Parallel corpora and contrastive studies

1
Parallel corpora and contrastive studies

• Hilde Hasselgård
• University of Oslo

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From monolingual to multilingual corpus
linguistics

• Corpus linguistics the study of language by
  means of large(ish), structured databases of text
  compiled and prepared for use in linguistic
  research.
• Largely developed within English linguistics,
  with the Brown corpus as the first (1960s),
  followed by the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen (LOB)
  corpus.
• Greatly facilitated the access to material.
• Opened up new possibilities for quantitative
  studies variation studies.
• Parallel corpora a more recent development
  (1990s), requiring new technology and new
  research methods.

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Structure of talk

• Multilingual corpus linguistics
• Multilingual corpora
• The English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus
• Contrastive analysis
• The use of parallel corpora in contrastive
  studies
• The contribution of parallel corpora
• Methodology
• The Oslo Multilingual Corpus and the work of
  Språk i Kontrast (Languages in Contrast) in
  Oslo
• Case study two future-referring expressions
• Summing up

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What is a parallel corpus?

• original texts with translations into one or more
  other languages ? A translation corpus
• comparable original texts in different languages
  ? A comparable corpus
• bi-directional translation corpus ? Parallel
  corpus

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Translation corpus

• A corpus that contains the same texts in more
  than one language, in other words a corpus with
  both original and translated texts.

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Comparable corpus

• a corpus that contains original texts in more
  than one language and where the texts in each
  language have been selected according to the same
  criteria (genre, content, publication date etc.)

Language 1 criterion A criterion B criterion C criterion D Language 2 criterion A criterion B criterion C criterion D Language 3 criterion A criterion B criterion C criterion D
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Parallel corpus (ENPC model)

• Combination of translation and comparable corpus
• The original texts are comparable (genre, number
  of words)
• The translations go in both directions a
  bidirectional translation corpus

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The English-Norwegian Parallel Corpus (ENPC)
Some facts

• Started as a research project at the Department
  of British and American Studies in 1994 and
  completed in 1997. Prof. Stig Johansson initiated
  and directed the project.
• Original texts with translations
  (English-Norwegian and Norwegian-English)
• Fiction and non-fiction
• Compiled for use in applied and theoretical
  linguistic research
• Development of software for alignment of the
  texts (Knut Hofland, UiB) and for searching the
  corpus (Jarle Ebeling, UiO)
• Sister projects The English-Swedish Parallel
  Corpus (Lund/Göteborg), English-Finnish Parallel
  Corpus (Jyväskylä/Savonlinna/Tampere) same
  principle of compilation to some extent also
  shared texts.
• Other corpora built on the ENPC model in Germany
  (Chemnitz), France/Belgium (Poitiers/Louvain-la-Ne
  uve the PLECI corpus), Spain (University of
  Léon).

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Contrastive analysis

• Contrastive analysis is the systematic comparison
  of two or more languages, with the aim of
  describing their similarities and differences.
  (Johansson 2007 1)
• CA contrastive analysis is a linguistic
  enterprise aimed at producing inverted (i.e.
  contrastive, not comparative) two-valued
  typologies (a CA is always concerned with a pair
  of languages), and founded on the assumption that
  languages can be compared. (James 1980 3)
• Executing a CA involves two steps description
  and comparison and the steps are taken in that
  order. (James 1980 63)

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Contrastive analysis

• A CA presupposes a tertium comparationis, i.e. a
  measure by which we can be fairly certain we are
  comparing like with like.
• The items to be compared across languages are
  selected on the basis of perceived similarity
  (Chesterman 1998), such as translation
  equivalence, semantic/etymological similarity,
  grammatical or functional categories.
• A frequently suggested tertium comparationis is
  translation equivalence (e.g. James 1980,
  Chesterman 1998) which implies that the items in
  the two languages convey (more or less) the same
  meaning.

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What can multilingual corpora contribute?

