{ "paper_id": "Y18-1023", "header": { "generated_with": "S2ORC 1.0.0", "date_generated": "2023-01-19T13:35:38.770048Z" }, "title": "Are They Arguing or Not? A Corpus-based Study", "authors": [ { "first": "Min-Chun", "middle": [], "last": "Hsiao", "suffix": "", "affiliation": { "laboratory": "", "institution": "National Chengchi University No. 64", "location": { "addrLine": "Sec. 2, ZhiNan Road Taipei City 11605", "country": "Taiwan" } }, "email": "" }, { "first": "Siaw-Fong", "middle": [], "last": "Chung", "suffix": "", "affiliation": { "laboratory": "", "institution": "Chengchi University", "location": { "addrLine": "No. 64, Sec. 2, ZhiNan Road Taipei City", "postCode": "11605", "country": "Taiwan" } }, "email": "sfchung@nccu.edu.tw" } ], "year": "", "venue": null, "identifiers": {}, "abstract": "This study reports a corpus-based analysis on the verb ARGUE in written texts. By adopting Frame Semantics, we analyzed 1385 instances from the corpus and investigated (a) the distribution of each semantic frame; (b) the patterns occurred in each semantic frame; and (c) the topics argued over by arguers. The study presents the distribution of frames in written texts and demonstrates the findings in terms of the common or unique patterns in each frame. In addition, some common topics are found among arguers.", "pdf_parse": { "paper_id": "Y18-1023", "_pdf_hash": "", "abstract": [ { "text": "This study reports a corpus-based analysis on the verb ARGUE in written texts. By adopting Frame Semantics, we analyzed 1385 instances from the corpus and investigated (a) the distribution of each semantic frame; (b) the patterns occurred in each semantic frame; and (c) the topics argued over by arguers. The study presents the distribution of frames in written texts and demonstrates the findings in terms of the common or unique patterns in each frame. In addition, some common topics are found among arguers.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Abstract", "sec_num": null } ], "body_text": [ { "text": "ARGUE 1 is a verb containing controversial perspectives. It means to express incompatible opinions emotionally; at the same time, it also means to discuss in a rational way. These two meanings are captured in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD), where ARGUE can be either 'to speak angrily to somebody' as in (1.1), or 'to give reasons to persuade people you are right' (see 1.2). (1.1) We are always arguing with each other about money. (OALD) (1.2) She argued the case for bringing back the death penalty. (OALD) The subject we quarrels with each other angrily in (1.1), while she argues with reasons to persuade others in (1.2).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In addition to these word senses, in academic writing, Hyland (2002:8) suggested that ARGUE \"signal[s] a supportive role for the reported information in the writer's argument, often by attributing a high degree of confidence to the proposition\" as in (1.3). (1.3) Keynesians argue that V tends to vary inversely with M, but also rather unpredictably. (J152036) 2 In (1.3), ARGUE serves as the verb to report the proposition from the arguer, which could be the writer or the subject of ARGUE (i.e., Keynesians) in academic writing. From the above, three word senses of ARGUE (including the writer's unique use of ARGUE) have been demonstrated. In this paper, we are interested to investigate the componential details of ARGUE that give rise to its different uses in written texts. Levin (1993) discussed the syntactic behaviors of ARGUE by categorizing it with other semantically related verbs into a verb class based on the assumption that \"various aspects of the syntactic behaviors of the verbs are tied to their meanings\" (p.5). ARGUE is semantically related to verbs that refer to \"group activities which inherently involve more than one participant\" (p.200), and hence is categorized into 'Verbs of Social Interaction'. Some syntactic behaviors were listed, including (a) when the subject refers to a single person, the sentence usually contain a with-phrase to indicate other participants (see 2.1a), and (b) when the subject is a collective noun phrase, it sometimes does not need a with phrase (see 2.1b). Based on the observation of Levin, we can see that ARGUE in (2.1) present these two syntactic behaviors in the sense of quarreling with others. 