• the more to the less frequent vocabulary items,
• foreign (Finnish, Swedish and French) learners,
• in contrast with native English writers,
• use them increasingly more.

32
Foreign-soundingness example 2

• A more sophisticated analysis conducted on
  annotated corpora reveals
• that French and Czech writers of English
• underuse the preposition "over" in the contexts
  of "in connection with", as in
• An argument over money
• while they overuse it in the locative sense,
• by confusing it with, for example, "during"
  (during the week) or "throughout" (throughout the
  play).

33
ICLE results

• ICLE provides an ideal testbed for
• improving the existing style and grammar
  checkers what is more,
• It can be a valuable help in devising a new
  generation of computer software packages
• suited to individual foreign varieties of
  English.

34
ICLE results

• New grammars, dictionaries, vocabulary books and
  handbooks
• could be devised that would take the newly
  identified learner needs better into account.
• Before that, results of various comparative
  analyses of the ICLE and native corpora could
  influence the day-by-day performance of our
  (writing) teachers.

35
ICLE Polish component

• Dr Przemek Kaszubski
• Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznan)
• http//main.amu.edu.pl/przemka/PICLE
• PICLE contains
• about 330,000 words of running text
• over 500 essays,
• all available in electronic form

36
PICLE Statistics

• Bytes 1 982 383 ( number of characters in the
  corpus)
• Tokens 330 336 ( number of
  running words in the corpus)
• Types 15 558 ( number of
  different words/wordforms)
• Type/Token Ratio 4,71 ( how many times
  on average an orthographic wordform is repeated
  in the corpus)
• Standardised Type/Token 57,28 ( average
  type/token ratio for 300 words of text)
• Ave. Word Length 4,79 ( mean, or
  average, word length)

37
PICLE Statistics

• Sentences 14 225
• Sent.length 18,40 ( mean sentence
  length)
• sd. Sent. Length 9,03 ( standard
  deviation of sentence length, in words)
• Paragraphs 3 670
• Para. length 89,66 ( mean paragraph
  length)
• sd. Para. length 65,76 ( standard
  deviation of paragraph length)
• Headings 509 ( number of essays
  in corpus)
• Heading length 618,17 ( average essay
  length)
• sd. Heading length 209,28 ( standard
  deviation of essay length, in words)

38
PICLE example

• Example of raw PICLE data
• This is the very first essay in the whole PICLE
  corpus.
• PPME01.TXT
• One often hears the despondent voice their
  complaints about the deteriorating condition of
  human creativity which is due to the
  overdevelopment of technology. What a
  preposterous idea! Neither technology nor
  industrialization can impede our capability of
  dreaming or using our imagination since human
  minds intrinsically harbor vast amounts of
  creative powers. We simple need these to overcome
  daily hazards and excuse our uncommendable
  behavior.

39
PICLE tagged example

• Example of tagged PICLE data
• This is a tagged version of the very first essay
  in the PICLE corpus.
• 1 lth_ IGN(left) PPME01.TXT N(prop,sing) lth/
  IGN(left) One NUM(card,sing) often ADV(ge) hears
  V(montr,pres) the ART(def) despondent ADJ voice
  N(com,sing) their PRON(poss,plu) complaints
  N(com,plu) about PREP(ge) the ART(def)
  deteriorating ADJ(ingp) condition N(com,sing) of
  PREP(ge) human ADJ creativity N(com,sing) which
  PRON(rel) is V(cop,pres) due PREP(ge)1/2 to
  PREP(ge)2/2 the ART(def) overdevelopment
  N(com,sing) of PREP(ge) technology N(com,sing) .
  PUNC(per) 2 What PRON(inter) a ART(indef)
  preposterous ADJ idea N(com,sing) ! PUNC(exm)

40
Concordancing for teachers

• Concordancing with Language Learners Why? When?
  What?
• Vance Stevens,
• CAELL Journal, vol 6 2, Summer 1995 pp. 2-10
• http//216.239.59.104/search?qcachewww.ruf.rice.
  edu/barlow/stevens.html

41
Concordancing for teachers

• Concordancing in English Language Teaching
• Prof. Dr. Bernhard Kettemann
• University of Graz
• http//www-gewi.kfunigraz.ac.at/ed/project/concord
  1.html

42
Concordancing for teachers

• Linguistic ideas to test on corpora
• representativeness or representativity ?
• is the latter word legitimate (BNC, Web)
• in/on/with a word processor?
• which preposition?
• narrower/commoner vs more narrow/common
• trace distribution patterns
• built-in or in-built
• which form dominates? any distribution or
  collocational pattern(s)?