From the analyses in chapters 5.3 and 5.6 on modality and negation we know that in the German newsgroup texts there are significantly more negation markers (significance level 0.01) and also significantly more modal markers (significance level 0.001). In the following section, the interplay of modal markers and syntactic negation markers will be investigated. The investigation involves only the syntactic negation markers because morphological negation markers and textual negation (conjunctions and continuatives) are too small in number. Furthermore, the query of the EDNA corpus is only for clauses which contain a first modal marker, i.e. we look at clauses with at least one modal marker, but do not specify whether there is also a second or third modal mark- er in a clause. With around 15%, the numbers for clauses with a second or third modal marker, however, are small. 85% of all clauses have only one modal marker. Table 5.27 displays, as a summary, the raw numbers for clauses with negation marker only, modal marker only, both markers, or neither. This table is the basis for the following calculations.
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Feature EN F GN F
Negation marker only 129 141 Modal marker only 238 437 Both neg and modal marker 80 138 No neg or modal marker 1,095 763 Total (processes) 1,542 1,479
Table 5.27 Raw numbers for clauses with/without syntactic negation marker and modal marker
Let us start with the significance test for the frequency of clauses containing at least a first modal marker (type of modality and type of realization unspeci- fied) and syntactic negation (position unspecified), see examples 127 to 129 in EN and 130 to 132 in GN:
(127) I still can’t let go
(128) […] which is in truth not all that often (129) We never really argued
(130) Das ist doch auch keine Lösung (131) […], denn mir ging es ja nicht schlecht (132) Ich weiß wirklich nicht mehr weiter
The null hypothesis states that there will be no significant variation in num- bers, table 5.28 shows the results.
Feature EN F GN F EN% GN% Overuse χ² S
Modality + negation 80 138 25 24 - 0.11 - Modality - negation 238 437 75 76 - 0.04 - Column total 318 578 100 100
Table 5.28 Raw and relative numbers, χ² and significance for clauses with modal marker (first modal only) and syntactic negation marker (any position) In both EN and GN, a quarter of all clauses with a modal marker additionally include a syntactic negation marker, either in the verbal, the nominal or an
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adverbial group. There is no statistically significant deviation in numbers and the null hypothesis can therefore not be rejected.
In the second table (5.29) of this section, the results of the test for the query of non-modal clauses plus a syntactic negation (position unspecified) are shown, see example 133 from EN and 134 from GN:
(133) I never had any physical pain (134) Er ist nicht mein Traummann
We use the default null hypothesis that there is no statistically significant vari- ation in numbers when comparing the two subcorpora.
Feature EN F GN F EN% GN% Overuse χ² S
Non-modal + negation 129 141 8 10 - 1.16 - Non-modal - negation 1,413 1,338 92 90 - 0.11 - Column total 1,542 1,479 100 100
Table 5.29 Raw and relative numbers, χ² and significance for clauses without a modal marker and syntactic negation
Again, there is no statistically significant variation in the frequency of clauses with only a syntactic negation marker, but without a modal marker. In both corpora, there are 8% / 10% of non-modal clauses with a syntactic negation marker in the clause, and 92% / 90% of all clauses have neither a modal marker nor a syntactic negation marker. The null hypothesis cannot be rejected.
The frequency of clauses with/without modal marker and/or syntactic negation marker, however, can also be looked at from another angle. Above in table 5.28, the column totals were for clauses with or without a modal marker (EN 318, GN 578) plus (or not) a syntactic negation marker. In table 5.29, however, the column totals are the number of clauses with or without a syntactic nega- tion (EN 209, GN 279) plus (or not) a modal marker. Table 5.30 displays the results for the query of clauses with a syntactic negation (position unspecified) and at least a first modal marker (type of modality and type of realization un- specified). No statistically significant difference is predicted by the null hy- pothesis.
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Feature EN F GN F EN% GN% Overuse χ² S
Negation + modality 80 138 38 49 - 3.35 - Negation – modality 129 141 62 51 - 2.70 - Column total 209 279 100 100
Table 5.30 Raw and relative numbers, χ² and significance for clauses with syn- tactic negation marker (any position) and modal marker (first modal only) In our third possible combination of features, there is no statistically significant difference between the two newsgroup text corpora. What is interesting to note is that of all clauses with a modal marker, only 25% are negated (see table 5.28 above), but of all clauses with a syntactic negation, as many as almost 40% in EN and as many as almost 50% in GN additionally carry a modal marker. These results suggest that the writers have a tendency to either strengthen or weaken negated statements, to indicate that the negated statement is not 100% unquestionably true (epistemic modality is expressed by 70% of all modal markers). It would be interesting to know whether the modal markers were strengthening ones, like really, must or will for English, or whether they were weakening the negated statement, like the modal markers might or maybe in English. Unfortunately, the modal markers in the EDNA corpus were not an- notated for their strength, so this aspect cannot be examined in this study. Allow me to repeat here that the German newsgroup texts have a significantly larger number of clauses with a negation marker (20%) than the English news- group texts (15%). The higher total number of negative clauses (in the sense of including a syntactic negation marker) in GN probably explains why GN has a higher number of clauses with both a syntactic negation marker and a modal marker (49%) compared to EN (38%).
The last study of statistical significance involves the frequency of positive clauses (in the sense of lacking a syntactic negation marker) and how many of these contain at least one modal marker. Examples for clauses with only a modal marker, but no syntactic negation marker, are I rarely leave the house, my god you’ll hate what you see, something needs to change in the EN corpus and für mich ist Essen meistens ein Qual und so überflüssig, ich soll doch ein Vorbild für meine Kinder sein, […] waren es ja bisher auch immer for the GN corpus. The null hypothesis suggests that there is no statistically significant difference in the
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frequency of such clauses in both corpora; see table 5.31 below for raw and relative numbers and the χ² value calculation.
Feature EN F GN F EN% GN% Overuse χ² S
No negation +
modality 238 437 18 36 GN 81.83 + + +
No negation -
modality 1,095 763 82 64 EN 29.71 + + +
Column total 1,333 1,200 100 100
Table 5.31 Raw and relative numbers, χ² and significance for clauses without syntactic negation marker but with modal marker (first modal only)
It probably comes as no surprise to see that modal markers occur most fre- quently in positive clauses, since positive clauses (85% in EN and 80% in GN) are far more frequent than negative ones, i.e. clauses with a negation marker. The null hypothesis can safely be rejected, there is a statistically significant deviation in the number of clauses with a modal marker. This is not surprising, either; although GN has fewer positive clauses in total compared to EN, GN has a much higher number of modal markers, and thus the modal markers appear significantly more often in positive clauses in GN, with 10.83 being the threshold for a significance of 0.001 (df=1). Due to the fact that in EN there are significantly fewer modal markers, a significant amount of positive clauses carry no modal marker, compared to GN (again, 10.83 being the threshold for a significance of 0.001 (df=1)).