Between the Humanist and the Modernist: Semi-automated Analysis of Linguistic Corpora

Garretson, Gregory; O’Connor, Mary Catherine

doi:10.1163/9789401203845_007

Cited by 6 publications

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“…First, the decision to use only automatically computed measures brings up the issue of software accuracy. This was evaluated here by spot‐checks; however, future investigations should (ideally) follow a semi‐automatic approach with a systematic correction of tagger errors (Garretson & O'Connor, , see also Vyatkina, ). Second, to enhance research comparability, more studies are needed with data manually annotated for syntactic complexity measures used for similar learner populations (such as clauses, T‐units, and lexical sophistication).…”

Section: Implications and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Second Language Writing Complexity in Groups and Individuals: A Longitudinal Learner Corpus Study

Vyatkina

2012

The Modern Language Journal

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This study explores the development of multiple dimensions of linguistic complexity in the writing of beginning learners of German both as a group and as individuals. The data come from an annotated, longitudinal learner corpus. The development of lexicogrammatical complexity is explored at 2 intersections: (a) between cross‐sectional trendlines and the individual development paths of 2 focal learners and (b) between different complexity variables. The study contributes to the empirical body of linguistic complexity research by close tracking of beginning learners over 4 semesters of collegiate study of German as a second language (L2). For this purpose, data for multiple variables were collected at dense time intervals using multiple waves, and correlation analysis between various datasets was performed. The results confirm some general developmental trends established in previous research. However, the study also found significant variability between individual and cross‐sectional data. Furthermore, differences found for more specific complexity measures between this study's results and previous research are explained in terms of differences in instructional approaches. In addition, the study contributes to the discussion of methods and metrics appropriate for tracking the development of complexity in foreign language writing. The study concludes with implications for L2 pedagogy and further research, including applications of computational methods.

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Section: Implications and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Second Language Writing Complexity in Groups and Individuals: A Longitudinal Learner Corpus Study

Vyatkina

2012

The Modern Language Journal

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“…This study aimed to benefit from available NLP resources and used automatic corpus tools for computing length‐based measures as well as automatically assigning POS tags as proxy measures for surface syntactic structures (Aarts & Granger, ; Lu, ). However, since automatic POS‐taggers never achieve 100% accuracy even on native speaker data (Schmid, ) and learner errors may affect the accuracy rate even more (Granger, ; van Rooy & Schäfer, ), this study adopted a semi‐automated tagging procedure (Garretson & O'Connor, ).For semi‐automatic POS annotation, the learner corpus was first tagged automatically for 50 distinct word classes using the Tree Tagger for German (Schmid, ), and the output was manually checked (Meunier & de Mönnink, ). For evaluating POS annotations, the total tagger output on the writing of the 2 learners was checked manually by the researcher and independently by another annotator, using the guidelines for the tagset employed in the Tree Tagger (Schiller et al, ).…”

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Specific Syntactic Complexity: Developmental Profiling of Individuals Based on an Annotated Learner Corpus

Vyatkina

2013

The Modern Language Journal

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This study tracks the development of syntactic complexity in the writing of two beginning German as a second language learners with English as a first language over four semesters of collegiate language study by using developmental profiling techniques applied to an annotated learner corpus. The focus of the investigation is on individual developmental pathways and differences between learners who follow the same instructional sequences. The study explores variation in terms of frequencies of the selected complexity features (coordinate, nominal, and nonfinite verb structures) using corpus analysis techniques with semi-automatic corpus annotation. Two developmental profiles emerge from an in-depth contextual investigation of the target linguistic phenomena. The results show that the general developmental trend is for increasing frequency and range of syntactic complexity features with learners diverging more from one another in the second half of the observation period. This study addresses existing gaps in interlanguage complexity research by focusing on benchmarking development rather than gauging proficiency, addressing specific rather than global complexity measures, and targeting instructed learners at beginning rather than high-intermediate and advanced proficiency levels. Suggestions for future developmental second language acquisition research and foreign language pedagogy are made.

