Papers by Lucía Loureiro-Porto
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Mar 1, 2023
In this work, Loureiro-Porto analyzes the corpus data from the double perspective of modality and... more In this work, Loureiro-Porto analyzes the corpus data from the double perspective of modality and grammaticalization. Her approach to modality follows cognitive models, and so necessity is understood in terms of forces, grammaticalization is the framework within which the ...
ArXiv, Jul 3, 2017
As global political preeminence gradually shifted from the United Kingdom to the United States, s... more As global political preeminence gradually shifted from the United Kingdom to the United States, so did the capacity to culturally influence the rest of the world. In this work, we analyze how the worldwide varieties of written English are evolving. We study both the spatial and temporal variations of vocabulary and spelling of English using a large corpus of geolocated tweets and the Google Books datasets corresponding to books published in the US and the UK. The advantage of our approach is that we can address both standard written language (Google Books) and the more colloquial forms of microblogging messages (Twitter). We find that American English is the dominant form of English outside the UK and that its influence is felt even within the UK borders. Finally, we analyze how this trend has evolved over time and the impact that some cultural events have had in shaping it.
Understanding Complex Systems, 2011
OLD version. Need to update! We study the viability and resilience of two languages in competitio... more OLD version. Need to update! We study the viability and resilience of two languages in competition using a simple dynamical model, in which we assume that public action can act on the prestige of an endangered language in order to avoid language extinction. We determine the viability kernel, that is, the set of states from which there exists an action policy maintaining the coexistence of the two languages, and we define such policies. We also study the resilience of the languages and identify configurations where the system can return to the viability kernel (finite resilience), and others where one of the languages is doomed to disappear (null resilience).
This volume includes a selection of papers and plenary lectures from the Fourth International Con... more This volume includes a selection of papers and plenary lectures from the Fourth International Conference on Corpus Linguistics held at the University of Jaén (Spain), from 22 to 24 March, 2012. It is divided into two sections: "Corpora and Historical Linguistics" (consisting of one introductory chapter by Alcaraz-Sintes, plus five further chapters) and "Corpora and Descriptive Linguistics" (with an introductory chapter by Valera-Hernández, plus seven more chapters). All chapters are of high quality, and serve to illustrate the various ways in which Corpus Linguistics has become an essential field in the advancement of linguistic study, particularly lexicological and grammatical studies, and also language acquisition and translation, in that these are the main subdisciplines represented in the volume. The paper by Nuria Calvo-Cortés, "A Corpus-Based Study of Gradual Meaning Change in Late Modern English," is a detailed lexical study which traces the evolution of four originally maritime words, aboard, ahead, aloof and astern, all of which developed new meanings and uses in the Late Modern English period. The author shows how this period is essential in the evolution of these four items and provides two socio-cultural reasons: (i) the decline of the prescriptive rule to avoid aprefixed words, and (ii) the advance of technology with the arrival of the steam engine, which brought with it the demise of sail power. This led to the decay of the primitive meanings of the terms under investigation, which first underwent lexicalization and, later, grammaticalization, as they developed new metaphorical meanings. The author not only manages to intertwine these two processes of language change, but also provides examples of new meanings and earlier usages than those attested in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Advancing Social Simulation: The First World Congress
In the general context of dynamics of social consensus, we study an agent based model for the com... more In the general context of dynamics of social consensus, we study an agent based model for the competition between two socially equivalent languages, addressing the role of bilingualism and social structure. In a regular network, we study the formation of linguistic domains and their interaction across the boundaries. We analyse also a small world social structure, in order to capture the effect of long range social interactions. In both cases, a final scenario of dominance of one language and extinction of the other is obtained, but with smaller times for extinction in the latter case. In addition, we compare our results to our previous work on the agent based version of Abrams-Strogatz model.
As global political preeminence gradually shifted from the United Kingdom to the United States, s... more As global political preeminence gradually shifted from the United Kingdom to the United States, so did the capacity to culturally influence the rest of the world. In this work, we analyze how the world-wide varieties of written English are evolving. We study both the spatial and temporal variations of vocabulary and spelling of English using a large corpus of geolocated tweets and the Google Books datasets corresponding to books published in the US and the UK. The advantage of our approach is that we can address both standard written language (Google Books) and the more colloquial forms of microblogging messages (Twitter). We find that American English is the dominant form of English outside the UK and that its influence is felt even within the UK borders. Finally, we analyze how this trend has evolved over time and the impact that some cultural events have had in shaping it.
