Rolf Kreyer

The Style of Pop Song Lyrics: A Corpus-linguistic Pilot Study

Abstract In the present paper, we discuss the analytic potential of corpus-linguistic research into the genre of pop song lyrics. More specifically, we are interested in a corpus-based description of the general style of and, potentially, the stylistic variation within the genre of pop song lyrics. To this end, we envisage the compilation, annotation and analysis of a large and representative corpus of pop song lyrics, the Giessen-Bonn Corpus of Popular Music (GBoP). In the present paper, we report on general findings from a pilot investigation of the pilot version of GBoP. The focus here is on the identification of style markers of pop song lyrics in general and on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the vocabulary and of lexicogrammatical routines in the corpus. Finally, we will also discuss the extent to which GBoP may help to shed light on metaphors that are typical of pop song lyrics.

Inversion in modern written English: syntactic complexity, information status and the creative writer

Full-verb inversion in English has been the subject of a large number of studies in the recent and the less recent past. The present study tries to give a corpus-based account of this phenomenon within a discourse-functional framework. First, I will describe the influence of syntactic complexity and information status. However, I will argue that inversion should not merely be regarded as a means to ensure processability and flow of information. Instead, inversion should be understood as the result of a conscious choice on the part of the writer, who makes deliberate use of this rather rare syntactic phenomenon to serve certain superordinate functions, namely text structuring and what I call the immediate-observer effect, i.e. helping the reader to immerse into the discourse world. It will be shown that the distributions of weight and information status within inverted constructions can be understood as a result of these two superordinate functions.

Syntax and Semantics at Tone Unit Boundaries

Abstract The relationship between syntax and prosody has spawned a vast literature over the last years. In the present paper, we particularly capitalise on the corpus-linguistic model of talk units as suggested by Halford (1996) and elaborated further by Esser (1998) and Mukherjee (2001). A major tenet of this model is the assumption that the boundaries of contour-defined tone units are usually syntactically motivated and that prosody and syntax can thus be shown to interact at these boundaries: it is here that the speaker signals various degrees of completeness or incompleteness of the utterance ‘so far’ to the hearer. This results in different degrees of expectancies on the part of the hearer. In the present paper, the relevance of the tone unit boundary as an ‘expectancy-relevance place’ is discussed in a wider setting. In particular, we provide data from a corpus-based experiment and an in-depth functional analysis which reveal that a variety of syntactic and semantic factors come into play at tone unit boundaries.

Introduction to English Syntax

Contents: From Language Data to Syntactic Description - Words and Word Classes - The Verb Phrase - The Noun Phrase - Adjective, Adverb and Prepositional Phrase - Clauses and Sentences - Indeterminacy - Spoken and Written Syntax - Syntactic Variation - Syntax and Meaning - Major Approaches to Syntactic Description - Psycholinguistic Aspects of Syntax.

The nature of rules, regularities and units in language : a network model of the language system and of language use

Comprehensive networks of language make use of structures that go beyond the basic associative connections that can be found in the brain. The present study is an attempt to provide an account of language that restricts itself to structures of a neurophysiological kind, i.e. simple nodes, excitatory and inhibitory connections.