Article published in:
The Complementary Contribution of Comparable and Parallel Corpora to Crosslinguistic Studies
Edited by Sylviane Granger and Marie-Aude Lefer
[Languages in Contrast 20:2] 2020
► pp. 184–208

Corpus-based contrastive studies

Beginnings, developments and directions

| University of Oslo , Norway
This article outlines the beginnings of corpus-based contrastive studies with special reference to the development of parallel corpora that took place in Scandinavia in the early 1990s under the direction of Stig Johansson. It then discusses multilingual corpus types and methodological issues of their exploration, including the tertium comparationis for contrastive studies based on different types of corpora. Some glimpses are offered of recent developments and current trends in the field, including the widening scope of corpus-based contrastive analysis, concerning language pairs as well as the kinds of topics studied and the methods used. The paper ends by identifying and discussing some challenges for the field and indicating prospects and directions for its future.
Keywords: contrastive analysis, multilingual corpus, parallel corpus, comparable corpus,
Published online: 06 October 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.00015.has
References

References

Aijmer, K.
2008 Parallel and Comparable Corpora. In Corpus Linguistics. An International Handbook, Vol. 1, A. Lüdeling and M. Kytö (eds), 275–292. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Aijmer, K. and Altenberg, B.
2013 Introduction. In Advances in Corpus-Based Contrastive Linguistics. Studies in Honour of Stig Johansson, K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg (eds), 1–6. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Aijmer, K., Altenberg, B. and Johansson, M.
(eds) 1996 Languages in Contrast. Papers from a Symposium on Text-Based Cross-Linguistic Studies. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Aijmer, K. and Lewis, D.
(eds) 2017 Contrastive Analysis of Discourse-Pragmatic Aspects of Linguistic Genres. Berlin: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Aijmer, K. and Simon-Vandenbergen, A.
(eds) 2006 Pragmatic Markers in Contrast. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
[ p. 202 ]
Altenberg, B.
1999 Adverbial Connectors in English and Swedish: Semantic and Lexical Correspondences. In Out of Corpora. Studies in Honour of Stig Johansson, H. Hasselgård and S. Oksefjell (eds), 249–268. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Altenberg, B. and Granger, S.
2002 Recent Trends in Cross-Linguistic Lexical Studies. In Lexis in Contrast: Corpus-Based Approaches, B. Altenberg and S. Granger (eds), 3–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Barlow, M.
1995 ParaConc: A Concordancer for Parallel Texts. Computers and Texts 10: 14–16.Google Scholar
2008 Parallel Texts and Corpus-Based Contrastive Analysis. In Current Trends in Contrastive Linguistics: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives, M. Á. Gómez González, J. L. Mackenzie and E. M. González Álvarez (eds), 101–121. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bernardini, S.
2015 Translation. In The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics, D. Biber and R. Reppen (eds), 515–536. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Biber, D.
1988 Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 Dimensions of Register Variation. A Cross-Linguistic Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Biber, D., Conrad, S. and Reppen, R.
1998 Corpus Linguistics. Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Čermák, F. and Rosen, A.
2012 The Case of InterCorp, a Multilingual Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 17(3): 411–427. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Čermáková, A. and Chlumská, L.
2017 Expressing place in Children’s Literature: Testing the Limits of the n-gram Method in Contrastive Linguistics. In Cross-Linguistic Correspondences: From Lexis to Genre, T. Egan and H. Dirdal (eds), 75–86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chlumská, L. and Lukeš, D.
2018 Comparing the Incomparable? Rethinking n-grams for Free Word-Order Languages. In Book of Abstracts. Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies Conference (5th edition), S. Granger, M.-A. Lefer and L. A. d. S. Penha-Marion (eds), 40–41. CECL Papers 1. Louvain-la-Neuve: Centre for English Corpus Linguistics/Université catholique de Louvain.Google Scholar
Cignoni, L., Coffey, S. and Moon, R.
1999 Idiom Variation in Italian and English: Two Corpus-Based Studies. Languages in Contrast 2(2): 279–300. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cortes, V.
2008 A Comparative Analysis of Lexical Bundles in Academic History Writing in English and Spanish. Corpora 3(1): 43–57. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cosme, C. and Gilquin, G.
