An Empirical Analysis Of Linguistic Features Across Genres In The Manually Annotated Sub-corpus (masc)

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive empirical analysis of linguistic features across diverse genres within the Manually Annotated Sub-Corpus (MASC) of the Open American National Corpus (OANC). The research aims to provide a methodologically robust and theoretically grounded examination of language variation as a function of genre. Using a quantitative methodology encompassing descriptive statistics, comparative analysis (ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis H test, and Chi-squared test), and collocation analysis, we investigate variations in word and sentence length, lexical diversity, part-of-speech (POS) tag distribution, and significant bigram collocations. Our findings reveal statistically significant differences in linguistic characteristics across genres, with effect sizes reported to quantify the magnitude of these differences. The results highlight the profound influence of communicative context on linguistic choices and underscore the utility of corpus-based approaches in understanding language variation. This study contributes to corpus linguistics by providing detailed quantitative insights into the MASC corpus, demonstrating its value for linguistic research, and offering a rigorous framework for future empirical studies of language use. The discussion is expanded to explore the implications of these findings for linguistic theory, natural language processing applications, and language pedagogy. The results underscore the importance of genre-specific analysis in linguistic investigations and provide a solid foundation for further research into the socio-linguistic and cognitive factors influencing language production.