• They give insights into the languages compared
  insights that are likely to be unnoticed in
  studies of monolingual corpora.
• They can be used for a range of comparative
  purposes and increase our understanding of
  language-specific, typological and cultural
  differences, as well as of universal features.
• They illuminate differences between source texts
  and translations, and between native and
  non-native texts.
• They can be used for a number of practical
  applications, e.g. in lexicography, language
  teaching, and translation.
• (Aijmer Altenberg 1996 12)

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Other benefits of a parallel corpus such as the
ENPC

• Ready access to (relatively) large quantities of
  bilingual data
• Sentence alignment
• Comparable original and translated texts in both
  languages
• Control for translation bias
• In-built tertium comparationis through
  translation equivalence and text comparability
• the paired texts reveal the interlingual
  identifications made by translators (Johansson
  1999 117)

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Methodology Classifying correspondences

• congruent
• expressed
• divergent
• Correspondence
• zero

Same realisation type
Different realisation type
Example English correspondences of imidlertid
(however) in ENPC Alle "innrømmelsene" hadde
imidlertid en pris. (GL1) ? However, all these
"concessions" had a price. Det endte imidlertid
godt () (UD1) ? But it ended well
() Reguleringstiltakene har imidlertid gitt
resultater (). (ABJH1) ? The regulations have
shown results ().
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Paradigms of correspondences

• Swedish translations of however
• emellertid (51 47)
• men (but) (36 33)
• dock (14 13)
• ändå (2)
• däremot (1)
• i alla fall (1)
• Ø (4)

• English translations of emellertid
• however (83 81)
• but (3)
• yet (3)
• anyway (1)
• Ø (13)

(Altenberg 1999)
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Mutual correspondence (MC)(Altenberg 1999)

• The frequency with which different (grammatical,
  semantic and lexical) expressions are translated
  into each other.
• Calculated and expressed as a percentage by means
  of the formula
• (At Bt) x 100
• As Bs
• The MC of however and emmelertid in the ESPC is
  thus
• (51 83) x 100 / (109 103) 63.2

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Lexicogrammar

• Paradigms of correspondence highlight the fuzzy
  borderlines between lexis and grammar and grammar
  and discourse.
• Example A modal verb will have a wide range of
  correspondences
• Norwegian kan (can)
• Valget av tidspunkt kan også inneholde et stenk
  av egoisme. (KH1)
• Maybe his choice of timing also contained a touch
  of egotism.

Modal aux can, could, may, might, ll, will,
would, should Other verbs know, enable, have,
have to, had better Adjectives possible, able,
capable. Adverbs maybe, perhaps Suffix -able
(Løken 2007)
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From ENPC to OMC under the SPRIK umbrella (SPRåk
I Kontrast)

• New languages have been added, first (mainly)
  German, then French
• Focus on English Norwegian German in the
  first phase of the SPRIK-project original texts
  in each language with translations into the other
  two.
• Same principles for text selection, text sampling
  and preparation as for the ENPC (exception even
  more biased towards fiction because of the lack
  of translated non-fiction)
• Same (or later versions of same) software for
  alignment, searching etc.
• Expanded search facilities and research
  possibilities
• Three-way comparison of translations and
  originals
• Possibilities of investigating two different
  translations of the same text (translation
  strategies, translationese)

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Current stock of multilingual corpora at Oslo

• OMC
• Parallel corpora English-Norwegian,
  French-Norwegian, German-Norwegian three-way
  English-German Norwegian.
• Translation corpora Norwegian English French
  German, Norwegian French German,
  English-Dutch, English-Portuguese.
• Multiple translations corpus (English-Norwegian)
• Outside OMC
• Russian English Norwegian (RuN)
• Multilingual corpora of historical texts (two
  projects)

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Trilingual parallel corpus model
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Searching in the OMC (En-Ge-No)Search terms
however in English originals, doch in German
originals

• Now, however, our father wears jackets and ties
  and white shirts, and a tweed overcoat and a
  scarf. (MA1)
• Jetzt jedoch trägt unser Vater Jacken und
  Krawatten und weiße Hemden und einen Tweedmantel
  und einen Schal. (MA1TD)
• Nå går faren vår imidlertid med jakker og slips
  og hvite skjorter og tweedfrakk og skjerf.
  (MA1TN)
• "However, the ex-Royal Family will be protected
  by the laws of the land. (ST1)
• Doch die Ex-Königsfamilie genießt auch den Schutz
  der Gesetze dieses Landes. (ST1TD)
• Ikke desto mindre vil den eks-kongelige familie
  kunne påberope seg beskyttelse under landets lov.
  (ST1TN)
• Und er war doch noch da. (ME1)
• And after all he was still there. (ME1TE)
• Og han var jo fortsatt til. (ME1TN)

