A regional analysis of contraction rate in written Standard American English
Download 8.95 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Measure Variant A Variant B
- Variables Mean 500 mile Weighting Function
- Variables Positive value clusters Negative value clusters
| Notes
1 All computer programs used in this survey, including the scripts used to compile the corpus, compute contraction rate, and calculate the two measures of spatial autocorrelation, were designed and written by the author using the programming language Perl. 2 In order to implement a spatial weighting function, the distance between every pair of cities in the corpus was calculated using longitudes and latitudes for the cities provided by the U.S. Census Bureau and the great circle distance formula (Sinnott 1984). 3 The Getis-Ord Gi* maps associate each location with one of 11 levels of z-scores: z-scores larger than or equal to 2.84, corresponding to the adjusted .0045 alpha level; z-scores larger than or equal to 2.58, corresponding to the a .01 alpha level; z-scores larger than or equal to 1.96, corresponding to a .05 alpha level; z-scores larger than or equal to 1.64, corresponding to a .10 alpha level; z-scores larger than or equal to 1.00; and z-scores between +1.00 and -1.00. By identifying clusters of locations with highly positive or negative Getis-Ord Gi* z-scores, regional patterns can be identified in the distribution of each variable. 4 The fact that double contraction shows no significant degree of global spatial autocorrelation is surprising as it is the only variable analyzed in this study that has been tested for regional variation in American English in a previous study (Yaeger-Dror et al. 2002), where it was found that in the northern United States relatively more not-contractions are used. This claim is supported to a limited degree by the present study, as not contraction in double contraction environments was found to be somewhat more common in the North Central States; however, there is no clear north/south pattern, although it should be noted once again that this variable had the lowest minimum frequency across the city sub-corpora, indicating that its actual values were likely not estimated as accurately as the other variables. 5 It should be noted that all three forms of non-standard contraction are very rare in the corpus and as such exhibit very little variation in their raw values. This fact, however, should not call in question the validity of the findings related to these variables; rather, these findings demonstrate that regional patterns exist even at this microscopic level of linguistic variation. References Algeo, J. 1988. “British and American grammatical differences”. International Journal of Lexicography, 1 (1), 1-31. Algeo, J. 2006. British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allen, H. B. 1973-1976. The Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Atwood, E. B. 1953. A Survey of Verb Forms in the Eastern United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Atwood, E. B. 1962. The Regional Vocabulary of Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press. Axelsson, M. W. 1998. “Contraction in British newspapers in the late 20th century”. Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia, 102. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Baugh, J. 1980. “A reexamination of the black English copula”. In W. Labov (Ed.). Locating Language in Time and Space. New York: Academic, 83 -106. van Bergen, L. 2008a. Negative contraction and Old English dialects: Evidence from glosses and prose. Part I. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 109 (vol?), 275-312. van Bergen, L. 2008b. Negative contraction and Old English dialects: Evidence from glosses and prose. Part II. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 109: 391-435. Biber, D. 1987. A textual comparison of British and American writing. American Speech 62 (vol?), 99-119. Biber, D. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. & Finegan, E. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman. Bloch, B. 1971. “Postvocalic r in New England Speech, a study in American dialect Geography”. In H. B. Allen& G.N. Underwood (Eds.), Readings in American Dialectology. New York: Appleton Century Croft Meredith Corporation. Carver, CM. 1987. American Regional Dialects. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Cassidy, FG. 1985. Dictionary of American Regional English. