研究习作: How is "old man" used in corpora?

two patterns:
1.number-year-old, and i think this "old" is a linguistic marker, hasn't exact meaning.
2.adj means "not young"

[本贴已被 作者 于 2005年07月29日 15时24分38秒 编辑过]​
 
This may be a pattern in written English.

In conversaion, old man simply means a man who is not young, and it is frequently used to refer to one's father (my old man, me old man etc). In the demographically sampled component of the BNC, not a single instance of xx-old man is found.

This lends further credibility to the claim by H. Tao that register/genre should be taken into account when we study grammar - and patterns.
 
回复：研究习作: How is "old man" used in corpora?

以下是引用 patricx 在 2005-7-29 15:24:16 的发言：
two patterns:
1.number-year-old, and i think this "old" is a linguistic marker, hasn't exact meaning.
2.adj means "not young"
Click to expand...

Again, what about the semantics of this expression?
 
回复：研究习作: How is "old man" used in corpora?

以下是引用 xiaoz 在 2005-7-29 21:07:20 的发言：
This may be a pattern in written English.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I have never thought about this.

以下是引用 xiaoz 在 2005-7-29 21:07:20 的发言：
In conversaion, old man simply means a man who is not young, and it is frequently used to refer to one's father (my old man, me old man etc).
Click to expand...
Can we then say that there is a bit of informality implied in these expressions?
 
回复：研究习作: How is "old man" used in corpora?

For sure.

以下是引用 xiaoz 在 2005-7-29 21:07:20 的发言：
In conversaion, old man simply means a man who is not young, and it is frequently used to refer to one's father (my old man, me old man etc).
Click to expand...
Can we then say that there is a bit of informality implied in these expressions?
[/quote]
 
Further evidences from spoken corpora
There is not a single instance of “old man” in SEC (Spoken English Corpus).
There is not a single instance of “old man” in LLC (London Lund Corpus).
There are 12 instances of “old man” in COLT.
There are 2 instances of “old man” in MICASE.

Old man in COLT
1. ... bats and everything, the old woman, the [[old man]]? [It's so] <u who=2-2 id=56> [Yeah.] ...
2. ... a kiss then <laughing>he's like some [[old man]]</> <u who=4-2 id=231> <nv>laugh</nv> ...
3. ... ped for seven years listening to this [[old man]] <u who=4-many id=306> <nv>laugh</nv> ...
4. ... o=8-3 id=188> Have not. You're like the [[old man]] you are go somewhere stay five minute ...
5. ... have any, remember that, remember that [[old man]] running for the bus, blew in the road ...
6. ... ack paddy wack, give a dog a bone, my [[old man]] went tumbling home</> <u who=17-2 id=1 ...
7. ... k paddy wack] give the dog a bone, my [[old man]] went tumbling home</> <nv>whistling</nv ...
8. ... paddy wack give a dog a bone ...(3) my [[old man]] went tumbling home</> <nv>whistling</ ...
9. ... rty eight. <u who=17-1 id=180> Uh, uh, [[old man]]! Innit? <nv>giggle</nv>. <u who=17-man ...
10. ... nk he's an old Army General, <mimicking [[old man]]>line up and get in a single line</> ...
11. ... My mum once saw this old woman and this [[old man]] was walking down the road with some e ...
12. ... t to do that, I want to be, a wealthy [[old man]]. <u who=33-1 id=411> <nv>clears throat ...

Old man in MICASE
1 matter. Sulla was a relatively old man when he achieved supreme
2 to say a forty-year- old man when you're just looking
 
Old man out of written corpora
2 in Business Letter Corpus (BLC2000)http://ysomeya.hp.infoseek.co.jp/

1 eir shoulders, and snickered that " the old man " was losing his touch.
2 was very kind of your wife to suffer an old man like me to dinner.

Simple Search of BNC-World http://view.byu.edu/ http://thetis.bl.uk/lookup.html
2361 hits
 
It is interesting that in the native speakers' world the old man is frequently referred to the speaker's father in the coversation.
 
回复：研究习作: How is "old man" used in corpora?

以下是引用 清风出袖 在 2005-8-16 9:29:07 的发言：
It is interesting that in the native speakers' world the old man is frequently referred to the speaker's father in the coversation.
Click to expand...

Glad you noticed this. That's why we need corpora, whether you are a native or a non-native speaker of the language.
 
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