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【Abstract】This paper aims at the quantitative study of D. H. Lawrence’s works—Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which attempts to compare and analyze the characteristics and changes of Lawrence’s works in his different creating periods. To obtain the pertinent data, a series of computation and tests facilitated by FOXPRO and SPSS are used. The Chi-square tests, F-test and T-test are used to check whether the difference of each item in each corpus is significant. Examination on the level of lexis and semantic show that there are linguistic evidence which validate the suspicion about the different styles of the two fictions.
【Key words】Quantitative study; Chi-square tests; T-test; F-test
【中圖分类号】G623.31【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1001-4128（2011）02-0005-02
As a representative writer of transition from neo-classicism to romanticism, D.H. Lawrence's works have their own characteristics. This paper is mainly to probe into D.H. Lawrence's two works——Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and reveals the characteristics; an analysis is based on the following aspects: syntax and lexicon.
1 Stylistics and Statistical tests
Stylistics studies the features of situationally distinctive uses (varieties) of language, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individual and social groups in their use of language. (Crystal 1980)
Statistical tests can be generally divided into two types: parametric tests and non-parametric tests. Parametric tests are used to test the significance of differences between two means. The data in such tests should be interval or ratio. Theses tests are applicable only when the samples are normally distributed. There are mainly three kinds of parametric tests: z-test, t-test and f-test. Z-test is used for larger independent samples (N>30). One-sample T-test is used to compare a sample with a known mean. Independent t-test is used for smaller independent samples (N<30). Paired t-test is used for correlated samples. F-test can be used to test homogeneity of variance and test whether there are significant differences between the means of more than two independent samples. In this thesis, chi-square test is used to test whether the difference of frequency is statistically significant at 5% (p<0.05).
2 Procedure of the Research
In order to study the characteristics of D.H. Lawrence's works, two corpora called LCHL (Lady Chatterley’s Lover) and SAL (Sons and Lovers) are established, and the content are downloaded from the Internet. It is believed to be convenient to index them independently and to study the features more clearly. The contents are listed in the table below:
Table 1 D.H. Lawrence's works and number of words for each novel
works
Number of words
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
110194
Sons and Lovers
160068
3 Analysis and Discussion
In this paper, the statistics will be analyzed on two levels, on Lexical Level and on Syntactic Level, by comparing the data among LCHL and SAL, the result will help us support the conclusions and deduce inferring features.
3.1 On Lexical Level
Vocabulary or lexis is a fundamental and essential device to help us achieve certain stylistic effect in a text and realize the experience of the world. On this level, D.H. Lawrence's works demonstrate some noticeable characteristics.
1) Vocabulary in the Corpora
Vocabulary is a standard symbol to influence the difficulty of a fiction. By running a FOXPRO program, each corpus is broken into several sentences and words. Then all the words are separated to form an original data. In this way, Length of each sentence (in words) and every word (in letters) are obtained and stored in the corresponding tables. Then the vocabulary of the corpora is counted and the size of each is measured.
Table 2 Total words of each corpus
CORPUS
LCHL
SAL
Total words
110194
160068
Obviously, the amount of the two corpora is very large, which is because D.H. Lawrence's six works contain a large number of words. Between the two corpora, SAL is the higher than LCHL. Vocabulary is a fundamental element to show a writer’s life history and his creating ability.
2) Words of Top Frequency
The occurrence of word class can show the nature of a text, which can be displayed through the frequency of certain words. In this way ,to check which text is more formal than the other. (Trudgill, 1974) The data in Table 3 is the 20 most frequent words of the two corpora.
Table 3 20 most frequent words in each corpus
According to the table, the mean word length in LCHL is the shorter. It is intriguing that although the paragraph length is extraordinary long, the word length of LCHL is very short. That is to say, a wide use of colloquial word in dialogues decreases the mean words length to a certain degree. Lawrence employs short item to make his works more vivid and easy to understand.
3) Word Length
Word length is an important stylistic marker. As we know, words in different varieties are associated with registers. The longer and more complicated the words are, the more formal the text is. Vocabulary which is used in formal style to express conventions and standards, while in informal style is mainly for the smooth and easy communication. By running a FoxPro program about WORDLENGTH, the mean word length is obtained in the following table.
Table 6 Mean word length
CORPUS
LCHL
SAL
mean
4.74
4.46
According to the table, the mean word length in SAL is the shorter. It is intriguing that although the paragraph length is extraordinary long, the word length of SAL is very short. Because so many familiar and conversational words are employed among characters' dialogues, and the main characteristics about this kind of words are short and easy to be understood. This shows that he is good at using very short items.
