Discussion Details
| Title: | Discussion: Re: 15.2577, FYI: Assessing Well-formedness Using Google Script |
| Submitter: | John Atkinson |
| Description: | In Linguist 15.2577, Danko Sipka <danko.sipka@asu.edu wrote: Dear Linguists, I frequently use Google to determine lexical and morphosyntactic well-formedness of two options in various languages. I advise my students to do the same. In order to save time required to go to Google two times for one inquiry, I have created a simple script at: http://cli.la.asu.edu/togoogleornot.htm which lets you enter two options, choose the target language and then get hits for both options in one window. For example, if a student of English enters take the liberty as the first option and take a liberty as the second, it will be possible to determine that the first option is well-formed while the other is not. Thanks, a very convenient little program. I must admit I was surprised when you said that "take a liberty" is not well-formed. My native-speaker intuition tells me that "take a liberty" is just as well-formed as "take the liberty to" [do something]. However, like you said, Google shows the first as 16 times less common than the second. Of course, it's no use entering "take the liberty", because three quarters of the returns are things like "Take the Liberty Bridge Exit". Also, a type of automobile called a Liberty seems to turn up in a high proportion of the hits on both sides. Perhaps the preponderance of "take the liberty to" in web-pages is because it's common in officialese, while "take a liberty" is a rather more literary term. Nothing to do with their relative well-formedness. I conclude that, while Google can be a great help in deciding on the well-formedness of phrases, it shouldn't be used blindly. There are lots of traps for the unwary. John Atkinson |
| Date Posted: | 18-Sep-2004 |
| LL Issue: | 15.2594 |
| Posted: | 18-Sep-2004 |
