Article published in:
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 25:1 (2020) ► pp. 89–115

Lexical dispersion and corpus design

| Northern Arizona University
| Northern Arizona University
| Northern Arizona University
Lexical dispersion is typically measured across arbitrary corpus parts of equal size. In this study, we apply DA  – a new dispersion index designed for unequal-sized corpus parts – to the British National Corpus (BNC) in a series of cases studies to show that the dispersion of a word is strongly influenced by the corpus units or parts it is measured across. Our results show that dispersion should be measured and interpreted based on corpus units that are linguistically meaningful for a particular research goal. We conclude with recommendations to help researchers select meaningful corpus units for measuring and interpreting lexical dispersion.
Keywords: word frequency lists, corpus design, text, mode, DA
Published online: 16 April 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.18010.egb
References

References

Alcaraz-Marmol, G.
(2015) Dispersion and frequency: Is there any difference as regards their relation to L2 vocabulary gains? International Journal of English Studies, 15(2), 1–16. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Altmann, E. G., Pierrehumbert, J. B., & Motter, A. E.
(2009) Beyond word frequency: Bursts, lulls, and scaling in the temporal distributions of words. PLOS one, 4(11), e7678. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Biber, D., Reppen, R., Schnur, E., & Ghanem, R.
(2016) On the (non) utility of Juilland’s D to measure lexical dispersion in large corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 21(4), 439–464. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Brezina, V., & Gablasova, D.
(2013) Is there a core general vocabulary? Introducing the New General Service List. Applied Linguistics, 36(1), 1–22. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Browne, C.
(2014) A New General Service List: The better mousetrap we’ve been looking for. Vocabulary Learning and Instruction, 3(2), 1–10.Google Scholar
Burch, B., Egbert, J., & Biber, D.
(2017) Measuring and interpreting lexical dispersion in corpus linguistics. Journal of Research Design and Statistics in Linguistics and Communication Science, 3(2), 189–216. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, J. B.
(1970) An alternative to Juilland’s Usage Coefficient for lexical frequencies. ETS Research Report Series 1970(2), 1–15.Google Scholar
Carroll, J. B., Davies, P., & Richman, B.
(1971) The American Heritage Word Frequency Book. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Coxhead, A.
(2000) A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213–238. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Coxhead, A., & Hirsch, D.
(2007) A pilot science-specific word list. Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée, 12(2), 65–78. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dang, T. N. Y., Coxhead, A., & Webb, S.
(2017) The academic spoken word list. Language Learning, 67(4), 959–997. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Davies, M., & Gardner, D.
(2010) A Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary American English: Word Sketches, Collocates and Thematic Lists. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Francis, W. N., & Kucera, H.
(1982) Frequency Analysis of English Usage: Lexicon and Grammar. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Gardner, D., & Davies, M.
(2013) A new academic vocabulary list. Applied Linguistics, 35(3), 305–327. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gries, S. Th.
(2008) Dispersions and adjusted frequencies in corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 13(4), 403–437. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2010) Dispersions and adjusted frequencies in corpora: Further explorations. In S. Th. Gries, S. Wulff, & M. Davies (Eds.), Corpus Linguistic Applications: Current Studies, New Directions (pp. 197–212). Amsterdam: Rodopi. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Juilland, A. G., Brodin, D. R., & Davidovitch, C.
(1970) Frequency Dictionary of French Words. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kilgarriff, A.
(1996, June). Why chi-square doesn’t work, and an improved LOB-Brown comparison. Paper presented at the ALLCACH Conference, Bergen, Norway.
Leech, G., Rayson, P., & Wilson, A.
(2001) Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English: Based on the British National Corpus. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
[ p. 114 ]
Lei, L., & Liu, D.
(2016) A new medical academic word list: A corpus-based study with enhanced methodology. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 22, 42–53. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lijffijt, J., & Gries, S. Th.
(2012) Correction to Stefan Th. Gries’ “Dispersions and adjusted frequencies in corpora”. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics. 17(1), 147–149. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lijffijt, J., Nevalainen, T., Säily, T., Papapetrou, P., Puolamäki, K., & Mannila, H.
(2016) Significance testing of word frequencies in corpora. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 31(2), 374–397. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Liu, D.
(2011) The most frequently used English phrasal verbs in American and British English: A multicorpus examination. TESOL Quarterly, 45(4), 661–688. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Matsushita, T.
(2012)  In what Order Should Learners Learn Japanese Vocabulary? A Corpus-based Approach (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.Google Scholar
Nation, I. S. P.
(2004) A study of the most frequent word families in the British National Corpus. In P. Bogaards & B. Laufer (Eds.), Vocabulary in A Second language: Selection, Acquisition, and Testing (pp. 3–13). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Paquot, M.
(2007) Towards a productively-oriented academic word list. In Walinski, J., Kredens, K., & Gozdz-Roszkowski, S. (Eds.), Practical Applications in Language and Computers 2005 (pp. 127–140). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Rosengren, I.
(1972)  Ein Frequenzwörterbuch der deutschen Zeitungssprache: Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung [ A Frequency Dictionary of German Newspaper Language: Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung], Vol. 2. Lund: GWK Gleerup.Google Scholar
Savický, P., & Hlavácová, J.
(2002) Measures of word commonness. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 9(3), 215–231. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wang, J., Liang, S. L., & Ge, G. C.
(2008) Establishment of a medical academic word list. English for Specific Purposes, 27(4), 442–458. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ward, J.
(2009) A basic engineering English word list for less proficient foundation engineering undergraduates. English for Specific Purposes, 28(3), 170–182. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wilcox, A. R.
(1967) Indices of Qualitative Variation (Technical Report ORNLTM-1919). Oak Ridge National Laboratory. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(1973) Indices of qualitative variation and political measurement. Western Political Quarterly, 26(2), 325-343. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 115 ]
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Burch, Brent & Jesse Egbert
2020. Zero-inflated beta distribution applied to word frequency and lexical dispersion in corpus linguistics. Journal of Applied Statistics 47:2 ► pp. 337 ff. Crossref logo
Omidian, Taha & Anna Siyanova-Chanturia
2021. Parameters of variation in the use of words in empirical research writing. English for Specific Purposes 62 ► pp. 15 ff. Crossref logo
Winter, Bodo & Martine Grice
2021. Independence and generalizability in linguistics. Linguistics 59:5 ► pp. 1251 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 05 january 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.