3 (2.1) a. Beal is arguing with Helen. (Levin, 1993:202) b. Beal and Helen are arguing. (Levin, 1993:202) In addition to 'Verbs of Social Interaction', ARGUE also belongs to 'Verbs of Communication' which highlight the \"communication and the transfer of ideas\" (p.202). And, among the subcategories of this verb category, ARGUE is classified into 'chitchat verbs' which is featured with not taking sentential complements (see 2.2a). However, unlike chitchatted in (2.2a), ARGUE is compatible with this construction in another word sense of expressing a proposition (see 2.2b). (2.2) a. *Ellen 4 chitchatted that the party was tomorrow. (Levin, 1993:202) b . Ellen argued that the party was terrible. Even though argue and chitchat are both members of 'chitchat verbs', ARGUE is polysemy in nature. In other words, since the word sense of ARGUE in (2.2b), expressing a proposition, is not covered in 'chitchat verbs', ARGUE could take a sentential compliment regardless the syntactic constraint in 'chitchat verbs'. However, this word sense of ARGUE and its syntactic behaviors are absent in Levin (1993) .", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 55, "end": 70, "text": "Hyland (2002:8)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 780, "end": 792, "text": "Levin (1993)", "ref_id": "BIBREF0" }, { "start": 1658, "end": 1659, "text": "3", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 1697, "end": 1714, "text": "(Levin, 1993:202)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 1746, "end": 1763, "text": "(Levin, 1993:202)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 2294, "end": 2313, "text": "(Levin, 1993:202) b", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 2749, "end": 2761, "text": "Levin (1993)", "ref_id": "BIBREF0" } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "A thorough investigation of the syntactic behaviors of ARGUE is still in need. Biber et al. (1999:362) is another resource that categorized ARGUE, along with explain, announce, etc., into 'communication verbs'. Based on the findings (Biber et al., 1999:378) , about 20% of 'communication verbs' are used with inanimate subjects in academic prose. Biber et al. (1999:663) also indicated that ARGUE is a relatively common verb to control a that-clause complement (see 2.2b).", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 79, "end": 102, "text": "Biber et al. (1999:362)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 233, "end": 257, "text": "(Biber et al., 1999:378)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 347, "end": 370, "text": "Biber et al. (1999:663)", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Literature Review", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Although some syntactic behaviors of ARGUE have been indicated by Levin (1993) and Biber et al. (1999) , limited understanding of ARGUE was discovered with respect to the preferred patterns in each word sense. In order to fill this gap, we look into the meaning of each sense by adopting Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 1985) . Fillmore (1985) proposed 'frame' as a schematic and conceptual representation which entails the necessary properties, experiences, and knowledge to understand the semantic structures and meanings of the verb. For example, the meanings of a set of semantically related verbs, including buy, sell, spend, etc. can be understood by knowing what actually takes place in commercial transaction in the COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION 5 frame (Fillmore & Atkins, 1992:78) . Then, with the knowledge of the frame as the basis, some necessary elements at the semantic level are indicated as the 'core Frame Elements' (core FEs); for instance, 'Buyer' 6 is considered the core FE in the COMMERCIAL TRANSACTION frame. Then, based on the recognized FEs at the semantic level, the syntactic realizations (e.g., NP or PP) of the FEs are investigated to \"document the range of semantic and syntactic combinatory possibilities of each word in each of its senses\" (Ruppenhofer et al., 2016:7) . This lexical analysis based on Frame Semantics has been developed in the Berkeley FrameNet project with corpus evidence.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 66, "end": 78, "text": "Levin (1993)", "ref_id": "BIBREF0" }, { "start": 83, "end": 102, "text": "Biber et al. (1999)", "ref_id": "BIBREF3" }, { "start": 304, "end": 320, "text": "(Fillmore, 1985)", "ref_id": "BIBREF2" }, { "start": 323, "end": 338, "text": "Fillmore (1985)", "ref_id": "BIBREF2" }, { "start": 750, "end": 778, "text": "(Fillmore & Atkins, 1992:78)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 1261, "end": 1289, "text": "(Ruppenhofer et al., 2016:7)", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Literature Review", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "According to FrameNet, ARGUE evokes three frames including REASONING, EVIDENCE, and QUARRELING. Each frame contains its description and FEs as demonstrated in Table 1 Based on the description, REASONING and EVIDENCE cover the word senses of 'to give reasons to persuade people you are right' and 'to report the proposition from the arguer', respectively, while EVIDENCE specifically requires an inanimate 'Support' which expresses the 'Proposition' (e.g., the paper in 2.3).