Extraction and Analysis of Modal Auxiliaries in Consecutive Clauses from a Corpus

135 Pages·2016·2.256 MB·English

by  Robert Chartrand

Extraction and
Analysis of Modal
Auxiliaries in
Consecutive Clauses
from a Corpus

Extraction and
Analysis of Modal
Auxiliaries in
Consecutive Clauses
from a Corpus
By
Robert Chartrand
Extraction and Analysis of Modal Auxiliaries in Consecutive Clauses
from a Corpus

By Robert Chartrand

This book first published 2016

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2016 by Robert Chartrand

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-8717-X
ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8717-5
CONTENTS
List of Figures............................................................................................. ix
List of Tables .............................................................................................. xi
List of Examples ....................................................................................... xiii
Abstract ..................................................................................................... xv
Acknowledgements ................................................................................. xvii
Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1
Introduction
1.1 Research Background
1.1.1 Modal Auxiliaries
1.2 Research Objectives
1.2.1 Extraction of Modals in Consecutive Pair Phrases
1.2.2 Simplifying Sentences
1.2.3 Providing Useful Examples
1.2.4 Producing a Learning System
1.3 Outline
Chapter Two ................................................................................................ 9
Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Linguistic Research
2.2.1 Consecutive Use of Modals
2.2.2 Semantic Structure of Modals
2.2.3 Colloquial Use of Modals
2.3 Collocations of Modals
2.3.1 Using Tools for Learning Collocations
2.4 Using a Corpus for Learning Languages
2.4.1 Using the BNC
2.4.2 Using other Corpora
2.5 Natural Language Processing Techniques
2.5.1 Part-of-speech Tagging
vi Contents
2.5.2 Parsing
2.5.3 How to Use these Tools
2.6 Using Statistics
2.6.1 Mutual Information
2.6.2 t-score
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 25
Extraction of Main Concepts
3.1 New Concepts
3.2 Principles of Research
3.2.1 Necessary Functions
3.2.2 Sentence Modification
3.3 Subordinate Clauses
3.4 Relative Clauses
3.5 Coordinating Conjunctions
3.6 Extracting Important Clauses
3.7 Deleting Clauses
3.8 Error Possibilities
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 41
Method of Implementation
4.1 Pre-processing the Corpus
4.1.1 British National Corpus
4.1.2 Processing the Corpus
4.2 Tagging and Parsing Sentences
4.2.1 Parsing Sentences with the Charniak Parser
4.3 Simplifying Complex Sentences
4.3.1 Separating Sentences into Clauses
4.3.2 Deleting Clauses
4.4 Extraction of Main Clauses
4.4.1 Separation and Extraction of Clauses
4.4.2 Phrase Patterns
4.5 Example of Extraction of Consecutive Clauses with Modals
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 81
Statistical Analysis
5.1 Calculation of t-scores
5.2 t-score results
5.3 Analysis of t-score results
Extraction and Analysis of Modal Auxiliaries in Consecutive vii
Clauses from a Corpus
Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 89
Analysis of Results
6.1 Example Phrases
6.2 Usefulness
6.3 Difficulties
6.4 Evaluation of Process to Obtain Results
6.5 Appropriateness of Phrases
6.6 Semantic Meaning
Chapter Seven ............................................................................................ 99
Conclusion
7.1 Summary
7.2 Future Work
Appendix 1 – POS Tags and Meanings ................................................... 101
Appendix 2 – Output of Example Clauses ............................................... 103
Bibliography ............................................................................................ 109
Index ........................................................................................................ 115

LIST OF FIGURES
2.1 BNCWeb simple concordance search of modal “could”
2.2 BNCWeb collocation parameters with modal “could”
3.1 Process flowchart of Extracting Modals in
Consecutive Clauses
3.2 Charniak Parser output for the sentence in Example 3.2
3.3 LISP program output for the sentence in Example 3.2
3.4 Charniak Parser Output for a noun clause
3.5 Charniak Parser Output for an adverbial clause
3.6 Charniak Parser Output for a restrictive relative clause
3.7 Charniak Parser Output for a nonrestrictive
relative clause
4.1 Raw data from BNC including XML and POS tags
4.2 Charniak Parser output from sentence in Example 4.1
4.3 Parsed sentence EA0 1897 with modals “could, would”
4.4 Rule 1 tree diagram
4.5 Charniak Parser and LISP output of a typical example
of Rule 1
4.6 Grammar tree of a typical example of Rule 1
4.7 Rule 2 tree diagram
4.8 Charniak Parser and LISP output of a typical example
of Rule 2
4.9 Grammar tree of a typical example of Rule 2
4.10 Rule 3 tree diagram
4.11 Charniak Parser and LISP output of a typical example
of Rule 3
4.12 Grammar tree of a typical example of Rule 3
4.13 Rule 4 tree diagram
4.14 Charniak Parser and LISP output of a typical example
of Rule 4
4.15 Tree diagram rule 4 coordinating conjunction
4.16 Rule 5 tree diagram
4.17 Charniak Parser and LISP output of a typical example
of Rule 5