Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate methods in corpus-based lexicography

614 Pages·2008·5 MB·English

Univariate, bivariate, and multivariate
methods in corpus-based lexicography –
a study of synonymy

Antti Arppe

Academic dissertation to be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of
Arts at the University of Helsinki in lecture room 13, on the 19th of December, 2008,
at 12 o’clock.

University of Helsinki PUBLICATIONS
Department of General Linguistics NO. 44
P.O. Box 9 (Siltavuorenpenger 20 A) 2008
FI-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
Cover image:
The tree seen from the researcher’s chamber on 6.5.2008 (Antti Arppe)

ISSN 0355-7170
ISBN 978-952-10-5174-6 (paperback)
ISBN 978-952-10-5175-3 (PDF)

URL: http://ethesis.helsinki.fi/

Helsinki 2008
Helsinki University Print
To my father and mother
Juhani and Raija Arppe

Abstract

In this dissertation, I present an overall methodological framework for studying
linguistic alternations, focusing specifically on lexical variation in denoting a single
meaning, that is, synonymy. As the practical example, I employ the synonymous set
of the four most common Finnish verbs denoting THINK, namely ajatella, miettiä,
pohtia and harkita ‘think, reflect, ponder, consider’. As a continuation to previous
work, I describe in considerable detail the extension of statistical methods from
dichotomous linguistic settings (e.g., Gries 2003; Bresnan et al. 2007) to polytomous
ones, that is, concerning more than two possible alternative outcomes.

The applied statistical methods are arranged into a succession of stages with
increasing complexity, proceeding from univariate via bivariate to multivariate
techniques in the end. As the central multivariate method, I argue for the use of
polytomous logistic regression and demonstrate its practical implementation to the
studied phenomenon, thus extending the work by Bresnan et al. (2007), who applied
simple (binary) logistic regression to a dichotomous structural alternation in English.

The results of the various statistical analyses confirm that a wide range of contextual
features across different categories are indeed associated with the use and selection of
the selected think lexemes; however, a substantial part of these features are not
exemplified in current Finnish lexicographical descriptions. The multivariate analysis
results indicate that the semantic classifications of syntactic argument types are on the
average the most distinctive feature category, followed by overall semantic
characterizations of the verb chains, and then syntactic argument types alone, with
morphological features pertaining to the verb chain and extra-linguistic features
relegated to the last position.

In terms of overall performance of the multivariate analysis and modeling, the
prediction accuracy seems to reach a ceiling at a Recall rate of roughly two-thirds of
the sentences in the research corpus. The analysis of these results suggests a limit to
what can be explained and determined within the immediate sentential context and
applying the conventional descriptive and analytical apparatus based on currently
available linguistic theories and models.

The results also support Bresnan’s (2007) and others’ (e.g., Bod et al. 2003)
probabilistic view of the relationship between linguistic usage and the underlying
linguistic system, in which only a minority of linguistic choices are categorical, given
the known context – represented as a feature cluster – that can be analytically grasped
and identified. Instead, most contexts exhibit degrees of variation as to their
outcomes, resulting in proportionate choices over longer stretches of usage in texts or
speech.

v
Preface and acknowledgments

ud mu-e-ši-zal
a-na-am šu mu-da-ti
3
‘The time passed, and what did you gain?’1 2

nam-sag -ga kaš-a
9
nam-hul kaskal-la
‘The good thing – it is the beer,
the bad thing – it is the journey.’3

This dissertation is essentially the product of a decade-long sequence of innumerable
discussions, in which my supervisors, colleagues, friends, and family have imparted
ideas and insights that have edged my research further. Not only have these
discussions taken place during supervision and consultation sessions proper, but they
have chanced to happen while crossing a street, in informal meetings in the
University’s corridors, by the copy-machine or printer at the Department, over the
phone or via e-mail, during the short question-and-answer sessions or the longer chit-
chat that follows at academic conferences, workshops, and seminars, or even through
the age-old medium for the exchange of scientific ideas through written books or
articles.

All too often, I have not fully appreciated such ideas when they have first been
proffered to me – probably because I was not yet ready to understand them yet – and
sometimes the true value of many a suggestion has dawned on me only years
afterwards. In all likelihood, my partners in these discussions may not have realized
themselves what – in retrospect – crystal-clear one-liners they have uttered or written
concerning one aspect or another relevant to my research process. Nonetheless, these
giveaway reflections are what I can now see to form the backbone of this written
work. Although this study is thus fundamentally the result of applying an ensemble of
many borrowed ideas, my own contribution – and therefore also nobody else’s
responsibility but mine – is the complex whole that they constitute and the overall
interpretation that is conveyed.