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 159, "end": 166, "text": "Table 1", "ref_id": null } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Literature Review", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "( 23) The paper argues that these various mechanisms now need to be harmonized. (HBM1960) Then, as for QUARRELING, it covers the word sense 'to speak angrily to somebody'.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Literature Review", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "From previous studies, we saw that pieces of information were found for the use of ARGUE, still, limited understanding of this verb was discovered. When ARGUE is seen as part of a big group, its characteristics are not showing. By using Frame Semantics, we hope to see how each sense and each frame is presented in written texts. We also intend to see when the arguers involve in real arguing, what issues (Core FE) are debated over. We formulate our research questions as follows:", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Literature Review", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "(a) How is the distribution of each frame of ARGUE? (b) What preferred patterns does ARGUE have in each frame? (c) What issues do arguers argue about?", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Literature Review", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "This section illustrates (a) the corpus; (b) the method for extracting data; and (c) data analysis in the study.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Methodology", "sec_num": "3" }, { "text": "We used the British National Corpus (BNC) as the source to retrieve the written data. We use BNCweb as the platform to retrieve the BNC data. For the written corpus in the BNC, it includes extracts from newspaper, journals, academic books, popular fictions, unpublished letters, and other kinds of texts.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Corpus", "sec_num": "3.1" }, { "text": "In this study, we used '{argue}_V*' as the query term to cover all the verb forms of ARGUE in written texts. The result of the search returned 13,992 hits in 1,922 different texts with the frequency of 159.17 instances per million words.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Method for Extracting Data", "sec_num": "3.2" }, { "text": "Then, we used the 'thin' function to downsize the number of hits into 10% of all, which returned 1,399 hits, by random selection. After data extraction, we manually filtered out any repeated concordance lines, resulting in 1,385 hits to be included for analysis.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Method for Extracting Data", "sec_num": "3.2" }, { "text": "Each frame of ARGUE requires its own core FEs at the semantic level, and each concordance line was manually annotated. Annotation of frame elements: We manually tagged each concordance line in accordance with the descriptions in the frames evoked by ARGUE (see Table 1 ). For REASONING and EVIDENCE, both frames present a 'Content' or 'Proposition', but are distinct in terms of whether the subject is animate (REASONING) or inanimate (EVIDENCE). On the other hand, QUARRELING denotes a quarrel among people with incompatible opinions. Then, we mapped the core FEs required by each frame onto the correspondent sentence constituents. Sentence (3.1) exemplifies the annotation of core FEs in the QUARRELING frame. Although detailed phrase types are proposed in FrameNet, in this study, we only used the general term to annotate 'noun phrase' (NP), 'prepositional phrase' (PP), and several clause types (see 3.2).