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Text Analytics: Present, Past and Future Read chapter Read first chapter

2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Lexicometric Paradoxes of Frequency: Comparing VoBIS and NVdB

Author : Luisa Revelli

Published in: Text Analytics

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

An emblematic “anti-spoken” canon, the linguistic variety offered as the standard model in Italian schools following national unification, while showing some signs of evolution over time, has remained relatively artificial and resistant to change. The lexical frequencies documented for scholastic Italian can therefore be intrinsically unaligned with those of the base vocabulary as well as with data for apparently similar varieties of Italian. This implies a need for interpretive models that assess quantitative data in the light of the complex paradigmatic relations among potential competing usages as well as the multi-layered connections between the number and type of meanings observed across different contexts of use. In this paper, I review the scholastic Italian modelled by teachers in the first 150 years after unification, with a view to assessing the strengths and weaknesses of applying lexicometric parameters to a linguistic variety that was targeted at an inexpert audience but specialist in nature, informed by lofty ideals but conditioned by practical educational needs, and constantly evolving yet resistant to the pull of contemporary living varieties.

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previous chapter Big Corpora and Text Clustering: The Italian Accounting Jurisdiction Case
next chapter Emotions and Dense Words in Emotional Text Analysis: An Invariant or a Contextual Relationship?
Footnotes
1
For general background on the stable and evolving characteristics of IS, see De Blasi [7], Cortelazzo [6], Benedetti and Serianni [1], Revelli [14].
 
2
The CoDiSV Project, initiated in 2004 at Aosta Valley University with the aim of collecting and studying samples of childhood writing [4]; [13]; [15], has yielded an archive with digital reproductions of over 1200 documents (mainly books, but also school registers, diaries, report cards, etc.) which is freely accessible at www.​codisv.​it.
 
3
The types of text included in the present corpus were: instructions for the completion of exercises, composition titles, dictations, corrections, assessments and feedback, all sourced in the students’ exercise books.
 
6
For example, Version 7.3 of T-LAB can only process a maximum of 1500 lexical units at a time when identifying word associations, comparing pairs of key words, conducting co-word analysis, and modelling emerging themes.
 
7
For a detailed description of the guiding principles and methodologies adopted, see Revelli [14].
 
8
Full words are those with meaningful semantic content (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs), while “empty words” fulfil grammatical functions such as completing, connecting, and supporting lexical words.
 
10
For example, dimostrativo—which is always preceded by aggettivo or pronome—never occurs in combination with atto, gesto, etc.
 
11
Bambagia, cagionare, figliolo, focolare, garzone, uscio are further instances of this last-mentioned category. Overall, the IS repertoire is markedly different to that of the contemporary lexicon, systematically preferring words that are missing from the NVdB, even in place of terms classified as FO within the latter (e.g., appetito in place of fame, ardere in place of bruciare, sciupare in place of rovinare, etc.).
 
12
“It is challenging, it is extremely difficult to systematically identify following objective criteria those everyday words which we all know but may not utter for months and years on end” [11]. In the preface to the NVdB, it is specified that the AD words “were obtained based on the old VdB’s list of 2300 highly available words, from which groups of university students were asked to delete the words they no longer perceived as among the most widely used and to approve new words they perceived as currently highly available”.
 
13
One example of the extent to which random factors can come into play is the case of ethnonyms, of which some are missing the CoDiSV (e.g., cinese, iugoslavo) while others that would appear to have been equally widely used are included in it (e.g., giapponese, inglese).
 
Literature
1.
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2.
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Chiari I, De Mauro T (2012) The new basic vocabulary of Italian: problems and methods. Rivista di statistica applicata/Italian J Appl Stat 22(1):21–35
6.
Cortelazzo M (1995) Un’ipotesi per la storia dell’italiano scolastico. In: Antonelli Q, Becchi E (eds) Scritture bambine. Laterza, Roma-Bari, pp 237–252
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De Blasi N (1993) L’italiano nella scuola. In: Luca Serianni, and Pietro Trifone (eds) Storia della lingua italiana, vol I “I luoghi della codificazione”, Einaudi, Torino, pp 383–423
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Moneglia M (1982) Sul cambiamento dello stile della lingua scritta: scrivono i bambini. In: Nencioni G et al (eds) La lingua italiana in movimento. Accademia della Crusca, Firenze, pp 230–276
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Revelli L (2013) Diacronia dell’italiano scolastico. Aracne, Roma
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Revelli L (2015) Dal micro- al macro-: storie del mutamento linguistico attraverso il CoDiSV. In: Gianmario Raimondi, and Hélène Champvillair (eds) Il CoDiSV in classe. Proposte metodologiche e didattiche di ricerca applicata. Aracne, Roma, pp 93–202
Metadata
Title
Lexicometric Paradoxes of Frequency: Comparing VoBIS and NVdB
Author
Luisa Revelli
Copyright Year
2020
Book
Text Analytics

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-52679-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-52680-1

Copyright Year: 2020

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52680-1_8

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