A study of the semantic preference and semantic prosody associated with the denominations of aging people

. This paper studies the representation and conceptualization of aging people depending on the way they are referred to through a series of near syn-onyms: old / older / elderly / middle-aged / mature + N. A speciﬁc focus will be laid on the notions of “semantic preference,” i


Introduction
The notions of "old age," "aging," and their representations have been brought to the front in recent years, especially so with the Covid-19 pandemic which has questioned Semantic preference and prosody JLAR 2 (2024) 10.15460/JLAR.2024.2.1.1183our views of and on the elderly.This article intends to focus on the evaluative aspect of the gendered denominations of aging people, through analyses carried out on the English Web 2020 corpus (available on SketchEngine 2017-2024, see Kilgarriff et al. 2014).We chose to refer to old / older / elderly, etc. people by the phrase "aging people" (AP from now on).The notions of "semantic preference" and "semantic prosody"2 are used to assess the evaluation triggered by the use of specific axiological adjectives used in combination with the denominations for AP.Taking this into account, the current study is structured around the following questions: • Are the denominations of AP neutral labels attached to a referent, or are they evaluative depending on the word choice?
• Do the adjectives used in combination with said denominations (semantic preference) have an effect on their evaluative aspect (semantic prosody)?
• Can we notice evaluative differences as far as gender is concerned?
To try and answer these questions, section 2 briefly reviews the literature; section 3 introduces the methodological approach -corpus linguistics -and the tools involved in the selection of the data, before tackling the reasons for the choice of the English Web 2020 corpus (enTenTen 20, see SketchEngine 2022).Section 4 focuses on the semantic preference of a selection of nominal collocations used to refer to AP, and section 5 addresses the question of the generally perceived negative axiology linked to the discourses on old age and aging through the notion of semantic prosody.The potential gender differences are also examined through the study of the collocations [adjective + old / older / elderly / middle-aged / mature + noun], as developed in sections 4 and 5, following Mautner's "corpus linguistic methods within a sociolinguistic framework" (Mautner 2007, 51) to establish collocational profiles for each collocation.
In line with this author, we posit that "age is discursively constructed" (53, see also Hareven 1995) and that labelling expressions play a crucial role in the categorization of groups of people: If we accept that labeling plays a crucial role in categorization, boundary drawing, and stereotyping, then the study of age labels emerges as a worthwhile contribution to aging research (Mautner 2007, 53).
While this study mainly focuses on old age and aging, we also aim to discuss potential evaluative gender differences.Gender is a complex and multifaceted notion that has been widely described and studied, especially in the field of sociolinguistics where it has been regarded as one of the factors for language variation and change, but also for perception differences.It should be noted that we deliberately use the term "gender" to refer to the expression of constructed social identity, which has to be distinguished from "sex" pointing only to biological identity (Cheshire 2004;Eckert 1989).

