The inverse frequency effect

Abstract

Rare syntactic constructions show an especially strong tendency to be repeated, but some rare constructions exhibit this tendency much more strongly than others. The reasons for this variation are not well understood. This exploratory study examines five rare noun-phrase (NP) expansions in English: (the rich), (a Bob Gates), (architect Julia Morgan), (the jobs data), and (home electronic equipment). Repetition tendencies are very strong in the first and second of these and somewhat strong in the third; in the fourth and fifth they are much weaker, only slightly higher than those of common NP expansions such as (the black dog). To explain this variation, we suggest that constructions may be associated with different types of discourse: constructions with high repetition tendencies tend to occur in persuasive rather than informative discourse.