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Craglia, M, Haining, R, Wiles, P. 2000. A comparative evaluation of approaches to urban crime pattern analysis. Urban Studies 37: 711-729. Crystal, D. 1991. Making Sense of English Usage. Edinburgh: Chambers. Cliff, AD, Ord, JK. 1973. Spatial Autocorrelation. London: Pion. Cliff, AD, Ord, JK. 1981. Spatial Processes: Models and Applications. London: Pion. Dall'erba, S. 2003. Distribution of regional income and regional funds in Europe 1989-1999: an exploratory spatial data analysis. MPRA Paper 1378, University Library of Munich, Germany. Davis, AL. 1948. A Word Atlas of the Great Lakes Region. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Michigan. Glavanakov, S, White, DJ, Caraco, T, Lapenis, A, Robinson, GR, Szymanski, BK, Maniatty, WA. 2001. Lyme disease in New York state: spatial pattern at a regional scale. The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 65: 538-545. Goebl, H. 1982. Dialektometrie; Prinzipien und Methoden des Einsatzes der numerischen Taxonomie im Bereich der Dialektgeographie. Vienna: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Goebl, H. 1984. Dialektometrische Studien: Anhand italoromanischer, rätoromanischer und
Goebl, H. 2006. Recent Advances is Salzburg Dialectometry. Literary and Linguistic Computing 21: 411-435. Grieve, J. 2009. A Corpus-Based Regional Dialect Survey of Grammatical Variation in Written Standard American English. Ph.D. Dissertation. Manuscript. Northern Arizona University. Hogg, R. 2004. The spread of negative contraction in early English. In Curzan, A, Emmons, K (Editors). Studies in the history of the English language II: Unfolding conversations. Berlin: Mouton. Holm, J. 1984. Variability of the copula in black English and its Creole kin. American Speech 59: 291-309. Hughes, A, Trudgill, P. 1996. English Accents and Dialects: An Introduction to Social and Regional Varieties of English in the British Isles. Hodder Arnold. Ingham, R. 2006. On two negative concord dialects in early English. Language Variation and Change 18: 241-266. Ihalainen, O. 1991. A point of verb syntax in south-western British English: an analysis of a dialect continuum. In Aijmer K, Altenberg B (editors). English Corpus Linguistics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik. London: Longman. 290-302. Kjellmer, G. 1998. On contraction in Modern English. Studia Neophilologica 69:155–186. Kortmann, B, Herrmann, T, Pietsch, L, Wagner, S. 2005. A Comparative Grammar of British
Kretzschmar, WA, McDavid, V, Lerud, T, Johnson, E. 1993. Handbook of the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Krug, MG. 1994. Contractions in spoken and written English. MA Thesis, University of Exeter, England. Kurath, H. 1949. Word Geography of the Eastern United States. University of Michigan Press. Kurath, H, Hansen, L, Bloch, B, Bloch, J. 1939-1943. Linguistic Atlas of New England. Providence: Brown University Press. Kurath, H, McDavid, RI. 1961. The Pronunciation of English in the Atlantic States. University of Michigan Press. Labov, W. 1966a. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Labov, W. 1966b. The Linguistic Variable as a Structural Unit. Washington Linguistics Review 3: 4-22. Labov, W. 1969. Contraction, Deletion, and Inherent Variability of the English Copula.
Labov, W. 1972a. Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, W. 1972b. Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, W, Ash, S, Boberg, C. 2006. Atlas of North American English: phonetics, phonology, and sound change. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Levin, S. 1958. Negative contraction: an Old and Middle English dialect criterion. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 57: 492–501. Marckwardt, AH. 1957. Principal and Subsidiary Dialect Areas in the North Central States. PADS 27:3-15. Marshall, RJ. 1991. A review of methods for the statistical analysis of spatial patterns of disease. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A) 154: 421-441. McDavid, RI, O’Cain, T. 1979. Linguistic atlas of the middle and south Atlantic states. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McElhinny, BS. 1993. Copula and auxiliary contraction in the speech of white Americans. American Speech 68: 371-399. Moran, PAP. 1948. The interpretation of statistical maps. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 37: 243- 251. Nerbonne, J, Heeringa, W, Van den Hout, E, van der Kooi, P, Otten, S, van de Vis, W. 1996. Phonetic distance between Dutch dialects. In Durieux, G, Daelemans, W, Gillis, S (editors). Papers from the sixth CLIN meeting. University of Antwerp. 185–202. Nerbonne, J, Kleiweg, P. 2003. Lexical Distance in LAMSAS. Computers and the Humanities 37: 339-357. Nerbonne, J, Kleiweg, P. 2007. Toward a Dialectological Yardstick. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 14:148-166. Odland, JD. 1988. Spatial Autocorrelation. Sage Publications. Ogura, M. 1999. On the use of negative na and ne in the Regius Psalter. Neuphilologische
