Chapter 5: Words CoMMeNtarY oN aCtIVItIes

activity 5.1

A 410-million- word collection of printed and spoken texts (the Corpus of Contemporary American English, discussed later in this chapter) includes a report from the year 1991 that mentions ‘a new kind of wireless data network … ’. It was around the turn of the millennium that wireless connections to the internet were introduced into daily life and rapidly became commonplace, and this is what the word is now mainly used to talk and write about. Through the years 1990 to 2010, the Corpus of Contemporary American English contains 4,972 occurrences of the word wireless and the most commonly occur-ring word immediately after wireless is network (186 times); the second most common word in that slot just after wireless is Internet.

activity 5.2

The point is that even words made from meaningful parts (like under + take +{-er}) have conventional meanings that can be different from what might seem to be justified by the meanings of their parts. A cooker is not someone who cooks. Such a person is a cook or chef. A cooker is a cooking- stove (or, for some speakers of English, an apple suitable for cooking). Unlike a coffee break, a windbreak is not time out for wind; nor is it a belch (as might be suggested by the meaning of to break wind). A windbreak is a line of trees or some other barrier that gives shelter from the prevailing wind. To overtake is not to take control of an organization – that’s a takeover. Overtaking is done by catching up with others and then going beyond them. A pass-word is not the word pass said when you don’t want to participate. It is a secret word or phrase or string of symbols that has to be given before you can pass a barrier. An egghead is not the head of an egg (whatever that might be), but a brainy person with an intellectual focus.

activity 5.3

There could be disagreement over the list below (e.g. should attitude have been included, as a word connected with racism, professional as one related to football; should penalised have been added, as a word of relevance to both racism and football; is manager too general to be claimed as football- related?). Nonetheless, the following appear to have close connec-tions with the themes of racism and football. (The number of tokens in the text are shown in brackets. Words that occur most often are listed first.)

• abuse (4)

• black (4)

• player(s) (4)

• racist(s) (3)

• game(s) (3)

• racism (2)

• fans (2)

• club(s) (2)

• Wimbledon (2; OK, this name is associated with tennis, but it is also the name of a famous football club)

Chapter 5: Words CoMMeNtarY oN aCtIVItIes2

• football (1)

• plays (1)

• midfield (1)

• terraces (1)

• colour (1)

• team (1)

• spectators (1)

• FA (1)

• Cup (1)

• won (1)

• manager (1)

• Uefa (1)

• Fifa (1).

activity 5.4

The lemma {racist, racists} under the headword RACIST is represented by three tokens in The noughties text. (The plural form is made by adding a suffix {-s} to the singular form racist; so the singular is more basic. In counts based on large collections of text data, tokens of singulars substantially outnumber tokens of plurals; see Biber et al. 1999: 291.) The lemma {has, have, had} under the headword HAVE is represented by eight tokens. Perhaps you chose HAD as the headword. Almost no linguists would do that. They would argue that had is a past tense or past participle form (➔ 7) and the pattern for such forms in English normally involves a suffix, so have, which has no suffix, is a more basic form. Try looking up has, have and had in an English dictionary. Have will be in there, probably with quite a lot said about it. If has and had are separately listed, their entries will be brief, probably just indicating that have is the form to consult for details. A more refined analysis would probably split this family between two headwords, the auxiliary verb HAVE and the main verb HAVE; and the same could be done for BE, below, but that would be unnecessarily sophisticated for present purposes.

For the lemma {be, been, was, were, is, being} under the headword BE there are 17 tokens. (Long tradition in English studies makes BE the headword here, even though is and was are used more often overall in English – see Leech et al. 2001: 33. Note that both been and being are made by adding a suffix to be; so be is more basic than been and being.)

The lemma {does, do, done} – headword DO – is represented by three tokens.The lemma {and} is represented by six tokens. (This is a one- member lemma.)