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 261, "end": 268, "text": "Table 1", "ref_id": null } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Data Analysis", "sec_num": "3.3" }, { "text": "[ISSUE:PP about this] for years. (AC1987) Then, within the clause types, we further annotated the finite clauses -'that clause' (that-C) in (3.3a), 'wh-clause' (wh-C) in (3.3b), and whether/ifclause (whether/if-C) in ( ", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "(3.2) [ARGUERS:NP Gardeners] have been arguing", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Although core FEs are required at the semantic level by their frames, in some circumstances, they may be absent at the surface level. In other words, they are not presented in the sentence, but exist at the semantic level. For example, (3.4) in the QUARRELING frame requires 'Arguers' and 'Issue' as its core FEs, but no constituent corresponds to 'Issue'. Therefore, 'Issue' is absent at the syntactic level in (3.4). (3.4) Yesterday, [ (Ruppenhofer et al., 2016, p.28) for the absence of FEs. In our purpose to investigate the preferred patterns of ARGUE, these annotations were too detailed. Therefore, we integrated them together with a new label of 'ABS' (as the abbreviation of 'Absence') to represent the absent core FEs.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 436, "end": 437, "text": "[", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 438, "end": 470, "text": "(Ruppenhofer et al., 2016, p.28)", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "(3.2) [ARGUERS:NP Gardeners] have been arguing", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "As for CNI, it specifies the absence of the core FEs due to the requirement of grammatical construction. Passive construction is a typical construction which gives rise to CNI as in (3.5). (3.5) It can be argued [CONTENT:THAT-C that biological differences become biological inequalities when people define them as such].", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "(3.2) [ARGUERS:NP Gardeners] have been arguing", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "[ARGUER CNI] (FB6799) In (3.5), we can see that the 'Content' is presented in a that-clause, but no sentence constituents fulfill the description of another mandatory FE, 'Arguer'. We attributed this situation to passive construction which renders that the 'Arguer' is absent in the sentence. Since the absence of the core FE, 'Arguer', results from the grammatical construction of passive construction, we annotated the syntactic realization of 'Arguer' as CNI.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "(3.2) [ARGUERS:NP Gardeners] have been arguing", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "With the annotation of the core FEs at the semantic level and their syntactic realizations at the syntactic level, we conducted the analysis on the 1,385 concordance lines. Table 2 : Distribution of Frames in ARGUE Apparently, REASONING accounts for 84.3% which shows that most uses of ARGUE in written texts present a 'Content' to persuade others. Then, QUARRELING accounts for 9.7% to express the quarreling among a group of 'Arguers'. At last, EVIDENCE takes 6.0% use which calls for the 'Support' to present the 'Proposition'.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 173, "end": 180, "text": "Table 2", "ref_id": "TABREF3" } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "(3.2) [ARGUERS:NP Gardeners] have been arguing", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In this section, we present the syntactic realizations of core FEs and the preferred patterns in each frame.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Syntactic Realizations and Patterns", "sec_num": "4.2" }, { "text": "Syntactic Realizations of REASONING: Table 3 demonstrates the syntactic realizations of 'Arguer' and 'Content' in the REASONING frame. It shows that most 'Arguer' are realized by NP (78.1%), while 21.1% are absent (i.e., CNI) and 0.8% in by phrases. Almost 20% of 'Arguer' are presented in non-referential-it which makes the subject hidden but at the same time it expresses the 'Content' (see 4.1b). Then, as for 'Content', it is mostly realized by that-C (87.2%), and we found 17 instances without 'Content' (ABS) in sentences. It demonstrates the emphasis on the event of making arguments by 'Arguer' rather than 'Content'. shows its stance towards the proposition (see 4.2b). The 'Proposition' as an NP can be seen in (4.2c). From the total 83 instances, all of them contain 'Support', indicating the topic being discussed is often needed when ARGUE is used. It is very unlikely that one argues without pointing out what is being argued.