1 Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: Proverbs, Collection 3: 3.157 (Black et al. 1998-
2008).
2 CompositeCuneiform signs by Tinney and Everson (2004-2007).
3 Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature: Proverbs, Collection 7: 7.98 (Black et al. 1998-2006).
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I am deeply grateful to my four official supervisors, Fred Karlsson, Lauri Carlson,
Urho Määttä, and Juhani Järvikivi, for each guiding in their own characteristic manner
this work further towards its final conclusion. Fred Karlsson saw promise in my early,
quite sketchy research plan concerning synonymy, accepting me, as the academic
immigrant from engineering that I was, into the field of linguistics as a post-graduate
student, as well as tipping me off about my first research funding in the GILTA
project. Fred’s persistent insistence on focusing on the final goal, however
uncomfortable I found the issue at times, was instrumental in getting this dissertation
finished.

Lauri Carlson was a wizard in articulating what I was not yet able to, seeing where
my thinking was taking me before I knew it myself, and crystallizing these into
simple comments or questions that connected my tiny, seemingly isolated island of
research into the grander scheme of things within the linguistic discipline. During the
final writing process of this text, Lauri pored through diligently each chunk as I
succeeded in churning them out, providing me the assurance that I remained on the
right track.

Urho Määttä always had ample time and interest to discuss the most general
ramifications and connections of my work and to delve deep into what language as an
object of study and linguistics as a discipline were fundamentally about. At the same
time, Urho assisted me in contenting myself first with only one, seemingly small, part
of my original research plan, and then mastering that portion as comprehensively as
possible.

Juhani Järvikivi’s expertise in psycholinguistic experimentation was the component
that I did not know was missing until I stumbled onto it, and which was to open my
eyes to what my research in linguistics could on the long term concern. Co-authoring
two journal articles together with Juhani introduced me to what academic discourse at
the international level is really about, and this co-operation also allowed me to sketch
out the general, multimethodological backdrop which this considerably more tightly
focused work serves.

I am also indebted to Martti Vainio, who acted as my fifth supervisor in all but name.
It was Martti who realized that logistic regression might be the very statistical method
that could bring some order to my jungle of linguistic features, and he neither
hesitated nor spared his time in working out with me a solution to applying this
technique to my multiple-outcome setting and getting me started with R. I also
appreciate Martti’s iconoclastic attitude in the many intensive but free-wheeling
discussions we have had concerning a wide array of topics ranging from the current
central questions in linguistics and other sciences to international politics, in which
we have not been troubled by the passing of time.

Furthermore, I am grateful to Kimmo Koskenniemi for all the support and sincere
attention he has shown to the progress of my research work. Thanks to Kimmo, I
originally wound up working in the mid-to-late 1990s at Lingsoft, a small Finnish
language technology company, where one of the software development projects I was
involved in, namely inflecting thesauri, would lead me to discover the kernel of this
dissertation. In particular, I want to thank Kimmo for inviting me on several occasions
vii
to speak in the language technology seminar in order to sort out the state of my
research and rediscover its red thread, when I was in danger of losing my way.

At the Department of General Linguistics, I have appreciated the collegial and
informal atmosphere, which has allowed me to benefit from the experience of the
research and teaching staff representing three closely related but distinct subjects. I
am thankful for the patient coaching and support by Jan-Ola Östman and Kari K.
Pitkänen when I was still primarily a full-time novice in the field. Moreover, I have
fond memories of the late Orvokki Heinämäki, who taught some of the very first
courses in general linguistics that I took in the early 1990s. Most importantly, I have
also had the excellent opportunity to broaden my understanding of linguistics through
encountering the extraordinarily diverse kaleidoscope research topics pursued by the
Department’s post-graduate students and affiliated post-doctoral researchers. Among
many others, I am happy to have had a lively interchange with Matti Miestamo, in
which he has convincingly argued for the importance of typological perspective in
linguistics. In particular, I want to thank Matti for providing me with comments in
this respect on the Introduction and Discussion of this text, and for the extra-curricular
discussions we have had as fellow Kallio linguists.