2008 Free and Bound Prepositions in a Contrastive Perspective. In Phraseology: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, S. Granger and F. Meunier (eds), 259–274. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Coussé, E. and van der Auwera, J.
2012 Human Impersonal Pronouns in Swedish and Dutch: A Contrastive Study of Man and Men . Languages in Contrast 12(2): 121–138. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crible, L. and Degand, L.
2019 Reliability vs. Granularity in Discourse Annotation: What is the Trade-Off? Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 15(1): 71–99. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 203 ]
Defrancq, B.
2015 Contrasting Contrastive Approaches. Languages in Contrast 15(1): 1–3. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dickens, A. and Salkie, R.
1996 Comparing Bilingual Dictionaries with a Parallel Corpus. Proceedings of the Seventh Euralex International Congress on Lexicography (Euralex ’96). Göteborg, Sweden 13–18 August 1996 Göteborg: Göteborg University. 551–559. Available at http://​euralex​.org​/category​/publications​/euralex​-1996​-2/ [last accessed May 2019].
Doval, I. and Sánchez Nieto, M. T.
2019 Parallel Corpora for Contrastive and Translation Studies. New Resources and Applications. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dušková, L.
2015 From Syntax to Text. The Janus Face of Functional Sentence Perspective. Prague: Karolinum Press.Google Scholar
Dyvik, H.
2005 Translations as a Semantic Knowledge Source. Proceedings of the Second Baltic Conference on Human Language Technologies. Tallinn, Estonia 4–5 April 2005 Tallinn: Institute of Cybernetics at Tallinn University of Technology, Institute of the Estonian Language. 27–38.Google Scholar
Ebeling, J.
1998 The Translation Corpus Explorer: A Browser for Parallel Texts. In Corpora and Cross-Linguistic Research: Theory, Method, and Case Studies, S. Johansson and S. Oksefjell (eds), 101–112. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
2016 Contrastive Linguistics in a New Key. Nordic Journal of English Studies 15(3): 7–14. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ebeling, J. and Ebeling, S. O.
2013a Patterns in Contrast. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 An English-Norwegian Contrastive Analysis of Downtoners, more or less. Nordic Journal of English Studies 14(1): 62–89. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 A Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Recurrent Word-Combinations in a Comparable Corpus of English and Norwegian Fiction. In Contrasting English and Other Languages through Corpora, M. Janebová, E. Lapshinova-Koltunski and M. Martinková (eds), 2–31. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Ebeling, S. O.
2016 Does Corpus Size Matter? Revisiting ENPC Case Studies with an Extended Version of the Corpus. Nordic Journal of English Studies 15(3): 33–54. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 Exploring Cross-Linguistic Congruence: The Case of two Stance Frames in English and Norwegian. Bergen Language and Linguistics Studies (BeLLS) 9(1): 69–92.Google Scholar
Ebeling, S. O. and Ebeling, J.
2013b From Babylon to Bergen: On the Usefulness of Aligned Texts. Bergen Language and Linguistics Studies (BeLLS) 3(1): 23–42.Google Scholar
2014  For Pete’s Sake! A Corpus-Based Contrastive Study of the English/Norwegian Patterns “for * sake” / for * skyld. Languages in Contrast 14(2): 191–213. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Egan, T.
2013  Between and through Revisited. In Corpus Linguistics and Variation in English: Focus on Non-Native Englishes, M. Huber and J. Mukherjee (eds). Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, Vol. 13. Available at http://​www​.helsinki​.fi​/varieng​/series​/volumes​/13/ [last accessed May 2019]
Egan, T. and Dirdal, H.
(eds) 2017 Cross-Linguistic Correspondences. From Lexis to Genre. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 204 ]
Escouflaire, L.
2020 Building a Typology of the Linguistic Functions of Emoji. A Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Platform Corpus Analysis of Emoji in Conversation. Master's dissertation, University of Oslo/Université catholique de Louvain.Google Scholar
Evert, S., and Neumann, S.
