Graduate Student Association of Applied
Linguistics
GSAAL 2021
April 10, 2021
A corpus-based study of [because X] in
Construction Grammar
Wellington Mendes Junior
Elisa Mattos
This presentation:
◦ Overview
◦ Construction Grammar
◦ [Because X]
◦ Data and Methodology
◦ Results and Discussion
◦ Next Steps
Mendes Junior & Mattos (2021)
http://www.seer.ufu.br/index.php/dominiosdelinguagem/article/view/58719
3
Overview
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Overview
Traditionally, because is used in two different syntactic
environments:
◦ He did this because he was bored.
◦ I can’t go out because of the rain.
However...
◦ I love graduation parties because food.
◦ Is it Sunday, guys? Because wow.
◦ If you like me, tell me. Because seriously.
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Construction Grammar
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Construction Grammar
◦ A family of theories within the field of Cognitive Linguistics which
posits that constructions, i.e. pairings of linguistic forms with
meanings, are the fundamental building blocks of human language;
◦ View of linguistic units as patterns;
◦ Non-modularity;
◦ Study of idiosyncrasies.
(Bybee, 2016)
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Types of Constructions
1. Encoding vs Decoding Constructions
(answer the door, wide awake)
(kick the bucket, pull a fast one)
2. Grammatical vs Extragrammatical Constructions
(spill the beans, blow one’s nose)
(by and large, first off)
3. Substantive vs Formal Constructions
(let alone, all of a sudden)
(the bigger they come, the harder they fall)
(Fillmore et al., 1998)
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[Because X]
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History
[Because X] is not entirely new:
◦ “it would be unwise, because unnecessary” [1820]
◦ “for white soldiers discharged from the army because mentally
incompetent” [1923]
◦ “Professor Einstein holds that perception is generally false because
relative” [1929]
◦ “no track because infinity-track” [1940]
COHA (Davies, 2020)
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Current usage
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12
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(Carey, 2013)
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Data and Methodology
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EnTenTen Corpus
◦ Corpus of the English Web --- web crawled;
◦ 21.9 billion words;
◦ Unwanted content removed: repeated content, snippets, incomplete
sentences, on-page advertisements via Justext (Pomikálek, 2011);
◦ Texts downloaded between 2016 and 2018 (80% in 2018).
(Suchomel & Pomikálek, 2012)
(Jakubíček; Kilgarriff; Kovář; Rychlý; Suchomel, 2013)
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Retrieval and Treatment
◦ Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff, 2014);
◦ Corpus Query Language (CQL): more complex lexico-grammatical patterns;
◦ [word = "because"] [tag = "N.*"] [tag = "SENT"]
◦ Manual cleaning for errors, interferences etc. = 5,011 tokens
◦ it?s frustrating because there? s only one answer: Just make art.
◦ Which is fine, because OFF! is still better than every band currently
rehashing the same scene.
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Results and Discussion
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Results
Because X N %
because + noun 1,305 69.2
because + adjective 287 15.2
because + adverb 112 5.9
because + verb 34 1.8
because + interjection 149 7.9
Total 1,887 100
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Distribution
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Frequent patterns
Noun N %
reasons 70 28.5
death 69 28.1
god 49 20.0
survival 39 15.9
people 18 7.3
Total 245 100
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[because + noun]
Ironic and non-ironic:
◦ I was planning to see both Interstellar and Mockingjay this weekend. I saw
neither because laziness.
◦ I will be taking off Thanksgiving & Christmas, because Holidays!
◦ Today we'll be doing a club playthrough of "My Girlfriend is an Alpaca"
because reasons.
◦ They extended the school day, without compensation to the teachers, because
charters!
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Variability
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[because + adjective]
Prone to informality:
◦ ...the game crashed. And, quite frankly, I was relieved it did, because gross!
◦ Dean’s out the damn door before Ric pays for the ink because awkward.
◦ She found a witch in chapter one and I’m planning on having her become a
witch one day because cute!
◦ ...thus confirming the idea which states that translation is a marginal art,
because invisible.
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Variability
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[because + adverb]
Adverb or interjection?
◦ Serve warm with more cinnamon sugar and maple syrup. Bacon too...
because always.
