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Article published In: Asia-Pacific Language Variation
Vol. 4:2 (2018) ► pp.135–160

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Lexical frequency and syntactic variation

Subject pronoun use in Mandarin Chinese

 | Michigan State University
 | University of California, Davis
Published online: 6 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.17005.li
Abstract
With the rise of exemplar theory, the role of lexical frequency in language variation has been the object of considerable study. Recently, Erker, Daniel, & Guy, Gregory R. (2012). The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability: Variable subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish. Language, 881, 526–557. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar extended the analysis of frequency to morphosyntactic variation and examined the role of frequency in variation between null and overt subject personal pronouns (SPPs) in Spanish. Their results suggest that frequency either activates or amplifies the effects of other constraints, such as co-reference. This study extends the study of frequency effects on SPP variation to Mandarin Chinese. Results of multivariate analysis of 6,691 tokens collected from Mandarin speakers in Harbin, China indicate that the effect of frequency on Chinese SPP variation is less than that of other well-established constraints such as co-reference and person and number. The results suggest that the role of frequency in this area of the grammar has been considerably exaggerated. Rather, well-established linguistic constraints provide a better explanation for SPP variation than frequency.
摘要
随着范例理论的兴起，很多学者对词频在语言变体中的作用做了大量研究。最近，Erker, Daniel, & Guy, Gregory R. (2012). The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability: Variable subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish. Language, 881, 526–557. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar 把这一方向的研究扩展到词素句法变体中，考察了动词频率在西班牙语主语代词使用和省略的变化中所起的作用。他们的结果表明词频对其他变量，如主语共指，起着激活或扩大的作用。本研究把词频在主语代词使用变体中的作用这一方向扩展到汉语。数据采集自中国哈尔滨的汉语母语使用者。对 6,691 个语言编码的多变量分析结果表明词频对汉语中主语代词变体的作用远远小于其他已被认可的变量的影响，如主语共指和主语人称和数量。这些结果显示词频在语法中的作用很大程度上被夸大了。其实，那些已被广泛证明的语言变量对于主语代词使用变体提供了更好的解释。
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Chinese subject pronouns
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Speakers
    • 3.2Data
    • 3.3Coding
      • 3.3.1Subject person and number
      • 3.3.2Co-reference
      • 3.3.3Other linguistic constraints
        • 3.3.3.1Specificity
        • 3.3.3.2Sentence type
      • 3.3.4Discourse type, social constraints, and lexical frequency
    • 3.4Data reduction and exclusions
    • 3.5Interrater reliability
    • 3.6Analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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