How to express ‘ express ’ ? – Pedagogical reflections from web resources

1. How to express ‘express’? –Pedagogical reflections from web resources Yiching Wu National Tsing Hua University Simon Smith Ming Chuan University Chu-Ren Huang Academia Sinica

2. Express on the Internet • Web resources,dictionaries, thesauri and corpora • How can they help the learner to understand the correct use of the false friends express and 表示? • Viewpoint: non-native language speaker • Goal: to gain a better understanding of current function and future directions

3. Resources on the Internet • Dictionaries: Cambridge Dictionaries Online Merriam-Webster Online • Thesauri: WordNet, FrameNet, HowNet, Proposition Bank • Corpora (today’s presentation): BNC,Sinica Corpus, Sinorama

4. Online corpora: (1) BNC • the British National Corpus (BNC) (Leech 1992) • data: 100 million English words collected between 1991 and 1994. • tool: the Sketch Engine programmed by Dr. Adam Kilgarriff and Dr. Pavel Rychlý

5. Online corpora:(2) Sinorama the Sinorama Chinese-English Parallel Text Corpus (Sinorama) data: 2,373 pairs of articles in Chinese/English, published between 1976 and 2000. (103,252 pairs of sentences translated into about 3.2 million English words and 5.3 million Chinese characters) tool:TOTALrecal on CANDLE led by Professor Hsien-Chin Liou and Jason S Chang at National Tsing Hua University.

6. Part of speech distribution of express in BNC and Sinorama

7. Expressand biaoshiin Sinorama express: 520 biaoshi 表示: 1,843 express | : 73 biaoshi表示

8. Why thematch rate is low? • Hypothesis I: The low match rate results from an asymmetry of grammatical function distribution.

9. Why thematch rate is low?Hypothesis I • BNC vs. Sinica Corpus • The low match rate does not result from an asymmetry of grammatical function distribution.

10. Why thematch rate is low? • Hypothesis II: Biaoshi 表示is also polysemous, only some of the meanings can be mapped to express.

11. Senses and meaning facets of biaoshi表示 • Liu and Wu 2004, Wu 2004 Sense 1: ‘to quote or to describe what a Speaker said’ 他表示：「這樣的定位點不容易被取代。」 ta biaoshi:「zheyang de dingweidian bu rongyi bei qudai.」 he biaoshi: “this kind of anchoring point not easy be replaced.” ‘He said, “This kind of anchoring point is not easy to be replaced.”’

12. Senses and meaning facets of biaoshi表示 Sense 2: ‘to convey emotion or attitude in language or by an action’ 李先生表示同情。 li xiansheng biaoshi tongqing. Li Mr. biaoshi sympathy. ‘Mr. Li expressed his sympathy.’

13. Senses and meaning facets of biaoshi表示 Sense 3: ‘to represent one thing in terms of another’ facet 1: ‘to reveal a deductive meaning’ 我這麼說並不表示我不重視可能的弊端 wo zheme shuo bing bubiaoshi wo bu zhongshi keneng de biduan. I so say do not biaoshiI not concern possible malady ‘Saying so doesn’t mean that I am taking the possibility of creating abuses lightly.’

14. Senses and meaning facets of biaoshi表示 Sense 3 facet 2: ‘to reveal a substitutive meaning’ • conventional 鮮花表示愛情。 xianhua biaoshi aiqing. fresh flower biaoshilove. ‘Fresh flowers represent love.’

15. Senses and meaning facets of biaoshi表示 Sense 3 facet 2: ‘to reveal a substitutive meaning’ • non-conventional 一支國旗表示一萬尾烏魚。 yi zhi guoqi biaoshi yi wan wei wuyu. one classifier nation flag biaoshi10,000 classifier grey mullet ‘One flag represents 10,000 grey mullet.’

16. Mapping of expressand biaoshi表示 • express‘conveying a message in language’  biaoshi表示-Sense 2: ‘to convey emotion or attitude in language or by an action’ 李先生表示同情。 ‘Mr. Li expressed his sympathy.’ • Hypothesis II: Biaoshi 表示is also polysemous, only sense 2 can be mapped to express.

17. Objects of predicate express and biaoshi

18. Nominal objectsof predicate express in BNC: Message a.He expressed a hope that we might meet again during the remaining two days of his stay and have a longer conversation. b.各國領袖皆表示希望戰爭儘快結束。 ge guo lingxiu jie biaoshi xiwang zhanzheng jinkuai jieshu. ‘Each leader of the countries all expressed a hope that the war will end as soon as possible.’ • biaoshi 表示+xiwang希望 ‘hope’（N）+appositive clause?

19. Messageof predicate express in BNC c.*表示他們的希望戰爭儘快結束 *biaoshitamen de xiwang zhanzheng jinkuai jieshu ‘express their hope that the war will end as soon as possible’ d. 各國領袖皆表示(他們)希望戰爭儘快結束。 ge guo lingxiu jie biaoshi(tamen) xiwang zhanzheng jinkuai jieshu. ?‘Each leader of the countries all expressedthat they hope that the war will end as soon as possible.’ • biaoshi 表示+Message [clause] • express +Encoded Message [NP] (Message [thatclause])

20. Active and Passive sentencesof predicate express in BNC • Active: 9,326 (78%) , passive 2,633 (22%) a.Concernhas beenexpressed about extending further the Prime Minister’s powers of patronage. b.Doubtwasexpressed that Richards could maintain the unit. c.That view, albeit qualified somewhat, was also expressedby Ireland . d. The EC Trade and Agriculture Ministers, meeting in Brussels on Jan. 10-11, had restated their reservations (expressed at an earlier meeting on Dec. 23), saying that "insofar as the Dunkel paper calls into question the foundation of the Communities' agricultural policy, the paper is not acceptable".

21. Active and Passive sentences in Mandarin • In Mandarin, passive sentences are highly marked (Chu 1973). • action verbs: da 打 ‘beat’, ma罵 ‘scold’ a.爸爸 打/罵 他。 baba da/ma ta. ‘Father beat/scolded him.’ b.他被爸爸 打/罵。 ta bei baba da/ma. ‘He wasbeaten/scolded by Father.’

22. Active and Passive sentences ofbiaoshi 表示 a.他表示關心。 ta biaoshi guanxin. ‘He expressed concern.’ b.*關心被他表示。 guanxin bei ta biaoshi. ‘*Concern wasexpressed by him.’

23. Reflections and conclusion • To meet pedagogical needs, the following are needed: • Information related to the frequency of a target lexical item and its collocated patterns • Role internal grammatical types • Common marked patterns, e.g. passive sentences and active sentences with N that-clause objects. • Similarities and differences between English and Mandarin, i.e. positive input as well as negative input • Some of these needs are met by the Sketch Engine corpus query tool • Currently available for English and Czech • Chinese version under development

24. Thank you!