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 37, "end": 44, "text": "Table 3", "ref_id": "TABREF5" } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Syntactic Realizations and Patterns", "sec_num": "4.2" }, { "text": "No. Table 7 demonstrates the syntactic realizations of 'Arguer1', 'Arguer2', 'Arguers', and 'Issue' in the QUARRELING frame. Most 'Arguer1' are presented by NP (83.8%), while 16.2% of them are not presented. As for 'Arguer2', over half of them are not presented (i.e., ABS), and 48.8% are realized by PP, mostly in with phrase. The with phrase refers to the one(s) holding different opinions contrary to 'Arguer1'. In other words, almost half of the sentences indicate different opinions between 'Arguer1' and 'Arguer2'. Then, with respect to 'Arguers', mostly, they are realized by NP (88.9%) which stands for arguers quarreling within a group of a shared discipline (e.g., psychologists .3d) . By the demonstration of patterns in QUARRELING, most 'Issue's (66 out of 80) remain absent with 'Arguer1' and 'Arguer2'; however, more than half (20 out of 37) are present with 'Arguers' (plural). We may suggest that 'Issue' exhibits the tendency to present and co-occur with 'Arguers'. This shows that when two parties disagree or argue, the issue needs not be present in same sentence. However, when a group of people serve as the arguers, the issue becomes almost crucial. ", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 4, "end": 12, "text": "Table 7", "ref_id": "TABREF11" }, { "start": 690, "end": 694, "text": ".3d)", "ref_id": null } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Support Proposition", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "To reveal the topic of 'Issue', which is argued over in the QUARRELING frame, we investigated the presented 'Issue' at the sentence level with the result displayed in Table 9 . It shows that, among the 50 lines from the total 134 'Issues' that are non-ABS, the topics are diverse. The top four most commonly seen topics are money (see 4.4), law (see 4.5), academy (see 4.6), and politics (see 4.7).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 167, "end": 174, "text": "Table 9", "ref_id": "TABREF15" } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Topic of Issue", "sec_num": "4.3" }, { "text": "Issue ( (BMA525) From the sentences, we found that we were misguided in believing that the QUARRELLING frame only works for literal verbal quarrelling. Many of the arguers are not verbal 'Arguers' and many of the 'Issues' are not necessarily issues that may cause any two ordinary people to argue. The 'Issues' could be rather formal which might be due to the genre of the written text. Yet, it is also not possible to find many uses of ARGUE in spoken text because it could be a speech act (that someone argues without mentioning the word ARGUE) rather than a description of the act. In general, the QUARRELLING frame returns examples that contain more metaphorical meaning of ARGUE than its literal one.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Topic of Issue", "sec_num": "4.3" }, { "text": "Based on the results, it shows that most occurrences of ARGUE in written texts are used in the REASONING frame to present the 'Content' with that-clause. Although most 'Content's are present in that-clause, 20% were absent (see 5.1) to highlights the action of making arguments instead of expressing a 'Content' to persuade others. This finding indicates that the matter being argued may not be important in all situations; rather the ability of doing so is more crucial (cf. the ability of children to argue in 5.1).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Discussion and Conclusion", "sec_num": "5" }, { "text": "In addition, almost 20% of 'Arguer's are substituted with non-referential-it (see 5.2). The substitution allows the 'Content' to be expressed without mentioning a definite 'Arguer'. It provides the writer a hedge to report propositions from criticism. While this ostensibly contradicts previous research (Hyland, 2002:8 ) that ARGUE attributes a high degree of confidence to the proposition (since seeking a hedge for a widely accepted proposition may be redundant), the cooccurrence of non-referential-it and ARGUE is accountable. By not specifying the arguer, nonreferential-it implies that the content should be well-recognized. In other words, since the user considers or assumes the content to be wellaccepted, there is no need to specify the exact arguer but use non-referential-it. Furthermore, even if the content is attacked, the writer remains intact with the hedge. The use of non-referential-it means to indicate the prevailing acceptance to the content, while at the same time offers a hedge from criticisms. ", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 304, "end": 319, "text": "(Hyland, 2002:8", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Discussion and Conclusion", "sec_num": "5" }, { "text": "In the EVIDENCE frame, the 'Support's are