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Translation corpus with four languages
No-En-Fr-Ge
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Searching in No-En-Fr-Ge

• Jeg kommer til å si det til ham likevel. (KF1)
• Ich werde es ihm sowieso sagen. (KF1TD)
• I 'll tell him about it anyway. (KF1TE)
• De toute façon, je le lui dirai. (KF1TF)
• "You're going to have a book reissued (BHH1TE)
• Du skal få en bok trykt opp igjen ... (BHH1)
• "Ein Buch von dir wird neu aufgelegt, ...
  (BHH1TD)
• Un de tes livres va être réédité ... (BHH1TF)

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Using the ENPC/OMC for research

• Particularly well suited for studies of lexis /
  lexico-grammar (or phenomena that can take lexis
  as their starting point)
• A broad range of phenomena have been (are being)
  investigated, e.g. the use of individual verbs
  (bli, få, take, give, see), modality, particular
  syntactic constructions, connectives, sentence
  openings and other discourse phenomena.
• The methodology is not tied to any particular
  theoretical approach
• A range of theoretical approaches, e.g. SFL,
  cognitive linguistics, pattern grammar,
  lexis-based approach à la Sinclair traditional
  grammar / basic linguistic theory.

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Limitations

• (As with corpus linguistics in general) you can
  only search for something that is explicit in the
  text
• Restricted to texts / text types that have been
  translated
• The size of the corpus restricts studies of less
  frequent lexical/ grammatical constructions
• Faulty and less successful translations
• The corpus has been word-class tagged, but not
  parsed (syntactically annotated), i.e. it is not
  possible to search for grammatical constructions,
  patterns of word order etc.
• Tagging errors

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Ways around the limitations?

• Identify typical (and searchable!) expressions of
  a grammatical construction, e.g. presentatives,
  clefting, phrasal verbs, inversion.
• Use a combination of word class tagging, filters
  and wildcards. Example tense / aspect,
  participle clauses. (e.g. BE Ving)
• In any case a lot of work involved in tidying
  up the search results (precision).
• Possibility of searching with regular expressions
• Errors in the tagging Never possible to make
  sure that you have found all the relevant
  instances (recall).
• Errors/idiosyncracies in the translation Weed
  out? Ignore translations that occur only once, or
  in only one text?
• Manual searches in running text, e.g. for Theme,
  subjects.
• Supplement results of parallel corpus study with
  (larger) monolingual corpora.
• Supplement corpus study with e.g. experimental
  data.

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Examples of studies based on ENPC/ OMC / ESPC

• Bengt Altenberg Work on adverbial connectors,
  sentence openings, subject selection etc. in
  English and Swedish.
• Karin Aijmer Work on modality and discourse
  markers in English and Swedish.
• Åke Viberg Work on verbs of motion and cognition
  in English and Swedish.
• Helge Dyvik Translations as semantic mirrors
  ENPC as basis for bilingual wordnet.
• Jarle Ebeling (2000) Presentative constructions
  in English and Norwegian a corpus-based
  contrastive study (PhD, University of Oslo)
• Mats Johansson (2002) Clefts in English and
  Swedish A contrastive study of IT-clefts and
  WH-clefts in original texts and translations.
  (PhD, Lund University)
• Signe Oksefjell Ebeling (2003) The Norwegian
  verbs bli and få and their correspondences in
  English a corpus-based contrastive study (PhD,
  University of Oslo)

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• Berit Løken Beyond modals A corpus-based study
  of English and Norwegian expressions of
  possibility (PhD, Oslo, 2007)
• Lene Nordrum English lexical nominalizations in
  a Norwegian-Swedish contrastive perspective.
  (PhD, Göteborg, 2007)
• Wiebke Ramm Sentence boundary adjustments in
  translation (German / Norwegian) Consequences on
  information distribution and discourse structure
  (PhD, Oslo, ongoing)
• Astrid Nome Ongoing PhD work on connectors in
  Norwegian and French. (Oslo)
• Cathrine Fabricius Hansen et al Big Events,
  Small Clauses. The Grammar of Elaboration.
  (Forthcoming book with multiple authors and
  multiple languages)
• Master theses (English, German, French) studying
  individual verbs, syntactic constructions,
  connectors, metaphor

