Jiří Milička, Anna Marklová & Václav Cvrček explore dimensions of variation in LLM-generated texts in Czech and English. They develop a reproducible method for measuring “register shift”, demonstrating the efficacy of different LLMs for producing linguistically diverse texts doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: Laura Locatelli explores the semantic–pragmatic interface of Chinese lexical passive constructions across domains, showing that LPCs differ not only in the events they conceptualize but also in the affective valence they convey. #FrameSemantics #ChineseLanguage doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

The passive voice of subjective experience and objective response

Abstract The passive voice in Chinese is the focus of extensive research seeking to understand its diverse discourse functions. Adopting a corpus-assisted approach, this paper brings attention to an underexplored category of passives — Chinese lexical passive constructions (LPCs) — and analyzes the semantic and pragmatic aspects of the zāo, shòu, and dédào structures. Quantitative and qualitative analysis helps to identify the semantic frames triggered by each LPC, highlighting potential differences in how events are conceptualized. Based on evidence from three corpora representing distinct discourse domains, the paper contends that LPCs differ in the range of events they represent as well as the affective valence they convey. As such, they constitute three distinct ways of conceptualizing the effects of an action, allowing the speaker to express their subjective-objective response to the event. This supports the unique form-function relationship of each LPC and informs the pragmatic implications involved in their selection.

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OUT NOW: Guying Zhou & Jiajin Xu present dassBNC2014: manually annotated corpus of directive speech acts in everyday British English conversations, thereby supporting investigations of the heterogeneity of directive practices in discourse. #pragmatics #annotation #LLMs doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

How do we explore intra-register variation? @mariannagracheva.bsky.social and @jesse-egbert.bsky.social present a framework for communicative text analysis and illustrate register comparisons for the extent of internal communicative and corresponding linguistic variation doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

Has Dutch undergone a process of tighter lexical organization over time? Robbert De Troij & Freek Van de Velde investigate collocational patterns around lemma and POS trigrams to provide evidence from literary periodicals for crystallization over the period 1850–1999. doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

The crystallization of language over time

Abstract In this article, we investigate Van der Horst’s (2013) hypothesis that Dutch (like other European languages) underwent a diachronic process of ‘crystallization’, i.e. tighter lexical organization, at the expense of freely combinatorial syntax, in the last centuries. Analysing the collocational association strength in lemma and part-of-speech trigrams using the ΔP measure and entropy (H), we find quantitative support for the idea that Dutch has crystallized in the period under investigation (1850–1999). Further enquiry into the diachrony of the lexicon by means of Kullback-Leibler Divergence (KLD) suggests that the reason might be what Baayen et al. (2017) have called the ‘Ecclesiastes Principle’, namely a lexical expansion that puts a cap on the combinatorial syntax. This lexical expansion is probably a response to the increasing specialization and cultural turnover in late modern times. The slow change in the syntax of Dutch shows how languages adapt to their cultural niche.

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OUT NOW: Qiao Gan offers insights into the variable realisation of there+BE+plural arguments Using Australian English language data collected in the 1970s and 2010s, Gan examines intersections of age, ethnicity and class alongside grammatical conditioning in use of THERE's doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

INTRODUCING: the HUM19 corpus, designed by @fstradling.bsky.social, Brian Walker, Hazel Price, Dan McIntyre & Michael Burke This off-the-peg specialised reference corpus of 19th century British and Irish novels serves both as a study corpus and comparator #CorpusStylistics doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

NEW BOOK REVIEW: József Andor offers a critical discussion of Partington & Diegoli's (2026) recent contribution to lexical priming theory doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

Review of Partington & Diegoli (2026): Lexical priming: Evolution, evaluation and applications in English and Japanese

Welcome to e-content platform of John Benjamins Publishing Company. Here you can find all of our electronic books and journals, for purchase and download or subscriber access.

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How reliable are dispersion measures? OUT NOW: Testing seven popular measures for sensitivity, Lukas Sönning & Jesse Egbert discuss the distributional and corpus design features that affect measures of the pervasiveness and evenness of text features in corpus analysis. doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

Sensitivity of dispersion measures to distributional patterns and corpus design

Abstract Recent work has shown that dispersion measures respond to multiple features in the data: Juilland’s D varies systematically with the number of corpus parts, and all commonly used indices are ...

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How do emojis & homoglyphs affect corpus tokenisation, and why does it matter? 🧐 OUT NOW: @matteodic.bsky.social explores how small discrepancies in tokenisation can distort linguistic analysis and undermine data fidelity 🔍 doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: Felix Morger & Aleksandrs Berdicevskis compare how well variation can be predicted using logistic-regression models and BERT. Their example case studies include the English dative alternation and Swedish att-omission, to consider differences in predictability doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

Not all linguistic variation is equally predictable

Abstract We compare to what extent the choice of a variant can be predicted from language-internal factors for two linguistic variables: the English dative alternation and the omission of the infiniti...

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OUT NOW: @corpusling.bsky.social and Kelvin K. H. Lee introduce the Document Similarity tool, which gives corpus compilers more control over the deduplication process. Reported case studies demonstrate how consequential deduplication is to corpus-based discourse research. doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: Liina Repo, Brett Hashimoto & Veronika Laippala look at extending register annotations from a corpus of historical documents using BERT-based deep learning models. Considering text-internal variation, they find that beginnings tend to support better predictions. doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: @timfeld.bsky.social, Fabian Barteld & Alexander Ziem present and evaluate an approach for predicting typical fillers for the slots of grammatical constructions using BERT. They ask: How can language models be used to support the development of linguistic resources? doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

Can BERT predict fillers for construction elements?