3.2On Syntactic Level
1) Sentence Length
Sentence length is viewed as another important factor to influence style when literary works are analyzed. Either long sentences or short sentences respectively have their own stylistic functions. Lawrence is famous for the use of short and simple sentences, which make his works easily understood by the readers. He uses frequent one-word or two-word sentences so as to achieve special effects, especially in some informal dialogues.
——‘Money!’ he said.
——But you've got to begin, said Clifford.
——Oh, quite! You've got to get in.
——You've got to beat your way in.
——You can do nothing if you are kept outside.
This dialogue is separated into several simple or elliptical sentences which displays the characteristics of the hero.
As to the data of Lawrence's mean sentence length, they are obtained by running the program BREAKCOP. After being processed by the computer, they are listed in Table 7.
Table 7 Mean Sentence Length in Each Corpus
CORPUS
LCHL
SAL
MEAN SENTENCE
LENGTH
10.0097
9.8078
In the table it is obvious that the mean sentence length in LCHL is a little longer than SAL. This shows that Lawrence’s creating period can be divided into 3 stages, the early one, middle one and the late one, from the analysis in this table, we can see clearly that his most prosperous creating period is the middle period. During this tine, Lawrence tends to use shorter sentences. According to psychologists, people can hold in short-term memory, a unit of a dozen or slightly more words if they are in a meaningful sequence. The data show that the sentences in SAL are nearest to this length, so the works of this period are the most charming and appealing to the readers.
3.3 Conclusion and Implication
By employing the statistical analytical means and several Stylistics theories, this paper has analyzed the language of D.H. Lawrence's works in on the two levels. The analysis shows that though the language of D.H. Lawrence's works shares some similar features, they differ from each other. The quantitative study of D. H. Lawrence’s works will help the fans of D.H. Lawrence to understand his works better. It will also provide a useful tool for all readers to appreciate literary, works better. Meanwhile, a stylistic analysis on D.H. Lawrence's works can help English learners develop their language skill and sense of style.
References:
［1］ Baker, S. W. The Practical Stylist. Harver & Row Publishers, 1985.
［2］Butler, C. Statistics in Linguistics. Basil Black Well Inc. 1969
［3］ Thornborrow, J. et al. (2000). Patterns in Language: Stylistics for Students of Language and Literature. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
【Key words】Quantitative study; Chi-square tests; T-test; F-test
【中圖分类号】G623.31【文献标识码】A 【文章编号】1001-4128（2011）02-0005-02
As a representative writer of transition from neo-classicism to romanticism, D.H. Lawrence's works have their own characteristics. This paper is mainly to probe into D.H. Lawrence's two works——Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and reveals the characteristics; an analysis is based on the following aspects: syntax and lexicon.
1 Stylistics and Statistical tests
Stylistics studies the features of situationally distinctive uses (varieties) of language, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individual and social groups in their use of language. (Crystal 1980)
Statistical tests can be generally divided into two types: parametric tests and non-parametric tests. Parametric tests are used to test the significance of differences between two means. The data in such tests should be interval or ratio. Theses tests are applicable only when the samples are normally distributed. There are mainly three kinds of parametric tests: z-test, t-test and f-test. Z-test is used for larger independent samples (N>30). One-sample T-test is used to compare a sample with a known mean. Independent t-test is used for smaller independent samples (N<30). Paired t-test is used for correlated samples. F-test can be used to test homogeneity of variance and test whether there are significant differences between the means of more than two independent samples. In this thesis, chi-square test is used to test whether the difference of frequency is statistically significant at 5% (p<0.05).
2 Procedure of the Research
In order to study the characteristics of D.H. Lawrence's works, two corpora called LCHL (Lady Chatterley’s Lover) and SAL (Sons and Lovers) are established, and the content are downloaded from the Internet. It is believed to be convenient to index them independently and to study the features more clearly. The contents are listed in the table below:
Table 1 D.H. Lawrence's works and number of words for each novel
works
Number of words
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
110194
Sons and Lovers
160068
3 Analysis and Discussion
In this paper, the statistics will be analyzed on two levels, on Lexical Level and on Syntactic Level, by comparing the data among LCHL and SAL, the result will help us support the conclusions and deduce inferring features.