Acknowledgements. Foreword by Manfred Krug. List of tables. List of figures. List of abbreviation... more Acknowledgements. Foreword by Manfred Krug. List of tables. List of figures. List of abbreviations. 1 Introduction. 1.1. Preliminary considerations. 1.2. Present-Day English need and need to. 1.2.1. Traditional approaches. 1.2.2. Modern considerations. 1.2.3. Conclusion. 1.3. A diachronic corpus. 1.4. Organization of chapters. 2 Theoretical Foundations. 2.1. Introduction. 2.2. Modality in English. 2.2.1. Types of modality: root and epistemic. 2.2.2. Semantic features of Present-Day English need and need to. 2.3. Grammaticalization. 2.3.1. Processes and parameters of grammaticalization. 2.3.2. English Modals: a paradigmatic case of grammaticalization. 2.4. Impersonal verbs and constructions. 2.4.1. Terminological issues. 2.4.2. Impersonal constructions: definition and structure. 2.4.3. Allen's (1995) classification. 2.5. Summary. 3. Tharf and Betharf. 3.1. Introduction. 3.2. Preterite-presents and pre-modals: morphology, syntax and semantics. 3.2.1. Morphology. 3.2.2. Syntax. 3.2...
The variety of English used in Gibraltar has been in contact with a number of European languages,... more The variety of English used in Gibraltar has been in contact with a number of European languages, such as Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Arabic (Moyer, 1998: 216; Suarez-Gomez, 2012: 1746), for more than 300 years. Studies of this variety have traditionally been based on interviews and observation (e.g. Moyer, 1993, 1998; Cal Varela, 1996; Levey, 2008 2015; Weston, 2011, 2013, etc.), and a detailed morphosyntactic description is yet to be published. In this context, the compilation of a reliable Gibraltar corpus using the standards of the International Corpus of English (ICE) will constitute a landmark in the analysis of this lesser known variety of English. In the present paper we describe the ICE project and the current state of the compilation of ICE-GBR. In addition, we present a detailed comparison between the section on press news reports of ICE-GB (standard British English) and ICE-GBR, with the aim of identifying morphosyntactic features that reveal the influence of language c...
This paper uses computer simulations as a means of assessing two different models for the competi... more This paper uses computer simulations as a means of assessing two different models for the competition between two languages from the interdisciplinary perspective of complex systems. These models allow for the analysis of the role of bilingual speakers and they consider two of the basic factors determining the use of each language: their relative prestige and the language loyalty of their speakers. Here we assess the effect of these parameters in different social networks, with the aim of contributing to the understanding of the role of bilingualism and social networks in processes of language contact. We first present a qualitative analysis based on a simulation tool that we have designed, in order to visualize the dynamics of the models. Secondly, we consider a qualitative analysis of the role of complex networks, identifying mechanisms for the rapid extinction of a language and for situations of language segregation. Finally, we present a quantitative analysis which shows, counte...
Dan Michel's "Ayenbite of Inwi", representative of the Kentish dialect, shows inter... more Dan Michel's "Ayenbite of Inwi", representative of the Kentish dialect, shows interesting idiosyncratic features in the field of orthography and lexis which have been the subject of different studies (cf. Scahill 2002). The aim of this study is to check whether this text is also idiosyncratic from a syntactic point of view, since a preliminary overview of the text has revealed that Dan Michel has a strong preference for the verb bihoven (>PDE behove, see MED s.v. bihoven), which was quite a marginal verb, rather than for highly frequent verbs such as thurven, which was dominant in Old English (cf. Bosworth and Toller s.v. þurfan) or neden (>PDE need), which was incipiently gaining ground in Middle English. This paper analyses the contexts in which behove occurs and pays close attention to its syntactic function in order to check whether this verb exhibits auxiliary features, as OE þurfan and PDE need do at different points of history.
As the global language it has become, English has indigenised in a wide array of territories, whi... more As the global language it has become, English has indigenised in a wide array of territories, which now speak a distinct variety of this language. The pioneering International Corpus of English (ICE) project began in 1990 with the aim of creating comparable corpora of English worldwide for their study (Nelson 2006, 736-740). In 2014 the current research team was appointed to compile the Gibraltar component of the ICE project, and this paper aims to contextualize such an endeavour from a sociolinguistic and methodological perspective. We discuss the shortcomings we need to face when aspiring to collect particular ICE text categories in Gibraltar as well as when determining what a true Gibraltarian is. The paper, then, explains our struggle to keep a constant balance between rigour, in following the general ICE framework and design, and pragmatism, which will allow us to adjust to the local Gibraltarian reality.
Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 2015
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Papers by Lucía Loureiro-Porto