English in Computer-Mediated Communication by Squires Lauren

Author:Squires, Lauren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4: Most frequent expressive lengthening types, Finland English and Comparison English corpora

The most frequent types in the Comparison English Corpus are almost all interjections or pronounceable non-dictionary words, most of which correspond to discourse-marking sounds used in spoken conversation (hmmm, mmm, mmmm, awww, ahhh, grrr, oooh, mmmmm, hmmmm, ooo, eee, oooo, ohhh, mmmmmm, ahhhh, ummm, awwww). Although lengthenings are much less frequent in the Comparison English Corpus, they are more likely to consist of longer sequences of characters: Thirteen of the twenty most frequent lengthening types contain three-character sequences, four four-character sequences, two five-character sequences, and one a six-character sequence.

An interesting pattern emerges when one considers the proportion of all lengthenings by character in the two corpora (Figure 5). Again, the profiles are similar, but there are some differences.

For the Finland English data, the letter o comprises 22% of the lengthenings in the corpus. In general, vowel characters are more subject to lengthening than are consonants, with characters representing open and mid vowels o, e, and a more likely to be lengthened than those that represent close vowels i and u or the semi-vowel y. Among non-vowel characters, r is most subject to lengthening, followed by h, d, s, m, and w. The characters l, x, t, g, n, and f are slightly less likely to be subject to lengthening, and the characters z, k, p, v, j, c, q, and b are the least likely to be lengthened.

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