A Walk in the WoRds : corpus linguistics

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Another Load of Corpus Linguistics

I often pass trucks like the one pictured below in my travels to and from northern Michigan (this one happened to be stopped at a gas station where I was filling up which allowed me to snap the picture).

I think it is wonderful that the company assembles 100% of the toys in their product line in the United States and that all of the plastic used in the toys is purchased in the USA (see here).

Unfortunately, every time I see these trucks I can't help but think "another load of crap."

The results from a Google Ngram Viewer search comparing the use of the phrases "load of crap" and "load of toys" in American English helps to explain why.

Additionally, a Corpus of Contemporary American English search for "load of [n]" lists the top five nouns following "load of" as follows.

1. LOAD OF LAUNDRY
2. LOAD OF CRAP
3. LOAD OF WOOD
4. LOAD OF FIREWOOD
5. LOAD OF WASH

Clearly, loads of crap are far more common than loads of toys, at least in American English corpora and the company is an American company.

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Corpus linguistics is the study of language as expressed in samples (corpora) of "real world" text.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Corpus Linguistics: A Slim Figure of Speech Graph

Is it "slim to none" or "slim and none"?

I grew up with the phrase "slim to none", which means that the chances of an event occurring fall somewhere between slim and none. In other words, there is a scale with multiple options (admittedly the options are slim from the get go).

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In a book I am reading currently, I encountered the phrase "slim and none". I initially thought there was either an unintentional conjunction error or that the author grew up mishearing the phrase.

A quick Google search told me that there really are two semantically-sensible versions.

The alternate version, "slim and none", simply eliminates the scalar aspect of the phrase; thus the chances of an event occurring are either slim or none.

SLIM [ ] NONE [ ]

I can't believe that I had never heard this alternate version. Now I am wondering if it is a regional variation. Please help me by commenting below with your preferred version and your region of origin.

I did feel a bit better about my lack of familiarity with the non-scalar version when I graphed the two versions on Google Ngram.

Click on chart to enlarge.