Michael Hoey (& Matt O’Donnell)

The Beginning of something important?: Corpus evidence on the text beginnings of hard news stories Michael Hoey (& Matt O’Donnell)

Dedicated to John Sinclair Discoverer of collocation

Becoming a science… • Observations made with specially designed instrumentation • Data classification • Hypotheses that give rise to experimentation • Unifying theories

Pre-Darwinian biology Creationism Classification Contradictions

Pre-Darwinian biology Dog breeding Darwin’s finches Whimsicality of God

Darwin’s contribution to biology Not evolution but mechanism for evolution

Pre-Darwinian linguistics Creationism Classification Contradictions

Pre-Darwinian linguistics Language as unity (contrast Harris) Classification Contradictions

Darwin’s finches = collocations • ubiquity • apparent arbitrariness • apparent unnecessariness

The Lexical Priming claim Collocation can only be explained if we revise our ideas on how utterances are stored. Psycholinguistic mainstream thinking is that there are different types of memory and decomposition of received utterances into semantic ‘primes’ [no direct connection] BUT to explain collocation, we must have “concordances” in the head.

The Lexical Priming claim Mental “concordances” also explain • literary allusion • quotation • spoonerisms (know your blowsrather than blow your nose) • recognition of plagiarism • recognition of non-nativisms • recognition of creativity

ago 177,827 • years 100,306 BUT ALSO • months 16,564 ▪ yonks14 • weeks 13,925 ▪ Novembers11 • year 11,304 ▪ Thursdays9 • long 7,062 • days 5,343 AND ALSO AND EVEN • defeats 3 ▪ a world ago • overs 3 ▪ three wives ago • albums 2 ▪ 14 Wimbledons ago • books 1 ▪ 61 victories ago • budgets 1 ▪ two Thanksgivings ago • careers 1 ▪ a few years and several stone ago

ago 177,827 • years 100,306 BUT ALSO • months 16,564 ▪yonks 14 • weeks 13,925 ▪Novembers 11 • year 11,304 ▪ Thursdays9 • long 7,062 • days 5,343 AND ALSO AND EVEN • defeats 3 ▪ a world ago • overs 3 ▪ three wives ago • albums 2 ▪ 14 Wimbledons ago • books 1 ▪ 61 victories ago • budgets 1 ▪ two Thanksgivings ago • careers 1 ▪ a few years and several stone ago

The Lexical Priming claim So how do we get ‘concordances’ in our head? My claim is that all the pieces of language we encounter prime us so that when we come to use the piece of language ourselves, we are likely (in speech, particularly) to use it in the same kinds of way as it was used in those encounters. We may be primed so that word clusters are acquired as unities with their own primings and then learn that they are not always fixed or we may be primed to recognise collocations and build clusters from them

drink all gone either the child is primed to associate all gone with foods, liquids and then learns that gone may go with nearly or the child is primed to collocate gone with all and nearly, and has the priming strengthened on each occasion.

The Lexical Priming claim Whenever we encounter a word (or syllable or combination of words), we note subconsciously • the words it occurs with (its collocations), • the grammatical patterns it occurs in (its colligations), • the meanings with which it is associated (its semantic associations),

The Lexical Priming claim Whenever we encounter a word (or syllable or combination of words), we note subconsciously • the words it occurs with (its collocations), • the meanings with which it is associated (its semantic associations),

all gonewith drink all with gone years with ago

The Lexical Priming claim Whenever we encounter a word (or syllable or combination of words), we note subconsciously • the words it occurs with (its collocations), • the meanings with which it is associated (its semantic associations),

all gone with CONSUMABLES gone with PROPORTION ago with MEASURE OF TIME

all gone with CONSUMABLES gone with PROPORTION ago with MEASURE OF TIME The collocations set up the semantic association, then the semantic association creates the environment for further collocations. The way we categorise the world is a direct consequence of our primings.

The Lexical Priming claim Whenever we encounter a word (or syllable or combination of words), we note subconsciously • the words it occurs with (its collocations), • the meanings with which it is associated (its semantic associations), • the pragmatics it is associated with (its pragmatic associations),

The Lexical Priming claim Whenever we encounter a word (or syllable or combination of words), we also note subconsciously • the grammatical patterns it is associated with (its colligations), • the genre and/or style and/or social situation it is used in, • whether it is used in a context we are likely to want to emulate or not

Colligations Colligations are an observation made with specially designed instrumentation.

Colligations An accumulation of colligations may (& usually does) lead to the creation of a grammar

20 years ago, 136 summers ago, two seasons ago, three nights ago, twelve months ago: NUMBER + NNs + ago a week ago, a year ago, one year ago, one/a + NN(-s) + ago (a = single number) nearly six years ago, almost five years ago, just three months ago, exactly a century ago PREMODIFYING ADVERB of (NON-)APPROXIMATION + NUMBER/one/a + NN(s) + ago a year or so ago, 10 days or so ago PREMODIFYING ADVERB of (NON-)APPROXIMATION + NUMBER/one/a + NN(s) + ago OR NUMBER/one/a + NN(s) + POSTMODIFYING EXPRESSION of (NON-)APPROXIMATION + ago

The Lexical Priming claim Whenever we encounter a word (or syllable or combination of words), we also note subconsciously • the grammatical patterns it is associated with (its colligations), • the genre and/or style and/or social situation it is used in, • whether it is used in a context we are likely to want to emulate or not

Michael Hoey (& Matt O’Donnell)