60 |
Sentences with no overt
MOVANT
were rare in the data. There were 11 sentences each
with
echar
and
tirar
without a
MOVANT
expressed. We saw in §4.1, that Spanish allowed the
subject to be unexpressed in a sentence. The same is not true with objects. They tend to be
expressed. Therefore, the lack of an overt
MOVANT
is relevant. The distribution tables do not
include the sentences with no overt
MOVANTS
because there are too few examples to be tested
statistically, but they are discussed in §4.2.6.
Having discussed the elements
that are considered
MOVANTS
, I will now detail how
these were classified. All
MOVANTS
were divided into three categories: nonphysical
(inanimate) movants, physical animate movants and physical inanimate movants. First of all,
many uses of the verbs involve nonphysical elements: things that cannot be touched or
handled, and therefore cannot be physically thrown. It is not the same to throw a candy (25)
as it is to throw a laugh (26).
(25)
…
todos
me
LANZABAN
caramelos….
(CdE:19-F, El nombre prestado)
everyone CL.1
st
throw.3
rd
.pl candies
‘
Everyone
THREW
me
candy’
(26)
…
LANCÉ
una carcajada…
(CdE:19-F, Fecundación fraudulenta)
threw.1st a guffaw
‘I burst out laughing’
Distinguishing between physical and nonphysical elements
is especially helpful for
studying light verb constructions (Vaamonde et al. 2010:1906). Sentences with physical
objects as
MOVANTS
tend to express literal motion, while the sentences with nonphysical
elements are usually figurative or metaphorical in some way.
A majority of
MOVANTS
fall into the physical category. In order to make meaningful
distinctions
within such a large category, I divided the physical category into animate and
inanimate elements. Separating physical entities into animate and inanimate allowed me to
separate the data into more categories, making the semantic analysis simpler. It also helped to
isolate the pronominal uses from non-pronominal ones.
This method exemplifies a bottom-up analysis (Gilquin 2010): I used the details of the
corpora to guide my annotation process. The annotation choices I made are justified in at
least three respects. Previous studies have used animacy as a parameter, as mentioned in §4.1.
The distinction between physical and nonphysical elements is basically one of concreteness
and abstractness, which has also been used in several other corpus studies (Gries &
Otani
2010, Liu 2010, Glynn 2009, Vaamonde et al. 2010). The innovation in this case was to use
the parameters concurrently.
61 |
Secondly, both Divjak & Gries (2008) and Liu (2010) mentioned adapting their
annotation process based on the data they had available; this type of bottom-up analysis has
been adopted before. Finally, the results of the statistical measures show that there is a
statistically significant difference in the behavior of the verbs across these three variables.
This indicates that the three variables are good predictors of the behavior of the
throw-
verbs.
The results from the data are shown in table 3. The p-value for the entire matrix of
data is 6.697E-14 (with a X-squared of 73.83 and a df of 6). The Cramer’s V is 0.3133,
showing a medium effect size (King & Minium 2008:327-329).
Each of the verbs shows a
different preference in the type of
MOVANT
. The table also shows how each verb varies from
the expected values. The goodness-of-fit p-value indicates that the observed data differs from
the expected. The arrows in the table show in which direction each verb differs (See §3.1).
Table 3
. Distribution of
MOVANT
types across all four
throw-
verbs
14
Physical inanimate
Physical animate
Nonphysical
GOF p-value
GOF p-value
GOF p-value
arrojar
50 ↑
6.94E-03
23 ↓
1.72E-02
27
echar
24
37
27
lanzar
11 ↓
7.47E-08
41
48 ↑
2.04E-05
tirar
54 ↑
2.13E-06
28
6 ↓
5.59E-06
Beginning with physical inanimate
MOVANTS
,
the number of examples for
echar
is not
significantly different from the expected value (approximately 1/3 physical animate
MOVANTS
).
Both
arrojar
and
tirar
have significantly more physical
MOVANTS
than expected.
In fact, (over) half of their total sentences include physical inanimate
MOVANTS
.
Lanzar
in
contrast has significantly fewer
MOVANTS
in this category.
With physical animate
MOVANTS
, only
arrojar
has a significant result, having fewer
physical
MOVANTS
than expected. The remaining three verbs have approximately 1/3
MOVANTS
.
In the final category, nonphysical
MOVANTS
, the number of examples for both
arrojar
and
echar
fall within the expected values, with approximately 1/3 nonphysical
MOVANTS
.
Tirar
has significantly fewer nonphysical
MOVANTS
, while
lanzar
has significantly
more of this
MOVANT
type.
Table 3 shows that the verbs can be
distinguished based on the
MOVANT
type. The
goal now is to understand why the verbs show this distribution. In the following, I will
discuss each
MOVANT
type, describing the most common uses and meanings that the verbs
14
The numbers for
echar
and
tirar
only add up to 88. There are 11 sentences with each verb that do not have
an overt
MOVANT
(see
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
