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Googling
Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 8:31 am
by fluffyhamster
People quite often post numbers of hits on Google for particular linguistic items. I was wondering exactly how much importance is attached to numbers such as these (especially the first item):
"he became a gold" (medalist) 97*
"he was a gold" 11,500
"he won gold" 41,000
"he won a gold" 51,800
"he won the gold" 58,000
*'~gold; ~the gold' both get even less hits, 27 and 37 respectively.
There are other ways to express things, but those are the items I specifically searched for. Why, you ask?
It's not that I find the first form ungrammatical (the fact that it is attested even 97 times surely means something), or have a huge preference for the rest; in fact, my concern isn't really with examining much less teaching this particular phrase-for-a-notion, but more with what the infrequent item really tells us about 'became' (this is a sentence from a high school textbook here in Japan). A quick glance at the entry for 'become' in e.g. the LongmanDOCE4 soon shows that things are rarely that simple with/surrounding this word, and the low Google hits seem to have confirmed my suspicion that that item is a little too neat and contrived (but I'm not sure I'd want to be teaching more complex examples for 'become' to high school students - I might even not teach it at all, at that level).
Anyway, digression aside, is Googling ultimately a matter of the "first past the post" wins? (Heh, only joking,it's more just a tool to give us a rough feel for, and only sometimes, outside of looking closer, very clear confirmation of, forms, right?).
1 [linking verb] to begin to be something, or to develop in a particular way:
George became King at the age of 54.
Pollution from cars has become a major problem.
The weather became warmer.
Slowly my eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
Helen became increasingly anxious about her husband's strange behaviour.
Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 9:47 am
by metal56
A quick glance at the entry for 'become' in e.g. the LongmanDOCE4 soon shows that things are rarely that simple with/surrounding this word, and the low Google hits seem to have confirmed my suspicion that that item is a little too neat and contrived (but I'm not sure I'd want to be teaching more complex examples for 'become' to high school students - I might even not teach it at all, at that level).
The item is based on the collocation "become famous", isn't it? Still, again, I'm not sure what you are trying to say in this thread. Do you mean that you wouldn't teach "became + noun" to highschool students?
Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:47 am
by fluffyhamster
Heh, I also wasn't sure what I was trying to say, so thanks for the response, I hope it can help me focus and reformulate.
Right then: I was wondering if one would or should dismiss 'He became a/the gold (medalist)' right away, based on the comparatively low frequency with which it appears on the web, and teach nouns more like 'King' and 'President'.
Thinking about the example in the textbook, and then Googling, I just reckoned that the verb that goes with 'gold (medal(ist))' should be something other than 'became', and there seem to be far more interesting, and more frequent usages/examples about the process of becoming whatever (more "important" nouns; adjectives) anyway, so why consider the sports "use" at all.
Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:28 pm
by metal56
fluffyhamster wrote:Heh, I also wasn't sure what I was trying to say, so thanks for the response, I hope it can help me focus and reformulate.
Right then: I was wondering if one would or should dismiss 'He became a/the gold (medalist)' right away, based on the comparatively low frequency with which it appears on the web, and teach nouns more like 'King' and 'President'.
Well, if you want students to get the idea that novel, or relatively novel combinations, are not possible, I guess you,d only want to teach them common collocations. Mind, I think you'd be doing them an injustice. Also, I imagine we talk about kings and presidents much more that we do gold medalists, so the low numbers seem to tally with that. That sense of "became" fits quite well with "medalist" for me because it expresses result after a long period effort, which is one major use of "become".
refining your search
Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 2:43 pm
by jotham
To do a more accurate Google search for this, I think you'll want to keep the word medalist and medal in the search. Otherwise, phrases such as "he won the gold" could stand out on their own, and thus unfairly tally up extraneous hits. Also, you might leave out the he preposition so that the other pronouns could be included in the search. These things may help fine-tune your search — perhaps without altering your results significantly
Another consideration: medalist is a special term that may be reserved for formal, or rare, or perhaps news-reporting occasions. It probably doesn't have much to do with the appropriateness of become in that sentence.
Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 3:45 pm
by metal56
<Another consideration: medalist is a special term that may be reserved for formal, or rare, or perhaps news-reporting occasions. It probably doesn't have much to do with the appropriateness of become in that sentence.>
"Become" is actually used more in formal registers than in informal ones.
Re: refining your search
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 12:29 am
by fluffyhamster
jotham wrote:To do a more accurate Google search for this, I think you'll want to keep the word medalist and medal in the search. Otherwise, phrases such as "he won the gold" could stand out on their own, and thus unfairly tally up extraneous hits. Also, you might leave out the he preposition so that the other pronouns could be included in the search. These things may help fine-tune your search---perhaps without altering your results significantly.
Well, 'medal
ist' would be highly unlikely to be ellipted (following either of the linking verbs mentioned), whereas 'medal' (inanimate object, as opposed to what a person becomes) would be after '(won) gold', and could be after '(won) the gold' (and also after 'a gold'); that is, you seem to be focussing on medalist versus medal.
Re: refining your search
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 12:40 am
by metal56
fluffyhamster wrote:
Well, 'medalist' would be highly unlikely to be ellipted (following either of the linking verbs mentioned), whereas 'medal' (inanimate object, as opposed to what a person becomes) would be after '(won) gold', and could be after '(won) the gold' (and also after 'a gold'); that is, you seem to be focussing on medalist versus medal.
Still waiting to discover the value of this thread.
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:06 am
by fluffyhamster
The value of this thread? Provides reading practice! Next 'Use of this thread', please! (Maybe we can get up to the magic 100).
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:10 am
by metal56
fluffyhamster wrote: 'Use of this thread', please! (Maybe we can get up to the magic 100).
Does "use of this thread" state that we can't ask why you have posted it and what we can learn from it?
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 8:00 am
by fluffyhamster
Well, it's here now...and we've already wondered what the point of it was.
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:50 pm
by Stephen Jones
Still waiting to discover the value of this thread.
A bit ambitious. I'm still waiting to discover its meaning.
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 1:59 pm
by fluffyhamster
Shall I tell you too about stacking baked beans while you're waiting, Stephen?