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Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 24:1 (2019) ► pp.98–130

Do speech registers differ in the predictability of words?

| Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University
| Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
| Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University | KNAW Meertens Institute
| Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

Previous research has demonstrated that language use can vary depending on the context of situation. The present paper extends this finding by comparing word predictability differences between 14 speech registers ranging from highly informal conversations to read-aloud books. We trained 14 statistical language models to compute register-specific word predictability and trained a register classifier on the perplexity score vector of the language models. The classifier distinguishes perfectly between samples from all speech registers and this result generalizes to unseen materials. We show that differences in vocabulary and sentence length cannot explain the speech register classifier’s performance. The combined results show that speech registers differ in word predictability.

Keywords: speech registers, word predictability, text classification, statistical language modelling, register analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Characterizing text in register analysis and natural language processing
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Corpus
    • 3.2Analysis
  • 4.Study 1: SLM vocabulary selection
    • 4.1Procedure
    • 4.2Results and discussion
  • 5.Study 2: Training and testing of the speech register classifier
    • 5.1Procedure
    • 5.2Results and discussion
  • 6.Study 3: Validation of the speech register classifier
    • 6.1Procedure
    • 6.2Results and discussion
  • 7.Study 4: How much text material is needed for speech register classification?
    • 7.1Procedure
    • 7.2Results and discussion
  • 8.Study 5: The sentence length confound
    • 8.1Procedure
    • 8.2Results and discussion
  • 9.General discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.17062.ben
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