2017 The Impact of Translation Direction on Characteristics of Translated Texts: A Multivariate Analysis for English and German. In Empirical Translation Studies: New Methodological and Theoretical Traditions, G. De Sutter, M.-A. Lefer and I. Delaere (eds), 47–80. Berlin: De Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Filipović, R.
1984 What are the Primary Data for Contrastive Analysis? In Contrastive Linguistics: Prospects and Problems, J. Fisiak (ed.), 107–117. Berlin: De Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fisiak, J.
(ed.) 1984 Contrastive Linguistics. Prospects and Problems. Berlin: De Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fløttum, K., Dahl, T. and Kinn, T.
2006 Academic Voices. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Frankenberg-Garcia, A. and Santos, D.
2003 Introducing Compara, the Portuguese-English Parallel Corpus. In Corpora in Translator Education, F. Zanettin, S. Bernardini and D. Stewart (eds), 71–88. Manchester: St Jerome.Google Scholar
Gale, W. A. and Church, K. W.
1991 A Program for Aligning Sentences in Bilingual Corpora. Proceedings of the 29th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). Berkeley, USA 18–21 June 1991 177–184. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gellerstam, M.
1986 Translationese in Swedish Novels Translated from English. In Translation Studies in Scandinavia, L. Wollin and H. Lindquist (eds), 88–95. Lund: CWK Gleerup.Google Scholar
Gilquin, G.
2000/2001 The Integrated Contrastive Model. Spicing up your Data. Languages in Contrast 3(1): 95–123.Google Scholar
Gómez González, M. A., Mackenzie, J. L. and González-Álvarez, E.
(eds) 2008 Current Trends in Contrastive Linguistics: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Granger, S.
1996 From CA to CIA and Back: An Integrated Approach to Computerized Bilingual and Learner Corpora. In Languages in Contrast. Text-Based Cross-Linguistic Studies, K. Aijmer, B. Altenberg and M. Johansson (eds), 37–51. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
2014 A Lexical Bundle Approach to Comparing Languages: Stems in English and French. Languages in Contrast 14(1): 58–72. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gries, S. Th., Miglio, V. G. and Jansegers, M.
To appear. Quantitative Methods for Corpus-Based Contrastive Linguistics. Available at https://​www​.researchgate​.net​/publication​/332120477​_Quantitative​_methods​_for​_corpus​-based​_contrastive​_linguistics [last accessed February 2020].
Hansen-Schirra, S. and Neumann, S.
2012 Corpus Enrichment, Representation, Exploitation, and Quality Control. In Cross-Linguistic Corpora for the Study of Translations. Insights from the Language Pair English-German, S. Hansen-Schirra, S. Neumann and E. Steiner (eds), 35–52. Berlin: De Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hansen-Schirra, S., Neumann, S., Steiner, E.
(eds) 2012 Cross-Linguistic Corpora for the Study of Translations. Insights from the Language Pair English-German. Berlin: De Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 205 ]
Hasselgård, H.
2016  The Way of the World: The Colligational Framework “the N1 of the N2” and its Norwegian Correspondences. Nordic Journal of English Studies 15(3): 55–79. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017a Temporal Expressions in English and Norwegian. In Contrasting English and Other Languages through Corpora, M. Janebová, E. Lapshinova-Koltunski and M. Martinková (eds), 75–101. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
2017b Lexical Patterns of place in English and Norwegian. In Cross-Linguistic Correspondences: From Lexis to Genre, T. Egan and H. Dirdal (eds), 97–119. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
James, C.
1980 Contrastive Analysis. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Johansson, S.
1998 On the Role of Corpora in Cross-Linguistic Research. In Corpora and Cross-Linguistic Research. Theory, Methods, and Case Studies, S. Johansson and S. Oksefjell (eds), 3–24. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
2007 Seeing through Multilingual Corpora. On the Use of Corpora in Contrastive Studies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011 A Multilingual Outlook of Corpora Studies. In Perspectives on Corpus Linguistics, V. Viana, S. Zyngier and G. Barnbrook (eds), 115–129. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 Cross-Linguistic Perspectives. In English Corpus Linguistics: Crossing Paths, M. Kytö (ed.), 45–68. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Johansson, Stig, Ebeling, J. and Oksefjell, S.
