Negative evidence and the raw frequency fallacy* - CiteSeerX

66 A. Stefanowitsch
Table 4.
a. say
Three verbs that do not occur with ditransitive complementation in the ICE-GB
Ditransitive ÿDitransitive Total
b. explain
say 0 3,333 3,333
(44.52)
ÿsay 1,824 131,394 133,218
Total 1,824 134,727 136,551
Ditransitive ÿDitransitive Total
explain 0 172 172
(2.30)
ÿexplain 1,824 134,555 136,379
c. whisper
Total 1,824 134,727 136,551
Ditransitive ÿDitransitive Total
whisper 0 5 5
(0.07)
ÿwhisper 1,824 134,722 136,546
Total 1,824 134,727 136,551
allow us, in many cases, to determine whether an unseen construction is
likely to be a possible construction of a language or not.
Consider Table 4, which shows the contingency tables for three verbs
that do not occur with ditransitive complementation in the ICE-GB, say,
explain, and whisper.
On a priori grounds, we might expect all three verbs to allow ditransitive
complementation, since they are all reasonably close in meaning to
one of the most strongly attracted collexemes of this pattern, tell (and
other verbs of communication occurring among the significantly
attracted collexemes; e. g. ask, inform, teach, assure). On the other hand,
they are textbook cases in the linguistic literature of verbs not allowing
ditransitive complementation (cf. e. g., Pinker 1989).
Table 4a provides conclusive evidence that the linguistic literature is
right in the case of say, whose repulsion strength meets the corrected
level of significance (p 1.96E20; < 1.03E05). We can confidently