LONG CLUSTERS WITH THE NEGATIONS I’M NOT AND I CAN’T

In this section we explore how far the usage of *I’m not* and *I can’t*

differs in the two corpora.

Table 8: Occurrence distribution of I can’t and I’m not amongst I use in SCO, MAC

and BNC/C

Table 8 above shows the proportional frequencies of the 2w clusters I

can’t and I’m not are similar both in relation to each other and in the

three corpora. Figure 1 (next page) shows the highest occurring clusters,

with SCO as the point of comparison. Deeper analysis shows, however,

that only one 3w cluster incorporating the 2w cluster I’m not is employed

with about the same proportional frequency: I’m not gonna.

By contrast, the 3w cluster no I’m not (a very finite statement) is the only

one of the clusters incorporating the 2w I’m not that is used markedly

more often in MAC than SCO. Table 9 gives the respective proportional

88 _{The number is similar in BNC/C, where I - I - I – I occurs 136 times.}

item

SCO

tot.

SCO %

MAC tot.

MAC %

Log- Likelihood BNC/C tot. BNC/C %

I CAN’T

51

1.6

902

2.4

3.23

2899

1.7

I’M NOT 78

2.4

867

2.2

3.13

2756

1.6

135

figures as 6.2% in MAC (8.2% in BNC/C) compared to 3.8% in SCO.

Further I'm not clusters found in MAC but rarely in SCO are well I’m not

(45 occ.) and I’m not going (44 occ.), where the former is not recorded in

SCO and the latter appears only twice in SCO.

136

Table 9: Comparison of I’M NOT clusters (% in relation to I’M NOT) in SCO, MAC

and BNC./C. (Percentages as of I’m not occ.).

137

Conversely, the hedge I’m not sure is noticeably more widely employed

in SCO (9.0%) than in MAC (5.7%). However, I’m not sure is nearly as

frequent in BNC/C (8.3%) as in SCO. This is one of the rare occasions

where MAC is the outlier

89

_{. As the statistical test shows, the difference is}

of no significance.

More striking is the occurrence of the cluster I’m notkidding, which

appears proportionally 25 times more often in SCO than in MAC (over 12

times more frequently than in BNC/C). I’m not kidding appears to be

likely to be a SCO-specific phrase. To a lesser degree, this is also true for

and I'm not. Because of the low numbers, no statically secure conclusions

can be made, yet were we to project the proportional occurrences on to

larger corpora, the difference would be significant

90

_{. This indicates how a}

particular form of negation with I may have a different field of semantic

association for SCO speakers when compared to MAC speakers.

Turning now to *I can’t*, we can find beyond the similarities that the

main difference across the corpora is the unequal distribution of verbs

following this cluster. This is shown in Table 10. As far as the low

numbers allow a judgement here, it has to be the following:

89 _{This is also underlined by the fact that the long cluster BUT I’M NOT SURE is recorded only once} in MAC, but twice in the smaller SCO

90 _{Were we to double the corpora and therefore the occurrence numbers, the LL figure for And I'm not} would be 10.18 (above the 99.0% significance level) and for I'm not kidding it would be 16.73 (99.99%).

138

Table 10: SCO highest-occurring terms to the right of I CAN’T (percentages per I

CAN’T occurrences) and MAC / BNC/C equivalents.

139

I can’t, in MAC, has a strong preference to be followed on the right (R.) by

these verbs: see; remember; understand; as well as a repetition of I. All

other verbs are clearly occurring with a lower frequency after I can’t. See,

remember and understand are all verbs that describe internal states or

forms of perception.

By contrast, the verb cluster of perception I can’t imagine is used with

similar frequency to many other clusters (i.e. I can’t see) in SCO, yet the

use of I can’t imagine is rather low in use in both MAC and BNC/C.

The clusters I can’t do and I can’t get are relatively frequent in their

use in SCO but marginal in their use in MAC, do and get are verbs that

may reflect external states. (In BNC/C, however, the proportional figures

are close to SCO).

This seems to highlight – as far as the low figures for both corpora

allow – that the semantic associations of I can’t are usually bound to

verbs of perception in MAC, while SCO users employ I can’t equally with

verbs of internal and external states. Where all three corpora are

compared, the phrase I can’t imagine stands out as being in relatively

strong use in SCO and marginal in use in MAC and BNC/C. One may

draw the conclusion that I can’t imagine is being used by SCO speakers

instead of the phrase I can’t understand, especially as the latter is not

recorded at all in SCO.

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In document Evidence of lexical priming in spoken Liverpool English (Page 134-140)