Some remarks on the use of Bible translations as parallel texts in linguistic research

Vries, Lourens de

doi:10.1524/stuf.2007.60.2.148

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…In the ideal case, a doculect is fully representative of a language. However, for typological purposes and especially for the semantic map approach it is equally important that doculects are as directly comparable as possible (similar style and register and especially the same domains documented), and this is an advantage of Bible translations (Masica 1976:130, Wälchli 2007, but see also de Vries 2007). Whenever I use -language‖ below, this should be understood in the sense of -doculect‖.…”

Section: Building a Semantic Map Of Local Phrase Markers From Parallementioning

confidence: 99%

Similarity Semantics and Building Probabilistic Semantic Maps from Parallel Texts

Wälchli¹

2010

Linguistic Discovery

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This paper deals with statistical (non-implicational) semantic maps, built automatically using classical multidimensional scaling from a direct comparison of parallel text data (the Gospel according to Mark) in the domain of motion events (case/adpositions) in 153 languages from all continents in 190 parallel clauses. The practical objective is to present one way (among other possible ways) in which semantic maps can be built easily and fully automatically from large typological datasets (Section 3). Its methodological objective is to demonstrate that semantic maps can be built in various ways and that the sampling of languages and small differences in the method chosen to build a semantic map can have a strong influence on the results (Section 4). This does not mean that semantic space is arbitrary, but rather that it is dynamic (having stretching and shrinking dimensions). The theoretical aim of this paper is to discuss similarity semantics, the implicit theoretical basis behind the semantic map approach, and to show that similarity semantics is not novel, but has a long-standing tradition in philosophy and psychology (Section 2).

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Section: Building a Semantic Map Of Local Phrase Markers From Parallementioning

confidence: 99%

Similarity Semantics and Building Probabilistic Semantic Maps from Parallel Texts

Wälchli¹

2010

Linguistic Discovery

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“…An early translation of the complete Bible into a single language was the Latin Vulgate of the late 4th century C. E. (Gilmore, p. 177) and the first complete English translation (Wycliffe's) did not appear until the 14th century (Bruce, 1961, p. 12). At present, there are several English translations extant which differ in terms of privileged source documents (de Vries, 2007), target populations (e.g., Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish; Appendix A), and translation philosophies.…”

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confidence: 99%

Emotional Consistency as Evidence of Dynamic Equivalence among English Translations of the Bible

Whissell

2012

Comprehensive Psychology

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In order to be dynamically equivalent, different translations of the same text must have the same effects (including emotional effects) on an audience. In this research, six English translations of the Bible (four entire Bibles, one Tanakh, and one nearly complete translation) were scored with the Dictionary of Affect in Language, which quantifies the Pleasant, Active, and Imaging undertones of words, and were compared in terms of these undertones. In spite of small differences among them (translations into simpler modern English were significantly more Pleasant, Active, and Concrete), the translations were emotionally consistent and therefore dynamically equivalent to one another with respect to emotion and imagery. The median correlation among translations for Pleasantness, Activation, and Imagery was .9. The greatest variation in scores was associated with chapters. Emotional and imagery differences between books and chapters of the Bible are described and discussed.

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“… 2. For detailed discussions of the methodological soundness of biblical texts as data sources in linguistic research see Kaiser (2005), De Vries (2007) or Enrique-Arias (2008, 2009, 2012a, 2013). …”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A match made in heaven: Using parallel corpora and multinomial logistic regression to analyze the expression of possession in Old Spanish

Rosemeyer

Enrique-Arias

2016

Lang Var Change

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This study applies multinomial regression analysis to a parallel corpus of Spanish medieval translations of the Bible in order to study the different factors that condition variation in the expression of possession in Old Spanish. Our methodology allows us to determine the degree to which less frequent possessive constructions (ART+POSS, as in la su casa 'the his house', GEN, as in la casa de él 'the house of him' and ART/BARE, as in la casa 'the house') can be considered competitors to the dominant POSS construction (as in su casa 'his house') as a function of usage context differences. In comparison to the POSS construction, the ART+POSS construction usually expresses pragmatic functions such as reverence, the GEN construction is typically used to either disambiguate a reference and the ART/BARE construction is bound to contexts in which the possessor is highly accessible. Crucially, the analysis also sheds light on historical changes in the balance between structural and contextual constraints on the use of these different variants. Whereas in the 13th century, structural and stylistic constraints are almost equally important, the importance of structural constraints diminishes in the 15th century. The study thus illustrates how in reductive processes of language change, variation due to structural constraints yields to stylistic variation.

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Some remarks on the use of Bible translations as parallel texts in linguistic research

Cited by 15 publications

References 1 publication

Similarity Semantics and Building Probabilistic Semantic Maps from Parallel Texts

Similarity Semantics and Building Probabilistic Semantic Maps from Parallel Texts

Emotional Consistency as Evidence of Dynamic Equivalence among English Translations of the Bible

A match made in heaven: Using parallel corpora and multinomial logistic regression to analyze the expression of possession in Old Spanish

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