Translation-based corpus studies : contrasting English and Portuguese tense and aspect systems / Diana Santos.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Santos, Diana.

Series:

Language and computers ; no. 50.

Language and computers : studies in practical linguistics ; no. 50

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Translating into Portuguese.

English language.

Portuguese language--Translating into English.

Portuguese language.

English language--Tense.

Portuguese language--Tense.

English language--Aspect.

Portuguese language--Aspect.

Translating and interpreting.

Physical Description:

xii, 173 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York : Rodopi, 2004.

Contents:

1.1 Motivation 1

1.2 Language differences are deeper than is generally acknowledged 2

1.3 Bootstrapping of language engineering 3

1.4 The ubiquity of vagueness 4

1.5 Grammatical studies allow for smaller corpora 5

1.6 On the use of literary texts 6

1.7 Conventions: On the "third line" 7

1.8 Aspect for beginners 7

2 Parallel corpora and contrastive studies 9

2.1 Parallel corpora 9

2.1.1 Research on very large corpora 10

2.1.2 Research on smaller corpora 12

2.1.3 Studies on one half of a parallel corpus 13

2.2 Contrastive studies 14

2.3 Translation studies and translation theory 16

2.3.1 Machine translation practice - and theory 18

2.3.2 Translationese 20

2.3.3 Baker's definition of "corpus-based translation studies" 22

2.4 Translation data as linguistic data 22

2.4.1 Jakobson and competence vs. performance 23

2.4.2 Dyvik's translational-based semantics 23

2.4.3 Schubert and implicitness in translation 24

2.4.4 Tsujii and the translation of discourse 25

3 Tense, aspect, and semantics 27

3.1 The crosslinguistic analysis of tense and aspect 27

3.1.1 Smith and the perfection of English 28

3.1.2 Dahl (1985): a major work, but one important flaw 29

3.1.3 Slobin and thinking for drawing 31

3.1.4 Gawronska and article and aspect choice 32

3.2 Vagueness 32

3.2.1 Types of vagueness 34

3.2.2 Vagueness vs. unmarkedness or underspecification 37

3.2.3 Vagueness vs. ambiguity 38

3.2.4 Vagueness and compactness 39

3.3 A working definition of tense and aspect 39

3.3.1 A new definition of aspectual class 41

3.3.2 Vendler's methodology, not Vendler's categories! 41

3.3.3 The Portuguese aspectual classes in a nutshell 43

3.3.4 Comparing the two sets of classes from a Vendlerian angle 50

3.4 The descriptive model 50

3.4.1 The aspectual network of Monens 52

3.4.2 My appropriation of Moens's model 56

3.5 The aspectual network model applied to English and Portuguese 59

3.5.1 An aspectual network for Portuguese 59

3.5.2 An aspectual network for English 66

4 The translation network 69

4.2 Abstract properties of translation 70

4.3 Concrete translation networks 73

4.3.1 Coercion by translation 73

4.3.2 The translation network does not force one analysis 75

4.3.3 Introduction of vagueness or ambiguity by translation 80

4.3.4 Compact categories 83

4.3.5 Lexical issues 88

4.4 Problems and limitations 91

4.4.1 Putting things together 91

4.4.2 "Too free" translations 94

4.4.3 Can one get an overall picture, anyway? 95

4.4.4 Temporal reference and quantification 97

4.4.5 How to evaluate the translation network model 98

5 Corpus studies 101

5.1 The corpus 102

5.2 Initial corpus processing 103

5.3 Imperfeito 107

5.4 Perception verbs 113

5.5 The English perfect 119

5.6 Pluperfect and Mais que Perfeito 123

5.7 Studying the I/P distinction and Perfeito 129

5.8 Acquisitions as a relevant class 137

5.9 Obras and Mudancas: a different way of classifying events 142

5.10 Temporal reference 146

5.11 Corpus-based contrastive generalizations 148

6 Language engineering, evaluation and applications 151

6.1 Evaluation of the translation network model 151

6.2 Direct applications 152

6.3 Advantages of understanding time and translation 155

6.4 In the realm of parallel corpora 156

6.5 A plea for validation 156

6.5.1 Santos & Oksefjell revisited 158

6.5.2 Validation machinery wanted 160.

Notes:

Revision of the author's thesis, 1996.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [163]-173) and index.

ISBN:

9042017511

OCLC:

56014450