Language vs individuals in cross-linguistic corpus typology

dc.contributor.author Barth, Danielle
dc.contributor.author Evans, Nicholas
dc.contributor.author Arka, I Wayan
dc.contributor.author Bergqvist, Henrik
dc.contributor.author Forker, Diana
dc.contributor.author Gipper, Sonja
dc.contributor.author Hodge, Gabrielle
dc.contributor.author Kashima, Eri
dc.contributor.author Kasuga, Yuki
dc.contributor.author Kawakami, Carine
dc.contributor.author Kimoto, Yukinori
dc.contributor.author Knuchel, Dominique
dc.contributor.author Kogura, Norikazu
dc.contributor.author Kurabe, Keita
dc.contributor.author Mansfield, John
dc.contributor.author Narrog, Heiko
dc.contributor.author Pratiwi, Desak Putu Eka
dc.contributor.author van Putten, Saskia
dc.contributor.author Senge, Chikako
dc.contributor.author Tykhostup, Olena
dc.date.accessioned 2022-01-24T19:37:20Z
dc.date.available 2022-01-24T19:37:20Z
dc.date.issued 2021
dc.description.abstract There is a long tradition in linguistics of seeing each language as a powerful factor setting out predetermining grooves in how people express themselves. But how strong is this effect? We know that despite the forces of linguistic habit people nonetheless enjoy some freedom in formulating their thoughts. Can we measure the relative contributions of language structures and individual variation to how people formulate statements about the world? Do accounts of typological differences need to take individual variation into account, and is such variation more prevalent in some kinds of linguistic domains than others? In this paper, we deploy a parallax corpus across thirteen languages from around the world and explore four case studies of linguistic choice, two grammatical and two semantic. We assess whether differences are accounted adequately just by individual participant variation, just by language information, or whether taking into account both helps account for the patterns we see. We do this through comparisons of statistical models. Our results make it clear that participants using the same language do not always behave similarly and this is especially true of our semantic variables. We take this to be a strong caution that the behaviour of individual participants should be considered when making typological generalisations, but also as an exciting outcome that corpus typology as a field can help us account for intra- and inter-language variation.
dc.identifier.citation Barth, Danielle & Evans, Nicholas & Arka, I Wayan & Bergqvist, Henrik & Forker, Diana & Gipper, Sonja & Hodge, Gabrielle & Kashima, Eri & Kasuga, Yuki & Kawakami, Carine & Kimoto, Yukinori & Knuchel, Dominique & Kogura, Norikazu & Kurabe, Keita & Mansfield, John & Narrog, Heiko & Pratiwi, Desak Putu Eka & van Putten, Saskia & Senge, Chikako & Tykhostup, Olena. 2021. Language vs. individuals in cross-linguistic corpus typology. In Haig, Geoffrey & Schnell, Stefan & Seifart, Frank (eds.), Doing corpus-based typology with spoken language data: State of the art, 179–232. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press.
dc.identifier.isbn 978-0-9979673-0-2
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10125/74661
dc.publisher University of Hawai'i Press
dc.relation.ispartofseries LD&C Special Publication
dc.rights Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike Licence
dc.subject social cognition
dc.subject corpus-based typology
dc.subject Family Problems picture task
dc.subject Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
dc.subject model comparison
dc.title Language vs individuals in cross-linguistic corpus typology
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