Computer-aided categorisation and quantification of connectives in English and Arabic (based on newspaper text corpora)
This study presents a detailed contrastive description of the textual functioning of connectives in English and Arabic. Particular emphasis is placed on the organisational force of connectives and their role in sustaining cohesion. The description is intended as a contribution for a better understanding of the variations in the dominant tendencies for text organisation in each language. The findings are expected to be utilised for pedagogical purposes, particularly in improving EFL teaching of writing at the undergraduate level. The study is based on an empirical investigation of the phenomenon of connectivity and, for optimal efficiency, employs computer-aided procedures, particularly those adopted in corpus linguistics, for investigatory purposes. One important methodological requirement is the establishment of two comparable and statistically adequate corpora, also the design of software and the use of existing packages and to achieve the basic analysis. Each corpus comprises ca 250,000 words of newspaper material sampled in accordance to a specific set of criteria and assembled in machine readable form prior to the computer-assisted analysis. A suite of programmes have been written in SPITBOL to accomplish
Al-Jubouri, Adnan J. R.
Linguistics
Computer-aided categorisation and quantification of connectives in English and Arabic (based on newspaper text corpora). This study presents a detailed contrastive description of the textual functioning of connectives in English and Arabic. Particular emphasis is placed on the organisational force of connectives and their role in sustaining cohesion. The description is intended as a contribution for a better understanding of the variations in the dominant tendencies for text organisation in each language. The findings are expected to be utilised for pedagogical purposes, particularly in improving EFL teaching of writing at the undergraduate level. The study is based on an empirical investigation of the phenomenon of connectivity and, for optimal efficiency, employs computer-aided procedures, particularly those adopted in corpus linguistics, for investigatory purposes. One important methodological requirement is the establishment of two comparable and statistically adequate corpora, also the design of software and the use of existing packages and to achieve the basic analysis. Each corpus comprises ca 250,000 words of newspaper material sampled in accordance to a specific set of criteria and assembled in machine readable form prior to the computer-assisted analysis. A suite of programmes have been written in SPITBOL to accomplish
computer_aided categorisation quantification english_arabic base newspaper text corpus study present_detail contrastive description textual functioning connective english_arabic particular_emphasis_place organisational force connective role sustain cohesion description intend good variation dominant tendency text organisation language finding expect utilised pedagogical purpose particularly improve efl teach_write undergraduate level study_base empirical_investigation phenomenon connectivity optimal efficiency employ computer_aided procedure particularly adopt corpus_linguistics purpose one_important methodological requirement establishment comparable statistically adequate corpus also design software use exist package achieve basic analysis corpus comprises word newspaper material sample accordance specific set criterion assemble machine readable form prior computer_assisted analysis suite programme write accomplish