all realized in NPs (e.g., the report, the results) which serve to strengthen the credibility of the 'Propositions' (cf., the theory in (5.3)). However, obviously, the frequency of the EVIDENCE frame is the least among the three frames. The reason for this is unknown although it might be possible that the verb ARGUE is less suitable in a metonymic way in (5.3) to show how the report or theory argues. More often, writers prefer the report presents/shows/demonstrates to argue, unless there is a pre-supposed opposition that the writers would like to argue against. This may cause the lower frequency of the EVIDENCE frame as compared with the ARGUE in the REASONING or the QUARRELLING frame. (HRM585) In the QUARRELING frame, the arguers are present in two ways. On the one hand, the arguers are mostly realized in [Arguer1 (NP) + Arguer2 (PP [with])] to specify two groups of people with incompatible opinions (see 5.4). On the other hand, the arguers are also realized by a group of people quarrelling within the group (e.g., the judges argue over the case means that the judges disagree among themselves, not with others). Sentence 5.5 is another example. Although the two realizations of arguers may be considered as two different linguistic expressions, we found they possibly relate to the presence of 'Issue'. Among all the 'Issue's in the frame, while 82.5% 'Issue's are absent with ['Arguer1'+'Arguer2'], fewer 'Issue's (54.1%) are missing with 'Arguers'. In other words, 'Issue' prefers to co-occur with 'Arguers' rather than ['Arguer1'+'Arguer2'] .", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 1581, "end": 1602, "text": "['Arguer1'+'Arguer2']", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Discussion and Conclusion", "sec_num": "5" }, { "text": "This could be interpreted by the different emphases of the patterns.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Discussion and Conclusion", "sec_num": "5" }, { "text": "Arguers are expressed in ['Arguer1'+'Arguer2'] to accentuate the event of quarreling by specifically indicating two groups of people with controversial opinions. By contrast, arguers are realized in 'Arguers' to emphasize the 'Issue' which is argued over in the shared discipline. The disparate emphases in the patterns are possibly the reasons that give rise to the difference of 'Issue' between patterns. ", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Discussion and Conclusion", "sec_num": "5" }, { "text": "At last, various topics of 'Issue' are found in the QUARRELING frame. Unexpectedly, most of them are rather formal (e.g., law and academy) possibly due to the genre of written texts. We found that the use of ARGUE is not necessarily limited in literal verbal quarreling with unpleasant emotion but, to some extent, discussion in a rational way in the particular domain could also be found. Since the topics in certain discipline (e.g., policy questions in 5.6) mostly require specific knowledge to argue over, not any ordinary people are capable of arguing about them. As a result, more metaphorical uses of ARGUE are found than literal ones in the present study. (5.6) Lenin had to argue policy questions with them publicly. (BMA525) To summarize, the present study reports the corpus analysis of ARGUE in written texts with several findings. Firstly, we found that most uses of ARGUE aim to present a 'Content' in written texts; however, some of them are absent for the emphasis on the action of ARGUE itself. Secondly, inanimate entities serving as the 'Support' claims the 'Proposition' even though the number is limited. The restricted co-occurrence of ARGUE with 'Support' is possibly due to the collocation issue; that is, writers prefer other verbs (e.g., present, demonstrate) to co-occur with 'Support's. In terms of 'Issue', in general, they are mostly absent in the QUARRELING frame. However, with a closer look, our results indicate their preference to co-occur with a group of 'Arguers' in a certain domain. When the arguers are in plural forms, two possible readings are provided. At last, several formal topics were found in written texts. Arguers are not necessarily to argue emotionally but, to some extent, with rational arguments. This study offers a detailed investigation on ARGUE in terms of its meaning distribution, preferred pattern in each meaning, and the topics people argue about. It may contribute to academic writers, TESOL-related studies and studies on lexical semantics.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Discussion and Conclusion", "sec_num": "5" }, { "text": "In this study, ARGUE is in capitals as a lemma including the word forms of argue, argues, argued, and arguing.