3.1 On Lexical Level
Vocabulary or lexis is a fundamental and essential device to help us achieve certain stylistic effect in a text and realize the experience of the world. On this level, D.H. Lawrence's works demonstrate some noticeable characteristics.
1) Vocabulary in the Corpora
Vocabulary is a standard symbol to influence the difficulty of a fiction. By running a FOXPRO program, each corpus is broken into several sentences and words. Then all the words are separated to form an original data. In this way, Length of each sentence (in words) and every word (in letters) are obtained and stored in the corresponding tables. Then the vocabulary of the corpora is counted and the size of each is measured.
Table 2 Total words of each corpus
CORPUS
LCHL
SAL
Total words
110194
160068
Obviously, the amount of the two corpora is very large, which is because D.H. Lawrence's six works contain a large number of words. Between the two corpora, SAL is the higher than LCHL. Vocabulary is a fundamental element to show a writer’s life history and his creating ability.
2) Words of Top Frequency
The occurrence of word class can show the nature of a text, which can be displayed through the frequency of certain words. In this way ,to check which text is more formal than the other. (Trudgill, 1974) The data in Table 3 is the 20 most frequent words of the two corpora.
Table 3 20 most frequent words in each corpus
According to the table, the mean word length in LCHL is the shorter. It is intriguing that although the paragraph length is extraordinary long, the word length of LCHL is very short. That is to say, a wide use of colloquial word in dialogues decreases the mean words length to a certain degree. Lawrence employs short item to make his works more vivid and easy to understand.
3) Word Length
Word length is an important stylistic marker. As we know, words in different varieties are associated with registers. The longer and more complicated the words are, the more formal the text is. Vocabulary which is used in formal style to express conventions and standards, while in informal style is mainly for the smooth and easy communication. By running a FoxPro program about WORDLENGTH, the mean word length is obtained in the following table.
Table 6 Mean word length
CORPUS
LCHL
SAL
mean
4.74
4.46
According to the table, the mean word length in SAL is the shorter. It is intriguing that although the paragraph length is extraordinary long, the word length of SAL is very short. Because so many familiar and conversational words are employed among characters' dialogues, and the main characteristics about this kind of words are short and easy to be understood. This shows that he is good at using very short items.
3.2On Syntactic Level
1) Sentence Length
Sentence length is viewed as another important factor to influence style when literary works are analyzed. Either long sentences or short sentences respectively have their own stylistic functions. Lawrence is famous for the use of short and simple sentences, which make his works easily understood by the readers. He uses frequent one-word or two-word sentences so as to achieve special effects, especially in some informal dialogues.
——‘Money!’ he said.
——But you've got to begin, said Clifford.
——Oh, quite! You've got to get in.
——You've got to beat your way in.
——You can do nothing if you are kept outside.
This dialogue is separated into several simple or elliptical sentences which displays the characteristics of the hero.
As to the data of Lawrence's mean sentence length, they are obtained by running the program BREAKCOP. After being processed by the computer, they are listed in Table 7.
Table 7 Mean Sentence Length in Each Corpus
CORPUS
LCHL
SAL
MEAN SENTENCE
LENGTH
10.0097
9.8078
In the table it is obvious that the mean sentence length in LCHL is a little longer than SAL. This shows that Lawrence’s creating period can be divided into 3 stages, the early one, middle one and the late one, from the analysis in this table, we can see clearly that his most prosperous creating period is the middle period. During this tine, Lawrence tends to use shorter sentences. According to psychologists, people can hold in short-term memory, a unit of a dozen or slightly more words if they are in a meaningful sequence. The data show that the sentences in SAL are nearest to this length, so the works of this period are the most charming and appealing to the readers.
3.3 Conclusion and Implication
By employing the statistical analytical means and several Stylistics theories, this paper has analyzed the language of D.H. Lawrence's works in on the two levels. The analysis shows that though the language of D.H. Lawrence's works shares some similar features, they differ from each other. The quantitative study of D. H. Lawrence’s works will help the fans of D.H. Lawrence to understand his works better. It will also provide a useful tool for all readers to appreciate literary, works better. Meanwhile, a stylistic analysis on D.H. Lawrence's works can help English learners develop their language skill and sense of style.
References:
［1］ Baker, S. W. The Practical Stylist. Harver & Row Publishers, 1985.
［2］Butler, C. Statistics in Linguistics. Basil Black Well Inc. 1969
［3］ Thornborrow, J. et al. (2000). Patterns in Language: Stylistics for Students of Language and Literature. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.