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My own contrastive work

• 2009. A textual perspective on the pragmatic
  markers in fact and faktisk. In S. Slembrouck,,
  M. Taverniers, M. Van Herreweghe (eds.) From will
  to well Studies in Linguistics offered to
  Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen. Ghent Academia
  Press.
• 2007. Using the ENPC and the ESPC as a parallel
  translation corpus adverbs of frequency and
  usuality. Nordic Journal of English Studies 61,
  http//ojs.ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/njes/issue/view/
  6
• 2006. Not now on non-correspondence between
  the cognate adverbs now and nå. In K. Aijmer
  A.-M. Simon Vandenbergen (eds.) Pragmatic Markers
  in Contrast. Elsevier, 93-114.
• 2005. Theme in Norwegian. In K.L. Berge, E.
  Maagerø (eds.). Semiotics from the North Nordic
  Approaches to Systemic Functional Linguistics.
  Oslo Novus, 35-48.
• 2004 . Spatial linking in English and Norwegian.
  In K. Aijmer H. Hasselgård (eds.). Translation
  and Corpora. Göteborg Acta Universitatis
  Gothoburgensis, 163-188.
• 2004. Thematic choice in English and Norwegian.
  Functions of Language 112. 187-212.
• 2000. English multiple Themes in translation. In
  A. Klinge (ed.) Contrastive Studies in Syntax.
  Special issue of Copenhagen Studies in Language,
  Vol 25. Copenhagen Samfundslitteratur, 11-38.

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Case study be going to and komme til å (come
to)

• Future-referring expressions based on motion verb
  infinitive
• Both described in grammars as common expressions,
  though less common than expressions with English
  will, Norwegian skal

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Meanings

• be going to
• future fulfilment of the present present
  intention or present cause (Quirk et al 1985)
• associated with present intention or arrangement
  was going to quite often has an implicature of
  non-actualisation. (Huddleston Pullum 2002)
• Two meanings futurish, linked to a present
  situation, and future tense, simply expressing
  future time reference. (Declerck 2006)
• komme til å
• the speaker predicts what will happen based on
  his knowledge at the moment of speaking (Faarlund
  et al 1997)
• Past tense kom til å V also accidentally V or
  was led to V/ grew to V (Vannebo 1979 and
  Engelsk Stor Ordbok)

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Examples

1. I know what hes going to say even before he says
   it. (FW1)
2. Jeg vet hva han kommer til å si selv før han sier
   det. (FW1T)
3. "I was going to wait until another time we met,
   but I may as well tell you now. (AH1)
4. Meningen var å vente til en annen gang, men jeg
   kan like godt si det nå. (AH1T)
5. Ingen av dem visste hva som kom til å skje.
   (TTH1)
6. Neither of them knew what was going to happen.
   (TTH1T)
7. Kanskje hun kom til å svelge dem ved et uhell?
   (LSC1)
8. Maybe she happened to swallow them by accident?
   (LSC1T)
9. Og siden ble det jeg som kom til å se mest til
   henne. (EHA1)
10. And then I became the one who ended up seeing her
    most often. (EHA1T)

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be going to and komme til å in ENPC fiction (raw
frequencies)
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Preliminary observations

• Be going to is more common than komme til å in
  original texts
• Be going to is more common in original texts
  than in translations
• Komme til å is less common in original texts than
  in translations
• i.e. translations in both directions can be
  assumed to be coloured by the source texts.
• The frequency differences between originals and
  translations (particularly with komme til å)
  indicate that the two expressions can often be
  used in the same contexts, but may tend not to
  be.

