Grammatical word class variation within the British National Corpus Sampler

It seems that genre and medium interact in a more complex way than originally hypothesized in the British National Corpus Sampler, and, in future, the internal structure of these text types may need to be addressed.

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between part-of-speech frequencies and text typology in the British National Corpus Sampler. Four pairwise comparisons of part-of-speech frequencies were made: written language vs. spoken language; informative writing vs. imaginative writing; conversational speech vs. ‘task-oriented’ speech; and imaginative writing vs. ‘task-oriented’ speech. The following variation gradient was hypothesized: conversation – task-oriented speech – imaginative writing – informative writing; however, the actual progression was: conversation – imaginative writing – task-oriented speech – informative writing. It thus seems that genre and medium interact in a more complex way than originally hypothesized. However, this conclusion has been made on the basis of broad, pre-existing text types within the BNC, and, in future, the internal structure of these text types may need to be addressed.