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "In actual communication, not all the elements are always present. For instance, one might say 'I am tired of arguing' and the with-phrase can be omitted sometimes without affecting the meaning of the verb. We thank the reviewer for bringing this up. However, in this paper, we discussed the possible elements of a verb.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The asterisk indicates that the construction of the sentence is not found in natural language.5 Note that the name of frames is presented in lower capitals in the study.6 In this study, the FEs are presented in first-letter capital.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation Hong Kong, 1-3 December 2018Copyright 2018 by the authors", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation Hong Kong, 1-3 December 2018Copyright 2018 by the authors", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation Hong Kong, 1-3 December 2018Copyright 2018 by the authors", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "", "sec_num": null } ], "back_matter": [ { "text": "Research reported in this paper was supported by the research project: The Semantic Representation of Negative Terms: A Corpus-based Lexicosemantic Research, Ministry of Science and Technology (Project Number: 106-2410-H-004-109-MY2).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Acknowledgements", "sec_num": null } ], "bib_entries": { "BIBREF0": { "ref_id": "b0", "title": "English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation", "authors": [ { "first": "Beth", "middle": [], "last": "Levin", "suffix": "" } ], "year": 1993, "venue": "", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Beth Levin. 1993. 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PACLIC 32 204", "links": null }, "BIBREF6": { "ref_id": "b6", "title": "32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation Hong Kong", "authors": [], "year": 2018, "venue": "", "volume": "", "issue": "", "pages": "", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "32nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation Hong Kong, 1-3 December 2018 Copyright 2018 by the authors", "links": null } }, "ref_entries": { "FIGREF0": { "text": "(3.1) [ARGUERS Gardeners] have been arguing [ISSUE about this] for years.(AC1987) Annotation of syntactic realizations: On the selected constituents of core FEs, we also labeled their syntactic features to demonstrate how the core FEs are realized at the syntactic level, particularly the phrase types.", "num": null, "type_str": "figure", "uris": null }, "FIGREF1": { "text": "(5.1) It is argued that [ARGUER children] are quite aware of the elements of discourse, are able to argue, and to rearrange the sequence of their stories. [CONTENT ABS] (J8728) (5.2)It can be argued [CONTENT:THAT-C that biological differences become biological inequalities when people define them as such]. [ARGUER CNI]", "num": null, "type_str": "figure", "uris": null }, "FIGREF2": { "text": "(5.3) [SUPPORT:NP Freud 's psychoanalytic theory] argued [PROPOSITION:THAT-C that people are innately possessive].", "num": null, "type_str": "figure", "uris": null }, "FIGREF3": { "text": "(5.4) '[ARGUER1:NP I] will not argue [ARGUER2: PP with you], Khan.' [ISSUE: ABS] (G17314) (5.5) [ARGUERS:NP Gardeners] have been arguing [ISSUE:PP about this] for years.", "num": null, "type_str": "figure", "uris": null }, "TABREF3": { "text": "presents the distribution of frames of the 1,385 concordance lines.", "html": null, "content": "
FrameNumberPercentage
REASONING116884.3%
EVIDENCE836.0%
QUARRELING1349.7%
Total1385100.0%
", "type_str": "table", "num": null }, "TABREF5": { "text": "Syntactic Realizations of Core FEs inTable 4demonstrates the pattern, the combination of the syntactic realizations of core FEs, in the REASONING frame.", "html": null, "content": "
It shows that [Arguer (NP) + Content (that-C)]
accounts for 67.3% as the most commonly seen
pattern in the frame (see 4.1a). Then, [Arguer (CNI)
+ Content (that-C)] takes 19.3% as the second one
in which 'Arguer' is missing as in (4.1b). The
pattern of [Arguer (NP) + Content (PP [for])]
accounts for 4.2% as the third preferred pattern
which shows the arguer's stance to the content (see
4.1c). At last, interestingly, both 'Arguer' and
'Content' are found missing in [Arguer (CNI) +
Content (ABS)] due to the imperative construction
(see 4.1d). In certain grammatical construction,
ARGUE belongs to the REASONING frame even
though both Core FEs are absent.