1999/2002 English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus: Manual. Available at https://​www​.hf​.uio​.no​/ilos​/english​/services​/knowledge​-resources​/omc​/enpc​/ENPCmanual​.pdf [last accessed February 2020].
Johansson, S. and Hofland, K.
1994 Towards an English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus. In Creating and Using English Language Corpora: Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora, Zürich 1993, U. Fries, G. Tottie and P. Schneider (eds), 25–37. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Kefala, S. and Sidiropoulou, M.
2016 Shaping the glo/cal in Greek–English Tourism Advertising. A Critical Cosmopolitan Perspective. Languages in Contrast 16(2): 191–212. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kirk, J. and Čermáková, A.
2017 From ICE to ICC: The New International Comparable Corpus. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Challenges in the Management of Large Corpora and Big Data and Natural Language Processing (CMLC-5+BigNLP), Birmingham, 24 July 2017, P. Bański, M. Kupietz, H. Lüngen, P. Rayson, H. Biber, E. Breiteneder, S. Clematide, J. Mariani, M. Stevenson and T. Sick (eds), 7–12. Mannheim: Institut für Deutsche Sprache. Available at https://​ids​-pub​.bsz​-bw​.de​/frontdoor​/deliver​/index​/docId​/6249​/file​/Kirk​_Cermakova​_From​_ICE​_to​_ICC​_2017​.pdf [last accessed February 2020].
Koehn, P.
2005 Europarl: A Parallel Corpus for Statistical Machine Translation. Proceedings of the Tenth Machine Translation Summit (MT Summit ’05). Phuket, Thailand 12–16 September 2005 Asia-Pacific Association for Machine Translation, Thai Computational Linguistics Laboratory. 79–86. Available at http://​www​.iccs​.inf​.ed​.ac​.uk​/~pkoehn​/publications​/europarl​-mtsummit05​.pdf [last accessed February 2020].
Kong, K. C.
2013 A Corpus-Based Study in Comparing the Multimodality of Chinese- and English-Language Newspapers. Visual Communication 12(2): 173–196. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 206 ]
König, E.
2012 Contrastive Linguistics and Language Comparison. Languages in Contrast 12(1): 3–26. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kunnskapsforlaget
2001 Engelsk Stor Ordbok: engelsk-norsk / norsk-engelsk. Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget.Google Scholar
Kunz, K., Lapshinova-Koltunski, E., Martínez Martínez, J. M., Menzel, K. and Steiner, E.
2018 Shallow Features as Indicators of English-German Contrasts in Lexical Cohesion. Languages in Contrast 18(2): 175–206. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lado, R.
1957 Linguistics across Cultures. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Lauridsen, K.
1996 Text Corpora and Contrastive Linguistics: Which Type of Corpus for which Type of Analysis? In Languages in Contrast. Papers from a Symposium on Text-Based Cross-Linguistic Studies, K. Aijmer, B. Altenberg and M. Johansson (eds), 63–71. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Laviosa, S.
2002 Corpus-Based Translation Studies. Theory, Findings, Applications. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Lefer, M.-A. and Vogeleer, S.
(eds) 2014 Genre- and Register-Related Discourse Features in Contrast. Special issue of Languages in Contrast 14(1).Google Scholar
Lewis, D.
2017 Coherence Relations and Information Structure in English and French Political Speeches. In Contrastive Analysis of Discourse-Pragmatic Aspects of Linguistic Genres, K. Aijmer and D. Lewis (eds), 141–161. Berlin: Springer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
López Arroyo, B. and Roberts, R. P.
2015 Unusual Sentence Structure in Wine Tasting Notes. A Contrastive Corpus-Based Study. Languages in Contrast 15(2): 162–180. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Macken, L., De Clercq, O. and Paulussen, H.
2011 Dutch Parallel Corpus: A Balanced Copyright-Cleared Parallel Corpus. Meta 56(2): 374–390. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maia, B. and Santos, D.
2012 “Who’s afraid of ... what?” – In English and Portuguese. In Aspects of Corpus Linguistics: Compilation, Annotation, Analysis, S. O. Ebeling, J. Ebeling and H. Hasselgård (eds). Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, Vol. 12. Available at http://​www​.helsinki​.fi​/varieng​/series​/volumes​/12/
Mair, C.