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“…The final step is of course the full analysis of the data; what form this takes will vary from study to study, and while it is certainly possible for this to be carried out in part by the computer (see Garretson and O'Connor 2007), that is not an integral part of the approach advocated here.…”

Section: Division Of Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this reason, in fairly large-scale studies, we prefer to do as much of the data extraction as possible using automated methods but then include at least one pass of "manual" evaluation of the data. If this manual evaluation can be speeded up by the further use of computers (see Garretson and O'Connor 2007), so much the better -but the main point is that the researcher him-or herself will eventually decide which tokens are in fact relevant to the study and how they should best be coded. Semi-automated approaches enable a research team to analyse as much data as possible, as accurately as possible, as quickly as possible.…”

Section: Advantages and Disadvantages Of Semi-automated Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, it is worth considering that time put into the development of automated processes is likely to pay dividends in that these processes may be reused (for example, when the time comes to study a second corpus) or adapted to other uses (for example, to study a similar phenomenon) (see Garretson and O'Connor 2007). The program SVEP is a good example of this principle -although it was designed for a particular purpose, we are offering it to other researchers with the hope that it will prove just as useful for other studies.…”

Section: Advantages and Disadvantages Of Semi-automated Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recent Advances in Corpus Linguistics

Vandelanotte¹,

Davidse²,

Gentens³

2014

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The progressive in South Asian and Southeast Asian varieties of English -147 mapping areal homogeneity and heterogeneity Marco Schilk and Marc Hammel Neology: from word to register 173 Antoinette Renouf viii Contents English amid(st) and among(st): a contrastive approach based on 207 Norwegian and Swedish translation Thomas Egan and Gudrun Rawoens Cohesive conjunctions in English and German: systemic contrasts and 229 textual differences Kerstin Kunz and Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski Part 3. Second language acquisition "Anyway, the point I'm making is": lexicogrammatical relevance 265 marking in lectures Katrien L. B. Deroey Faux amis in speech and writing: a corpus-based study of English 293 false friends in the production of Spanish students M. Luisa Roca-Varela Automated classification of unexpected uses of this and that in a learner 309 corpus of English Thomas Gaillat, Pascale Sébillot and Nicolas Ballier Crude contours: a pilot study into the feasibility of charting student 325 speakers' proficiency †Monique van der Haagen, Pieter de Haan and Rina de Vries A longitudinal study of the syntactic development of very advanced 335 Dutch EFL writing Pieter de Haan and †Monique van der Haagen Vandelanotte (University of Namur). They were very pleased that Caroline Gentens and Ditte Kimps joined the editorial team.While naturally we accept the final responsibility for the choices made, we were very lucky in being guided by the conscientious advice of the following external referees: den Branden. We much appreciated their careful comments and suggestions for revision, which benefited both the papers selected for this volume and those eventually recommended to other publication outlets.Without the contributors, there obviously would not shave been a volume. We thank them for developing the studies they presented at ICAME 33 with an eye to the general coherence of this volume and for the good spirit in which the whole enterprise was conducted.Rodopi helped along the project with their usual friendly efficiency. Eric Van Broekhuizen was always ready to offer help and useful advice and we are very grateful to the series editors Christian Mair, Charles Meyer and Nelleke Oostdijk for having accepted the volume for publication in the series Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics.For generous financial support of the conference, thanks are due to the Research Foundation -Flanders (FWO), the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) and the Leuven International Doctoral School for the Humanities and Social Sciences. We would also like to acknowledge the support of the GOAproject 12/007, for linguists, but for sociologists and historians as well. The corpus will be available in different formats, focusing not only on textual transcription, but also on visual representations and meta-textual information. Beal and Sen set out the main lines of a project to develop a corpus of eighteenth-century English phonology, based on eighteenth-century pronouncing dictionaries and other texts dealing with pronunciation. ...

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Between the Humanist and the Modernist: Semi-automated Analysis of Linguistic Corpora

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

The Development of Second Language Writing Complexity in Groups and Individuals: A Longitudinal Learner Corpus Study

The Development of Second Language Writing Complexity in Groups and Individuals: A Longitudinal Learner Corpus Study

Specific Syntactic Complexity: Developmental Profiling of Individuals Based on an Annotated Learner Corpus

Recent Advances in Corpus Linguistics

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