Ogura, M. 2008. Negative contraction and nocontraction in Old English. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 109:313-329. Ord, JK, Getis, A. 1995. Local Spatial Autocorrelation Statistics: Distributional Issues and an Application. Geographical Analysis 27: 286-306. Pederson, L, McDaniel, SL, Adams, CM. 1986-93. Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (7 Volumes). Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. Perry, MJ. 2003. State to State Migration Flows: 1995 to 2000. Census 2000 Special Reports. CENSR-8. Available at http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-8.pdf Preston, D. 2002. Language with attitude. In Chambers JK, Trudgill P, Schilling-Estes N (editors). The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 40-66. Quirk, R, Greenbaum, S, Leech, G, Svartvik, J. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. New York: Longman. Ratcliffe, JH, McCullagh, MJ. 1999. Hotbeds of crime and the search for spatial accuracy. Journal of Geographical Systems 1: 385-398. Rickford, JR, Ball, A, Blake, R, Jackson, R, Martin, N. 1991. Rappin' on the copula coffin: theoretical and methodological issues in the analysis of copula variation in African-American English. Language Variation and Change 3: 103-32. Séguy, J. 1971. La relation entre la distance spatiale et la distance lexicale. Revue de linguistique romane, 35: 335-357. Séguy, J. 1973a. Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de la Gascogne. Volume 6. Paris: Centre national de la recherché scientifique. Séguy, J. 1973b. La dialectometrie dans l’Atlas linguistique de la Gascogne. Revue de linguistique romane, 37: 1-24. Sinnott, RW. 1984. Virtues of the Haversine. Sky and Telescope 68: 159. Szmrecsanyi, B. 2008. Corpus-based dialectometry: aggregate morphosyntactic variability in British English dialects. International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 2(1-2): 279-296. Tagliamonte, S, Smith, J. 2002. "Either it isn't or it's not" NEG/AUX contraction in British dialects. English World-Wide 23: 251-281. Trudgill, P. 1978. Sociolinguistic patterns in British English. London: Edward Arnold. U.S. Census Bureau. 2005. State of Residence in 2000 by State of Birth. PHC-T-38. Available at http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/migrate/2000pob.html Wolfram, W. 1969. A Sociolinguistic Description of Detroit Negro Speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Wolfram, W. 1974. The relationship of white southern speech to vernacular black English. Language 50: 498-527. Wolfram, W. 1991. The linguistic variable: fact and fantasy. American Speech 66: 22-32. Yaeger-Dror, M.1997. Contraction of negatives as evidence of variation in register specific interactive rules. Language Variation and Change 9:1–36. Yaeger-Dror, M, Hall-Lew, L, Deckert, S. 2002. It's not or isn't it? Using large corpora to determine the influences on contraction strategies. Language Cariation and Change 14: 79-118. Zelinsky, W. 1973. Cultural Geography of the United. States. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall.
Table 1. Contraction measures
Table 2. Descriptive statistics and global spatial autocorrelation results
Table 3. Regional clusters
Figure 1 Geographical Distribution of City Sub-Corpora 
Directory: bitstream -> 123456789 123456789 -> College day annual report 123456789 -> Biomchanics and Medicine in Swimming, Jyväskyla, Finland June 1998 123456789 -> A. gw student and alumni numbers summary 3 123456789 -> Lexicology in theory, practice and tests Study guide Recommended by the Academic Council of Sumy State University Sumy Sumy State University 2015 123456789 -> Keywords Domestication research, older adults, digital games, media adoption, motivation, time expenditure, display of technology, identification Corresponding Author 123456789 -> Clustering Microarray Data within Amorphous Computing Paradigm and Growing Neural Gas Algorithm 123456789 -> From Via della Scala to the Cathedral: Social Spaces and the Visual Arts in Paolo Uccello’s Florence 123456789 -> Paralinguistic factors affecting foreign language acquisition Download 8.95 Mb. Share with your friends:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||