◦ This caused the fatality price to drop considerably because well. The process
of a civil lawsuit can take up to several years to resolve.
◦ What's not to like? (editor's note: I put this in big quotes because obviously)
◦ As for the villain reveal – let's talk after you see the movie, because
seriously?
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Distribution
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[because + verb]
Ellipsis and interjection?
◦ Excellent condition, low mileage. Only selling because relocating. No
accidents. The car is in mint condition.
◦ Carl wants to know what she's doing out here and she runs off because
flirting? If you're caught up on the comics you might see where this is going..
◦ ...it's making him sputter and he's hungry and yet I can't seem to feed him
correctly, I almost fall apart because see? Suck, sucky, suck. Something really
awful is going to happen to one of my kids.
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[because + interjection]
◦ While not strictly fan fiction, I felt it deserved a mention, because wow! Isn't
that a great poem?? I love it! Well done, Latrone!
◦ A human can combine foreskin and grapes to create fun and whimsy. Unless it
involves turning those grapes into raisins, because ew.
◦ I recommend pairing your pasta with some cheesy garlic bread, because yum.
◦ Back down there, Tails FIRES THE MAIN CANNON on the steel wall (of
doom, probably, because damn!) and manages to break it.
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Constructional Properties of [because X]
[Because X] as an encoding construction
◦ “I have a friend like that, who can eat anything and not gain any weight, but
still has to exercise because cholesterol”
[Because X] as an extragrammatical construction
◦ “The Land that Time Forgot was one of my favorite movies when I was a
kid... because DINOSAURS!”
[Because X] as a formal construction
◦ “I recommend pairing your pasta with some cheesy garlic bread, because
YUM!”
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Conclusion
◦ Due to specific form/function characteristics, [because X] differs from
traditional constructions such as [because + clause] or [Because +
prepositional phrase];
◦ Following Fillmore et al. (1988), [because X] can be understood as an
encoding, formal, extra-grammatical construction;
◦ The [X] slot mainly favors the production of nouns, adjectives and
interjections;
◦ [Because X] is mainly used in informal contexts, favoring brevity.
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Next Steps
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Brazilian Portuguese
◦ [Porque X] beyond “porque sim” and “porque não;
◦ Different uses of because in BP: “por que” [why] and “porque”
[because];
◦ Ellipsis: “Porque pode” = “Porque [ela/e] pode;
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References
BYBEE, J. Língua, uso e cognição. São Paulo: Editora Cortez, 2016.
CAREY, S. ‘Because’ has become a preposition, because grammar. Sentence First. 2013. [blogue] Available at:
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/because-has-become-a-preposition-because-grammar/ . Access: 05 jun. 2018.
DAVIES, M. Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). 2020. Available at: https://corpus.byu.edu/coha/. Access: 05 jun. 2018.
FILLMORE, C. J.; KAY, P.; O'CONNOR, M. C. Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone.
Language, p. 501-538, 1988.
JAKUBÍČEK, M., KILGARRIFF, A., KOVÁŘ, V., RYCHLÝ, P., & SUCHOMEL, V. The TenTen corpus family. In 7th International
Corpus Linguistics Conference, p. 125-127, 2013.
KILGARRIFF, A. et al. The Sketch Engine: ten years on. Lexicography, v. 1, p. 7-36, 2014.
MENDES JR, W.; MATTOS, E. [Because X] sob a perspectiva da Gramática de Construções: uma análise baseada em corpus. Domínios
de Linguagem. Ahead of print. 2021. Available at: http://www.seer.ufu.br/index.php/dominiosdelinguagem/article/view/58719
POMIKÁLEK, J. Removing boilerplate and duplicate content from web corpora. PhD thesis, Masaryk university, Faculty of
informatics, Brno, Czech republic. 2011.
SUCHOMEL, V., POMIKÁLEK, J. Efficient web crawling for large text corpora. In Proceedings of the seventh Web as Corpus
Workshop (WAC7), p. 39-43, 2012.
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Thank you!
Wellington Araujo Mendes Junior
Federal Center for Technological Education (CEFET-MG)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1459-4183
http://lattes.cnpq.br/5379564954532489
Elisa Mattos
Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4787-1837
http://lattes.cnpq.br/5108972381990293
