THE ADJECTIVES LIGHT AND DARK IN ASTROPHYSICAL TEXTS: A CORPUS STUDY

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the uses of the lexemes light and dark in astrophysical texts. The research questions concern not only their frequencies and use in specialized terms, but also the contexts in which they tend to occur. We are mainly interested in the basic meanings of the adjectives light and dark, relating to visual perception.  For the purposes of our research, we compiled a corpus of abstracts extracted from nine scientific journals specializing in astrophysics. The software employed to create the corpus was AntConc Version 4.2.0. The lexeme light occurs in the corpus 1,478 times, including 867 occurrences as an adjective, whereas the lexeme dark is found 1,610 times, including 1,473 occurrences as an adjective. The most frequent word combinations include the following ones: light curve, light source, light travel, light yield, light time, light intensity; dark matter, dark energy, dark sector, dark universe, dark fluid, dark spot, dark halo. The most popular word combinations including light and dark are scientific terms, e. g. light curve, dark matter and dark energy. The most frequent adjectival uses of light relate to the phenomenon of light, not to the qualities of being bright or pale. The identified expressions could be paraphrased as N of light, e. g. light source > source of light. On the contrary, dark – as used in the most frequent expressions – refers to the quality of being ‘devoid of light’ and ‘of low lightness’.