I am very grateful to both of my preliminary examiners, R. Harald Baayen (University
of Alberta) and Stefan Th. Gries (University of California, Santa Barbara), for their
constructive criticism with respect to the current text and their encouraging
suggestions to continue developing its themes further. In fact, when I had first made
the acquaintance of both my examiners, on separate occasions just around the
beginning of this millennium, they had each given me tips that I did not heed at the
time, but which advice I later realized to contain two cornerstones of this dissertation.
Harald Baayen was the first person to recommend to me that I get acquainted with the
R statistical programming environment, which became the workhorse for all the
statistical analysis in my work, while Stefan Th. Gries’ own doctoral dissertation
already contained the general tripartite methodological setup that I was to find well-
suited to bring structure also to my work.

In addition, there are a great number of scholars both in Finland and abroad with
whom I have had the opportunity, privilege and pleasure of collaborating or
exchanging ideas, opinions, and assistance over the many years, not always only
concerning linguistics but also the practical everyday challenges of leading the life a
young researcher. These people whom I wish to recognize are (in alphabetical order):
Daniel Aalto, Tiina Arppe, Lili Aunimo, Juhani Birn, Pia Brandt, Joan Bresnan,
Andrew Chesterman, Pernilla Danielsson, Dagmar Divjak, Antonina Durfee, Nils-
Erik Enkvist, Stefan Evert, Marja Etelämäki, Sam Featherston, Dylan Glynn, Stefan
Grondelaers, Mickel Grönroos, Erja Hannula, Tarja Riitta Heinonen, Irmeli Helin,
Kris Heylen, Suvi Honkanen, Timo Honkela, Silja Huttunen, Esa Itkonen, Jarmo H.
Jantunen, Eriika Johansson, Kristiina Jokinen, Timo Järvinen, Panu Kalliokoski, Irina
Kauhanen, Tapani Kelomäki, Harri Kettunen, Tarja Knuuttila, Leena Kolehmainen,
Lari Kotilainen, Ville Laakso, Krista Lagus, Ritva Laury, Jaakko Leino, Pentti Leino,
Yrjö Leino, Krister Lindén, Mikko Lounela, Aapo Länsiluoto, Laura Löfberg, Anke
Lüdeling, Annu Marttila, Matti Miestamo, Manne Miettinen, Sjur Nørstebø
Moshagen, Jussi Niemi, Otto Nieminen, Urpo Nikanne, Alexandre Nikolaev,
Torbjørn Nordgård, Elina Nurmi, Martti Nyman, Seppo Nyrkkö, Krista Ojutkangas,
Jussi Pakkasvirta, Heikki Patomäki, Pertti Palo, Santeri Palviainen, Simo Parpola,
viii
Marja Peltomaa, Kaarina Pitkänen, Marja Pälsi, Michaela Pörn, Jarno Raukko, Timo
Riiho, Jouni Rostila, Jack Rueter, Janne Saarikivi, Gabriel Sandu, Dirk Speelman,
Kaius Sinnemäki, Pirkko Suihkonen, Mickael Suominen, Antti Suni, Gert De Sutter,
Pasi Tapanainen, Lauri Tarkkonen, Jarmo Toivonen, Trond Trosterud, Jarno Tuimala,
José Tummers, Tuuli Tuominen, Ulla Vanhatalo, Johanna Vaattovaara, Kari T.
Vasko, Kimmo Vehkalahti, Marja Vierros, Simo Vihjanen, Liisa Vilkki, Maria
Vilkuna, Laura Visapää, Mari Voipio, Atro Voutilainen, Tytti Voutilainen, Jarmo
Välikangas, Fredrik Westerlund, Caroline Willners, Malene Würtz, Anssi Yli-Jyrä,
and Jussi Ylikoski.

From my time at Lingsoft, I am especially grateful to Juhani Birn for his witty insight
and seasoned experience in interpreting the unexpected behavior of inflecting
thesauri. Likewise, I appreciate the initial effort that Mari Voipio and Malene Würtz
made to put our finger on what the oddities exactly were and what they might
generally entail. Moreover, I truly enjoyed the many manifold times that we managed
to drift over to discussing linguistic topics together with many of the company’s
employees in the late 1990s.

For the first three years of my postgraduate studies, I participated in and received
funding through the GILTA project, led by Ari Visa (Tampere University of
Technology), Hannu Vanharanta (Tampere University of Technology), and Barbro
Back (Åbo Akademi University). I appreciate greatly the wide latitude that I was
allowed within this cross-disciplinary project, permitting me to pursue my purely
linguistic research interests at the same time. Especially glad I am that we succeeded
in tying most of the different strands of research together in one major joint article, in
which the individual contributions of Tomas Eklund (Åbo Akademi University) and
Camilla Magnusson played a central role. Although Camilla started out as my
research assistant in the GILTA project, she soon became an independent-minded
researcher in her own right, and I am grateful to her for questioning some certainties
that I held.