2018 Contrastive Analysis in Linguistics. In Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics, M. Aronoff (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mauranen, A.
1999 Will ‘Translationese’ Ruin a Contrastive Study? Languages in Contrast 2(2): 161–187. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
McArthur, T.
1992 The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McEnery, T. and Hardie, A.
2012 Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nordrum, L., Ebeling, S. O. and Hasselgård, H.
(eds) 2016 Languages in Contrast 20 Years on. Special issue of Nordic Journal of English Studies 15(3). CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Oakes, M. and McEnery, T.
2000 Bilingual Text Alignment – An Overview. In Multilingual Corpora in Teaching and Research, S. P. Botley, A. M. McEnery and A. Wilson (eds), 1–37. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
O’Keeffe, A.
2018 Corpus-Based Function-to-Form Approaches. In Methods in Pragmatics, A. H. Jucker, K. P. Schneider and W. Bublitz (eds), 587–618. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Salkie, R., Aijmer, K. and Barlow, M.
1998 Editorial. Languages in Contrast 1(1): v–xii. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 207 ]
Sanjurjo-González, H. and Izquierdo, M.
2019 P-ACTRES 2.0: A Parallel Corpus for Cross-Linguistic Research. In Parallel Corpora for Contrastive and Translation Studies: New Resources and Applications, I. Doval and M. T. Sanchez Nieto (eds), 215–232. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Šebestová, D. and Malá, M.
2018 Testing the Contrastive Application of the n-gram Method to Typologically Different Languages: The Case of English and Czech Children’s Literature. In Book of Abstracts. Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies Conference (5th edition), S. Granger, M.-A. Lefer and L. A. d. S. Penha-Marion (eds), 157–158. CECL Papers 1. Louvain-la-Neuve: Centre for English Corpus Linguistics/Université catholique de Louvain.Google Scholar
Sinclair, J.
2004 Trust the Text. Language, Corpus and Discourse. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Šinkūnienė, J.
2017 Corpora and Corpus Linguistics Revisited: An Interview with Karin Aijmer. Kalbotyra 70: 184–191. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ström Herold, J. and Levin, M.
2019 The Obama Presidency, the Macintosh Keyboard and the Norway Fiasco: English Proper Noun Modifiers and their German and Swedish Correspondences. English Language and Linguistics 23: 827–854. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Taboada, M., Carretero, M. and Hinnell, J.
2014 Loving and Hating the Movies in English, German and Spanish. Languages in Contrast 14(1): 127–161. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tognini-Bonelli, E.
1996 Towards Translation Equivalence from a Corpus Linguistics Perspective. International Journal of Lexicography 9(3): 197–217. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2001 Corpus Linguistics at Work. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
van der Auwera, J.
2012 From Contrastive Linguistics to Linguistic Typology. Languages in Contrast 12(1): 69–86. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Viberg, Å.
2013 Posture Verbs: A Multilingual Contrastive Study. Languages in Contrast 13(2): 139–169. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 Saying, Talking and Telling: Basic Verbal Communication Verbs in Swedish and English. In Cross-Linguistic Correspondences. From Lexis to Genre, T. Egan and H. Dirdal (eds), 37–75. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wallis, S.
2007 Annotation, Retrieval and Experimentation. Or: You only Get out what you Put in. In Annotating Variation and Change, A. Meurman-Solin and A. Nurmi (eds). Studies in Variation, Contacts and Change in English, Vol. 1. Available at http://​www​.helsinki​.fi​/varieng​/series​/volumes​/01/
Xiao, R. and T. McEnery
2010 Corpus-Based Contrastive Studies of English and Chinese. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zanettin, F.
2011 Translation and Corpus Design. SYNAPS – A Journal of Professional Communication 26: 14–23. Available at https://​openaccess​.nhh​.no​/nhh​-xmlui​/handle​/11250​/2394011
[ p. 208 ]
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Johansen, Stine Hulleberg
2020. “I guess anyone would do that wouldn’t they?”. Languages in Contrast Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 08 february 2021. 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.