Abstract The starting point of this paper is a central problem in constructicography: on the one hand, constructicon projects aim at describing a broad spectrum of constructions based on usage data; o...

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Two new book reviews!: @mariannagracheva.bsky.social reviews Le Foll's (2024) Textbook English: A multi-dimensional approach doi.org/10.1075/ijcl... and Holly Baker reviews Kaunisto & Schilk (2024) Challenges in corpus linguistics: Rethinking corpus compilation and analysis doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

Review of Le Foll (2024): Textbook English: A multi-dimensional approach

Welcome to e-content platform of John Benjamins Publishing Company. Here you can find all of our electronic books and journals, for purchase and download or subscriber access.

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In case you missed it..

IJCL@ijcl.bsky.social · 10mo ago

OUT NOW: Jia Li and Xianyao Hu compare human- and machine-translated texts from Chinese to English to evaluate features of conservatism across registers Their investigation sheds light on the potetnial of human-machine collaborative translation models doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

In case you missed it:

IJCL@ijcl.bsky.social · 11mo ago

la semaine prochaine but la raison suivante Looi, Riget, Boulton & Hassan discuss synonym alternation between French prochain and suivant, using corpus evidence and statistical methods to re-examine variables derived through introspection #OnlineFirst #FrenchLinguistics doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: Yiğit Savuran & Stefanie Wulff introduce the Turkish Learner Corpus (TURLEC), comprising written and spoken texts of learners of Turkish L2 across CEFR proficiency levels. The corpus and metadata are available at: osf.io/bnv3p/files/... #OpenScience #LearnerCorpus doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

Introducing TURLEC

Abstract This paper provides a detailed account of the Turkish Learner Corpus (TURLEC). Building on the first author’s doctoral dissertation project, which aimed to identify proficiency descriptors fo...

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OUT NOW: Guest Editor David Wright introduces the Special Issue on Corpus perspectives on #LegalDiscourse Wright draws out the themes explored across the papers in the issue, as indicative of the cutting edge of forensic linguistics – showing what corpus studies can do! doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: Jamie McKeown and Haojie Deng show how corpus tools can assist in the exploration of semantic frames, as investigated in leave to appeal decisions from Hong Kong This paper will appear as part of our Special Issue on Corpus Perspectives on #LegalDiscourse doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of (Dis)Interest and (Un)Importance frames in leave to appeal decisions of the HKSAR appellate courts

Abstract This study presents a corpus-assisted discourse analysis examining the semantic frames of (Dis)Interest and (Un)Importance in leave to appeal decisions of the HKSAR appellate courts. With the...

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OUT NOW: the next paper to appear in our Special Issue on Corpus Perspectives on #LegalDiscourse Le Cheng, Xiuli Liu & Jian Li present a continuum of stance as derived from a cross-genre examination of stance expressions in legislation, judgments and legal academic articles doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

Continuum of stance in law

Abstract Stance is deep-rooted in law, where legal values can never stand in a vacuum. Despite a growing body of literature on stance in legal genres, cross-genre examinations conducted from a corpus-...

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OUT NOW: Davide Mazzi explores argument structures in a corpus of Supreme Court of Ireland’s judgments on human rights, based on indicators of pragmatic argumentation. This paper appears as part of our Special Issue on Corpus Perspectives on #LegalDiscourse doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

“…animated by a number of fundamental principles”

Abstract The aim of this paper is to combine a quantitative analysis of indicators of pragmatic argumentation with a qualitative investigation of the argument scheme in a corpus of Supreme Court of Ir...

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OUT NOW – the next contribution to our forthcoming Special Issue on Corpus Perspectives on Legal Discourse: Edward Clay presents a systematic approach for identifying indicators of divergence, comparing terms relating to migration in EU legal documents and news articles doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: Biel, Wasilewska & Koźbiał explore linguistic variation in the Polish Eurolect, applying MDA to a corpus of legal acts, judgments, administrative reports, and institutional websites. This paper will appear as part of our Special Issue on #ForensicLinguistics doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

LATEST BOOK REVIEWS: Gili Diamant reviews Fitzgerald (2023) and reflects on the use of oral testimonies for historical research doi.org/10.1075/ijcl... Philine Metzger reviews Vyatkina's (2024) application of Data-Driven Learning for English instruction in Germany doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: Jia Li and Xianyao Hu compare human- and machine-translated texts from Chinese to English to evaluate features of conservatism across registers Their investigation sheds light on the potetnial of human-machine collaborative translation models doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: Rose Stamp provides a comprehensive review of the current state of sign language corpora around the world – discussing video capture, transcription, and coding and how these relate to corpus compilation in terms of representativeness, searchability and open access doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

la semaine prochaine but la raison suivante Looi, Riget, Boulton & Hassan discuss synonym alternation between French prochain and suivant, using corpus evidence and statistical methods to re-examine variables derived through introspection #OnlineFirst #FrenchLinguistics doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

OUT NOW: @leighharrington.bsky.social , @drkevingerigk.bsky.social & Maria Fano Gonzalez offer a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of representations of fuel poverty and the (new) fuel poor in UK newspapers Work carried out in association with fuelpovertyresearch.net doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...

"I feel a wave of affection.." "il sera fou de joie…" OUT NOW: Iva Novakova, Olivier Kraif, & Marion Gymnich's contrastive corpus analysis sheds light on the phraseological motifs observed in the French and English romance novel genre. #LiteraryGenre #CorpusStylistics doi.org/10.1075/ijcl...