Already in 1999, I had been invited by Anu Airola and Hanna Westerlund to join an
informal post-graduate discussion group, which soon extended to include also Jussi
Piitulainen. I am thankful to Anu, Hanna, and Jussi for all the mutual assistance and
instruction that was of great help to me in trying to make sense – both to myself and
the others – of what various central theoretical concepts meant or could connote.
During 2002-2003, this evolved into the Suomenlinna circle of linguists, also known
as TR-9, formed by Urho Määttä, Anu Airola, Juhani Järvikivi, Camilla Magnusson,
Jussi Piitulainen, Reetta Konstenius, Martti Vainio, Hanna Westerlund, and myself.
TR-9 gave me an inspiring glimpse of the satisfying intellectual interchange that can
be achieved when linguists with diverse backgrounds and complementary skills work
together rather than alone. In particular, I still remember clearly Reetta’s insistence on
the rigorous formation of hypotheses and firm argumentation while conducting
linguistic research.

Beginning in 2003, I had the privilege of being accepted into LANGNET, the Finnish
Graduate School in Language Studies, within which I received full funding for the
first four years, followed by an additional year as a self-financed fellow. I have come
to consider many of my postgraduate colleagues within the LANGNET graduate
school, as well as recent doctors, to form a unique peer group that is best positioned to
ix
wholly understand the many conflicting demands and to provide support in the
difficult challenges that young researchers face these days. Many of these originally
primarily professional colleagues I now consider also my friends.

During my research process and the writing of this dissertation text, I have had the
privilege of tapping into the expert knowledge of some of the foremost and upcoming
specialists in Finland outside my own restricted field. At the postgraduate seminars
organized by the Department of Finnish language and literature, which I had the
pleasure of attending twice, I was happy to receive from Pentti Leino both common-
sense and worthwhile feedback from the Fennistic perspective on interpreting
quantitative results arising from my statistically-oriented line of research. When I
have needed guidance concerning the etymological roots of the THINK verbs that I
study or help with rarer infinitival or other infrequent forms in Finnish, I have had the
opportunity to consult Jussi Ylikoski’s unfailing store of knowledge. I have also been
able to indulge in my interest in writing systems by studying the cuneiform script,
elementary Akkadian and Sumerian under the tutelage of Simo Parpola, and Maya
hieroglyphs under the guidance of Harri Kettunen. These studies have provided me a
truly welcome and worthwhile, culturally and historically rich counterpart and
relaxation to my otherwise quite numeric study. Moreover, I wish to thank Harri for
his peer-support during some trying times in my research process, which I hope to be
able to reciprocate.

In the linguistic analysis of my research data, I was fortunate enough to have for
several months two research assistants, Marjaana Välisalo and Paula Sirjola, to
produce comparative analyses for parts of the data. I can only admire the thorough
inquisition to which I was subjected concerning my principles of classification, which
certainly became more uniform and explicit in the process, and I commend them both
for the diligence in applying these principles in their own analysis of the data.

In the numerous statistical analyses undertaken throughout my research process, I am
grateful to Daniel Aalto (Helsinki University of Technology), Pertti Palo (Helsinki
University of Technology), Lauri Tarkkonen, Kimmo Vehkalahti, Seppo Nyrkkö, and
Kari T. Vasko (CSC – IT Center for Science) for the invaluable advice that I have
received countless times. Especially indebted I am to Daniel Aalto, who inspected
Sections 3-4 describing the array of statistical methods applied in this study, although
any possible faults and mistakes naturally remain mine alone. I also want to thank
Seppo Nyrkkö for his assistance in getting R to work properly with the Finnish
character set on my portable Macintosh, and Jarno Tuimala and Yrjö Leino (both of
CSC – IT Center for Science) for providing me all the programming and other
assistance necessary for the parallel computations that I undertook on CSC’s brand-
new murska supercluster system.

Likewise, I owe many thanks to the administrative and support staff at our
Department, in the Faculty of Arts, and in the LANGNET graduate school for keeping
the paperwork and infrastructure running smoothly, so that I and other researchers
could mostly concentrate on academic matters. Especially, I want to mention Johanna
Ratia, Anders Enkvist, Jaakko Leino, Ulla Vanhatalo, Hanna Westerlund, Tiina
Keisanen, Miroslav Lehecka, Jussi Luukka, and Kristiina Norlamo for doing their
utmost to facilitate my research work, not to forget Kirsti Kamppuri, Ardy Pitré, and
others who no longer work in the academic world.
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