Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Search Challenge (12/9/15): How often do we write... this?


When we write, we reveal much... 

... about ourselves, and about the way we think.  Linguists have known this for a while, and often do studies where they try to figure out how what we think/feel/believe is reflected in what we write. 

This week's Challenge is a couple of simple questions that are either taxing, or simple... if you know how to approach the question.  

What does our language tell us?  We'll consider just English in this week's Challenge, as it's a good entry point, and finding the data isn't terribly hard.  So, in a large collection of written English text, what are the answers to these questions?  

1. When people write about world cities, which do they write about most often?  Los Angeles, London, Berlin, or Beijing? 
2. If you look at what people write about what they drink (as a beverage), what do they write about?  (Water? Wine? Beer? Coffee? Root beer?)  Which is the most commonly written-about beverage? 
3. Is the word "fly" used more often as a noun, or as a verb?  
4. Speaking of polysemous words (words with more than one meaning), can you find any words that USED to be used more frequently as nouns, that are now usually used as verbs?  (Or vice-versa? Words that were once verbs, but are now thought of as nouns?)  

This isn't that hard, once you figure out how / where to analyze the data.  But it probably give you hours of fun as we explore how often different words appear in written prose. 

Can you do it?  Let us know what you find (and HOW you discovered it)!  

Search on! 



6 comments:

  1. Good day, Dr. Russell and everyone. You are right, it is so much fun and interesting to find different words and how case, for example, can change results.

    Searched:

    First thought is Google Ngram

    Ngram Viewer

    Then searched for other possible sources with[Ngram]

    Word frecuency

    [word frequency analysis]

    Returned to Google Ngram

    1.[ Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Beijing]
    2.[ Water, Wine, Beer, Coffee, Root beer]
    3.[fly _NOUN_,fly _VERB_]
    4. Still thinking how to search for this one.

    [polysemous words from noun to verb]

    Answers


    1. When people write about world cities, which do they write about most often? Los Angeles, London, Berlin, or Beijing?
    A: London.


    2. If you look at what people write about what they drink (as a beverage), what do they write about? (Water? Wine? Beer? Coffee? Root beer?) Which is the most commonly written-about beverage?
    Water Still need to find way to understand what kind of product is each one when right click on the line, and why (all) is not always displayed.

    3. Is the word "fly" used more often as a noun, or as a verb?
    A. Now is as a Noun. Before 1917 was as a verb Also, case makes differences.

    4. Speaking of polysemous words (words with more than one meaning), can you find any words that USED to be used more frequently as nouns, that are now usually used as verbs? (Or vice-versa? Words that were once verbs, but are now thought of as nouns?)
    A: not yet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Question 1:
    London, Berlin, Los Angeles, Bejing - From Google NGram Viewer for demo click https://goo.gl/uNfdFp

    Question 2:
    water, milk, whiskey, orange and beer?
    A database I am playing with for a product - from Google NGram dada.
    Interestingly changing prefixes to indicate a female gender drops whiskey and introduces coffee.

    Question 3:
    Verb - much more so.
    The polysemy of hompgraphic words is available in Wordnet - link here http://goo.gl/zJgSdR

    Question 4;
    Pre Alphabet, Google was a noun - now we all Google.
    Things now Trend - we used to observe a Trend
    We Text people
    We Bookmark pages
    We Phone people
    We Message people
    In the UK we used to Hoover the floor (vacuum clean)
    I don't have a short code for these - they just popped in my head :)

    Dan ..... I have mentioned the impact your blog has on my productivity before. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Without doing any research--I'm sure that while "Google" is still a noun," google" is used far more frequently these days as a verb than as a noun.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Another great CHallenge

    Used TRENDS for the cities and found that over the last 10 years London gets much more attention than the other 3.

    Same TREND finds Water way ahead of the others

    Same TREND finds the verb form used much more than the noun variety "to fly" vs "a fly"

    Polysemous--more to come

    Book comes to mind n > v
    Milk N > v
    Man n > v

    Cheers

    jon tU

    ReplyDelete
  5. Interesting article about Google Ngram and possibly giving other options which I have yet to explore
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2015/11/11/why-we-need-to-verify-our-big-data-results/

    ReplyDelete