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Correspondences of be going to (percentages)
35
Correspondences of komme til å (percentages)
36
Correspondences

• The mutual correspondence between be going to and
  komme til å is surprisingly low 12.6
• The correspondence is asymmetrical
• 15 of be going to are translated as komme til å
• 7 of komme til å are translated as be going to
• Komme til å has meanings not covered by be going
  to (accidentally, grow to, be led to).
• The present cause/intention meaning works
  differently for the two expressions apparently
  also speaker certainty/non-actualisation.
• What are we going to do, says Ruth, (BV2T)
• Hva skal vi gjøre, sier Rut (BV2)
• Hun kommer bare til å bli redd." (THA1)
• She 'll only be frightened." (THA1T)
• "Are you going to run a hotel?" enquired
  Frederick reasonably, (DL1)
• "Har dere tenkt å drive hotell?" spurte Frederick
  fornuftig, (DL1T)

Uncertain outcome, no intentionality
Confident prediction speaker knowledge
Intention, but uncertain outcome
37

• Thus, in spite of shared meanings, English be
  going to and and Norwegian komme til å, differ as
  to
• The frequency with which the item is chosen
• The extent to which they compete with other
  future-referring expressions
• The extent to which they convey confident
  predictions, present intention and actualised
  future in past.
• Some other explanations may be
• Translators in both directions tend to normalize
  be going to / komme til å into a more common
  future-referring expression (will/would INF and
  skal/skulle INF) Will/would and skal/skulle are
  also the most common sources of komme til å / be
  going to
• Sometimes more lexically explicit forms have been
  used to translate be going to/komme til å ha
  tenkt å / intend to (subjects intention) was to
  (was led/destined to)
• Be going to may be needed for syntactic reasons,
  as English modals lack non-finite forms and do
  not show tense clearly.
• Norwegian modal auxiliaries are more flexible,
  having non-finite and tensed forms ? skal /skulle
  INF fits into more syntactic environments than
  will/would INF

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The verb forms
39

• The present tense be going to occurs to a great
  extent in direct speech.
• The meanings of accidentally do and grow to/
  be led to of komme til å occur mainly with the
  past tense, the former also with modalisation.
• Hun kjenner at hun er søvnig, at hun kan komme
  til å sovne mot fars jakke, hun vil ikke det.
  (BV2)
• She feels that she is sleepy, that she might fall
  asleep against father's jacket, but she doesn't
  want to do that. (BV2T)
• og at den kvinnen jeg leter efter egentlig var
  et barn den gangen hun kom til å bety noe for
  meg. (FC1)
• and that the woman I'm searching for was really
  a child when she came to mean something to me.
  (FC1T)

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Some reflections on findings and further work

• The picture of correspondence is a complex one,
  in spite of the rather similar descriptions in
  grammars of be going to and komme til å.
• Syntactic differences between will/skal-future
  expressions may go some way towards explaining
  the difference in distribution.
• Correspondence types will have to be correlated
  with tense forms.
• Subtle differences of meaning regarding speaker
  certainty and present cause/intention come to the
  surface when studying correspondences.
• be going to is closer to a neutral future meaning
  than komme til å further grammaticalized as a
  future tense.

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Summing up

• Parallel corpora enhance contrastive studies in a
  number of ways
• by ensuring that observations are based on
  authentic language use
• by yielding paradigms and patterns of
  correspondences
• thus often revealing meanings and nuances we
  might not have thought of
• and showing how the same meaning may be expressed
  by means of different linguistic categories
• by providing quantitative data
• thus also giving insights into preferred ways
  of putting things
• (if the corpus is bidirectional) by providing
  control for translation bias
• (if the corpus is representative) by controlling
  for the idiosyncrasies of individual
  authors/translators

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Why undertake corpus-based contrastive
investigations?

• The importance of multilingual corpora extends
  beyond contrastive studies. It is up to the user
  to define fruitful research questions and use the
  corpora creatively. In this process we learn not
  only about individual languages and their
  relationships, about translation and
  foreign-language acquisition, but also about
  language in general provided that the study
  becomes truly multilingual. Seeing through
  corpora we can see through language.
• Stig Johansson (2007 316)

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Information on the OMC / ENPC

• About the corpora
• OMC www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/originalfiler/serv
  ices/omc/
• ENPC www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/originalfiler/ser
  vices/omc/enpc/
• www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/ENPC/
• About publications based on the OMC (up to 2006)
• www.hf.uio.no/ilos/forskning/prosjekter/sprik/engl
  ish/publications/

44
References

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• Berglund, Y. 2005. Expressions of Future in
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