Quantifying relational nouns in corpora

Bibliographic Data

ID21695218
AuthorsLelia Gla (0000-0003-0428-7785, Georgia Institute of Technology, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume26
Issue4
Pages833-859
Publication date2022-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnglish Language and Linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1360-6743 • E-ISSN: 1469-4379
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1360674322000089
OpenAlexW4306857325
LanguageEN
References cited36

While relational nouns ( cousin ) are traditionally delineated in a binary and theory-dependent manner, this article approximates relationality as a continuous, objective corpus metric (Percent Possessive) – allowing for lexicon-wide exploration of which nouns are more or less relational and why. Comparing across nouns and accounting for the ontological class of the noun's referent (focusing on nouns denoting artifacts, natural kinds, occupations, humans and locations), I find that Percent Possessive is positively correlated with a noun's per-million-word frequency. Comparing across different web communities, I find that a noun is more frequent, and shows a greater ratio of definite to indefinite tokens, in the community where its Percent Possessive is significantly higher. I take these findings to be consistent with the claim that a noun is more easily interpreted as relational (as measured by Percent Possessive) when human interaction with its referent is more conventional (as measured by its frequency and definite-to-indefinite ratio). Inspired by the many authors who have suggested a socio-cultural component to relationality and possession, this article explores at scale in English how nouns reflect the conventions of the people who use them

Definiteness · Determiner · Genitive case · Lexicon · Linguistics · Noun · Plural · Possessive · Proper noun · Referent · Computer Science · Lexicography and Language Studies · linguistics and terminology studies · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Psychology

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