Arguer ContentNumber(%)
that-C78667.3%
PP [for]494.2%
NPNP PP [against]33 192.8% 1.6%
ABS141.2%
Others110.9%
that-C22519.3%
NP100.9%
CNIPP [for] PP [against]3 30.3% 0.3%
ABS30.3%
If-C30.3%
that-C60.5%
PP [by]NP20.2%
PP [for]10.1%
Total1168100.0%
", "type_str": "table", "num": null }, "TABREF6": { "text": "Table 5presents the syntactic realizations of 'Support' and 'Proposition' in the EVIDENCE frame. It shows that all of the 'Support's are realized by NP. Then, as for 'Proposition', 78.3% lines are realized by that-C, 20.5% by PP, and only 1.2% by NP.", "html": null, "content": "
: Patterns in REASONING
(4.1) a. [ARGUER:NP He] argues [CONTENT:THAT-C
that societies change by a process of
structural differentiation].(F9S1037)
b. It can be argued [CONTENT:THAT-C that
biological differences become biological
inequalities when people define them as
such]. [ARGUER CNI](FB6799)
c. [ARGUER:NPMrBarabash]argues
[CONTENT:PP for a hefty transfer].(CRC2618)
d. Do not argue with outrageous statements.
[ARGUER CNI] [CONTENT ABS](HKT57)
", "type_str": "table", "num": null }, "TABREF7": { "text": "Syntactic Realizations of Core FEs in", "html": null, "content": "
patterns,
", "type_str": "table", "num": null }, "TABREF9": { "text": "", "html": null, "content": "
: Patterns in EVIDENCE
(4.2) a. [SUPPORT:NP Freud's psychoanalytic theory]
argued [PROPOSITION:THAT-C that people are
innately possessive]. (HRM585)
b. [SUPPORT:NPThereport]argued
[PROPOSITION:PP against the imposition of
bans on imports from countries with low
environmental standards].(HLG2530)
c. [SUPPORT:NP Standing rules] determine
entitlement to raise and argue
[PROPOSITION:NP the issue of illegality].
(EBM646)
", "type_str": "table", "num": null }, "TABREF11": { "text": "Syntactic Realizations of Core FEs in ] occupies 15.7% in which 'Arguer2' and 'Issue' are understood in contexts (see 4.3b). As for the plural 'Arguers', [Arguers (NP) + Issue (PP [about)] accounts for 13.4% (see 4.3c) in which 'Issue' is present, while 'Issue' can be absent in [Arguers (NP) + Issue (ABS)] (see 4", "html": null, "content": "
QUARRELING
Patterns in QUARRELING: In Table 8,
[Arguer1(NP) + Arguer2 (PP[with]) + Issue (ABS)]
accounts for the most use (24.6%) in which both
'Argue1' and 'Arguer2' are presented (see 4.3a).
Then, [Arguer1 (NP) + Arguer2 (ABS) + Issue
", "type_str": "table", "num": null }, "TABREF13": { "text": "", "html": null, "content": "
: Patterns in QUARRELING
(4.3)a. [ARGUER1:NP I] am not going to argue
[ARGUER2:PP with you]. [ISSUE: ABS] (B3J1890)
b. [ARGUER1:NP You] can argue until you are
blue in the face, my girl.
[ARGUER2: ABS] [ISSUE: ABS](FPK1514)
", "type_str": "table", "num": null }, "TABREF15": { "text": "", "html": null, "content": "
: Distribution of the Content of Issue
(4.4) Those who argue about this (about how much
should be spent on Arts faculties in
universities, for example) tend to debate
whether it does or does not help the economy.
(CS2495)
(4.5) Much of the Act was fiercely argued over
because of the very real conflicts of opinion
that exist in these areas.(FS61045)
(4.6) Psychologists argue whether problem solving
is the same as or just part of thinking or
learning.(B7D38)
(4.7) Lenin had to argue policy questions with them
publicly.
", "type_str": "table", "num": null } } } }