Die Hausarbeit besteht aus einem theoretischen und einem praktischen Teil. Der theoretische Teil gibt Definitionen und allgemeine Vorgehensweisen zum Thema Corpus Linguistik. Es wird erklärt wie ein Corpus erstellt und später ausgewertet wird.
Der praktische Teil beschäftigt sich mit englischen und deutschen Märchen im Verglech. Dabei wir Wert auf die Sprache, die Benutzung besonderer, für Märchen markanter, Wörter und Wendungen gelegt. Es wird eine Erklärung für die Unterschiede, sowie eine Zusammenfassung und Fazit gegeben.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Part
2.1. What is a corpus?
2.2 Tools for examining corpora
3. Practical Part
3.1. Corpus Design
3.2. Corpus analyzes and results
Research Objectives and Key Topics
This paper aims to explore the fundamental principles of corpus linguistics by providing a theoretical overview of corpora and demonstrating their practical application through a comparative analysis of English and German fairy tales. The study seeks to investigate linguistic patterns—specifically regarding animal roles, royal figures, and mythical characters—to understand how corpus-based tools can uncover structural and thematic differences between linguistic versions of similar narratives.
- Theoretical foundations of corpus linguistics and definitions of various corpus types.
- Methodological approaches to corpus design and ensuring data representativeness.
- Analysis of character roles and animal frequency in English and German folklore.
- Comparative case study of the tale "Tom Thumb" across both languages.
- The practical utility of concordance lines and word lists in linguistic research.
Excerpts from the Book
3.2.2. Royalty and mythical creatures
Another common role in fairytales play the figures of the king and the queen. In almost every story, we used to compile our corpus, these two characters were mentioned. But by looking at the wordlists we found out that the king is more often mentioned in English tales whereas the queen isn’t that important. In the German tales the king also played the major role, but the queen was mentioned way more often than in the English tales. This preponderance of male characters in the English storytelling and of female characters in the German tales is also shown in the frequency of the words “Prince” and “Princess”.
These results may be interpreted in different ways. One reason for the major role of the king in the English fairytales may be that these tales most of the time base on historical backgrounds and actual circumstances of the time they have been told. So was the king the ruling monarch and for that reason more often used as the monarch and leading character in the tales, too. Thus the prince was the heir to the throne and therefore more important than the princess.
In German tales the Queen was most of the time the stepmother to the princess and usually described as the mean and jealous villain. The princess for most of the tales is the heroin and major character like Snow White, Cinderella or the Sleeping Beauty. The King is the father and good heart of the story and the prince is usually the hero that saves the princess and marries her in the end. Because of this role allocation that is shown in most of the German tales, the prince usually isn’t mentioned that often during the story but almost always in the end.
Summary of Chapters
1. Introduction: Outlines the rise of Corpus Linguistics and sets the goal of exploring how corpora can be utilized to analyze linguistic differences in fairy tales.
2. Theoretical Part: Defines the concept of a corpus and explains various types of corpora, such as specialised, comparable, and parallel corpora, alongside the tools used for their analysis.
3. Practical Part: Details the compilation of a balanced corpus of English and German fairy tales and presents the linguistic findings regarding animals, royal figures, and the comparative analysis of "Tom Thumb".
Keywords
Corpus Linguistics, Fairy Tales, Comparative Analysis, Concordance Lines, Word Lists, German Literature, English Literature, Royalty, Animal Frequency, Corpus Design, Methodology, Folklore, Tom Thumb, Frequency Analysis, Linguistic Research.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the fundamental objective of this work?
The work aims to explain what a corpus is and demonstrate its practical utility by analyzing and comparing English and German fairy tales using corpus linguistic methods.
Which thematic areas are central to this study?
The study focuses on the usage of specific vocabulary concerning animals, royal figures, and mythical characters within selected fairy tales of English and German origin.
What is the primary research approach?
The author uses a quantitative and qualitative approach, compiling a balanced corpus and analyzing it through frequency lists and concordance lines.
What topics are covered in the main section?
The main section covers corpus design, an analysis of animal presence, the roles of kings, queens, and mythical figures, and a comparative study of the "Tom Thumb" fairy tale versions.
Which linguistic tools were used for the analysis?
The analysis relied on corpus access programs to calculate word frequencies and to examine concordance lines for context and phraseology.
How is the corpus for this study characterized?
The corpus is described as a comparable, balanced corpus consisting of 21 English and 21 German fairy tales, totaling nearly 400,000 words.
Why did the author find the "Tom Thumb" comparison particularly interesting?
It was interesting because the name of the main character differs significantly in origin and frequency between the two languages, reflecting different storytelling traditions.
What role do animals play in the analyzed stories?
The analysis revealed that while English tales mention a wider variety of animals, German tales grant animals more significant narrative roles as allies, friends, or villains.
How does the representation of gender roles differ between the tales?
The findings indicate a preponderance of male royal characters in English tales and a higher frequency of female royal characters in German tales, which the author links to different narrative traditions.
What does the author conclude about the representativeness of the corpus?
The author admits that the corpus is relatively small, but asserts that by ensuring a balanced word count, the findings are reliable and offer a new perspective on the texts.
- Quote paper
- Kathl Morgenstern (Author), 2006, Corpus Linguistics - Differences and similarities between German and English Fairy Tales, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/128477