Literature review and research questions
The topical nature of the study has to be noted, as there is a growing interest in agerelated questions due to growing populations of aging people all over the world.This Semantic preference and prosody JLAR 2 (2024) 10.15460/JLAR.2024.2.1.1183resulted in various and varied studies within CARE and/or medical contexts (Escourrou et al. 2022, Abdi et al. 2019, Fulmer et al. 2021, etc.), but strangely enough, in relatively few studies on the language used to talk about AP per se.Notable exceptions are Tommaso's (2015) work on media depictions of age and aging, Coupland, Coupland, and Giles's (1991) Language, Society and the Elderly, Coupland's (1997) study on language, aging and agism, Wangler and Jansky's (2023) media portrayal of old age, etc., and most specifically Mautner's (2007) work on collocational profile of the word "elderly."Following Gerstenberg and Lindholm's (2019, 1) call to an "interaction and collaboration between diverse disciplines [...] to allow for collaborations across these barriers," this paper will focus on the linguistic aspect of some sequences used to refer to AP, and the impact these denominations have on the representations of old age and aging in terms of evaluation (see Appraisal theory), but also regarding the potential gender differences.Following one of the main tenets of Corpus Linguistics, i.e. the Firthian conception of contextual meaning or Sinclair's principle of "no independent word meaning," we posit that the meaning of words in actual occurrences of language is rarely the dictionary meaning, but a discursive meaning not generated by the sum of the words following one another, but rather by the interaction of those words together (Firth 1957, Channel 2000, Sinclair 2004, etc.); this means that the meaning of a given item is "frequently shared across units in discourse" (Morley and Partington 2009, 139) or, as Firth (1957, 179) writes, "You shall know a word by the company it keeps," especially when it comes down to evaluative meaning.To put it simply, and metaphorically, "elements of meaning 'hunt in packs."'(Morley and Partington 2009, 140).Semantic preference and semantic prosody are two concepts frequently resorted to in Corpus Linguistics, but they are also often confused. 3Semantic preference is defined by Stubbs (2001, 65) as "the relation, not between individual words, but between a lemma or word-form and a set of semantically related words."A given item shows semantic preference when it co-occurs with "a class of words which share some semantic feature" Stubbs (2001, 88).Semantic prosody, a.k.a."evaluative prosody," "discourse prosody," "emotive prosody," "pragmatic prosody" or "attitudinal prosody," is a useful -though sometimes controversial and contentious (Whitsitt 2005, Hunston 2007, Bednarek 2008, Stewart 2010) -notion in Corpus Linguistics 4 that was introduced by Louw, 5 who defines it as "a consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its collocates" (Louw 1993, 157).As Soto-Almela and Alcaraz-Mármol (2017, 153) state, "In 2000, Louw amplifies his definition of semantic prosody going beyond this "aura of meaning" (1993) to clearly distinguish it from connotation."Semantic prosody is thus not just synonymous with connotation, even if some scholars refer to it as "connotational meaning" (Morley and Partington 2009, 150) or integrate the term "connotation" within its definition (Bednarek 2008). 6Several studies have already been conducted 3.For further reading on the differences between semantic preference and semantic prosody, see Partington (2004), Bednarek (2008) and more recently Begagic (2018).
5.More precisely, Louw (1993, 158) recognizes that the term has been coined by Sinclair during a personal communication (1988), who himself borrowed it from Firth (1957) who used the term "prosody." 6. "If we want to keep the terms semantic prosody and semantic preference, we should reserve the term semantic preference for collocations of lexical items with (more or less specific) semantic subsets, and use the term semantic prosody for connotations of all kinds.Semantic prosody then refers to POS/NEG connotation as well as more complex attitudinal connotations affecting both simple words Semantic preference and prosody JLAR 2 (2024) 10.15460/JLAR.2024.2.1.1183on semantic prosody, in various fields, such as politics, mostly immigration (Soto-Almela and Alcaraz-Mármol 2016, 2017; Jamet and Lafiandra 2023), mental health (Jamet 2018(Jamet , 2022;;Jamet and Coupé 2023), but, to the best of our knowledge, not on the language of old age and aging.This paper therefore intends to fill in a gap by focusing on the role played by semantic preference and semantic prosody in the contemporary denotation of AP in English, mostly through the adjectives used in combination within ten typical collocations, and to bring out the collocational profiles of expressions referring to AP.The hypothesis in this paper is that the meaning of a particular item or phrase cannot be brought out in isolation, but only within the discursive context -left and right -of the phrase, which creates a specific semantic preference for said item or phrase.Yet, it would be misleading to just consider the surrounding context to evaluate the semantic prosody of a given token, as the node also plays a role in the evaluation, as Morley and Partington (2009, 142) clearly state: "The relationship between the node and the surrounding items, as we said, needs to be contemplated in the definition."Indeed, a clearly negatively or positively connoted node will affect the semantic prosody of the token under consideration, regardless of the influence of the surrounding context.That is why, depending on researchers, there are two schools of thought (Ben Ghozlen 2022): semantic prosody is either in the lexical item itself (items have, in Hoey (2005)'s terminology, lexical primings, i.e., a set of suggestions on how to use them, on how they normally interact with other items), or in the overall discourse (Hunston 2007).We will depart from the two antinomic positions, following Morley and Partington (2009, 156), and consider that "item and environment do interact and affect each other, that repeated usage of an item in new environments will alter the priming instructions-suggestions of the item itself," and that "some words form an evaluative meaning 'pack"' (140).

Methods and data
This section discusses the corpus-based method implemented for the study of the evaluative representations of AP.Section 3.1 provides some data on the corpus and section 3.2 expands on the analyses carried out on the corpus.

Corpus selection
As our intention is not to examine the evaluative evolution of our items in a diachronic perspective, we adopted a purely synchronic point of view, which means that we are only interested in the contemporary state of the language.This theoretical decision is reflected in the methodology and choice of the corpus to collect our data: we opted for the English Web 2020 corpus, a.k.a.enTenTen20, a reference corpus available on SketchEngine (Kilgarriff et al. 2014;SketchEngine 2022).The corpus contains approximately 43 billion tokens (36 billion words); see Appendix Figures 5 and 6).The English Web 2020 has been selected for this study because it is considered as a reference corpus and, as such, it is balanced and representative of contemporary English (2019English ( -2021)).It is composed of a variety of sub-corpora from different Englishand larger units of meaning such as phrases, i.e. concerns both 'traditional' connotation (said to relate to single words) and 'prosodic' connotation (connotation that is "distributed prosodically across a textual sequence" (Stubbs 2001, 202).Semantic preference and prosody JLAR 2 (2024) 10.15460/JLAR.2024.2.1.1183speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc.), and contains different registers (arts, business, games, health, home, recreation, reference, science, etc.; see Appendix Figures 6 and 7).Mautner also used a large corpus, the 500-million-word Bank of English.Wordbanks Online, and justified her choice as follows: [L]arge reference corpora are rich repositories of social information and thus offer considerable potential for research in sociolinguistics and discourse analysis.[...] Millions of words from diverse genres allow one to be reasonably confident about generalizability, especially when the item under investigation, as it is the case with elderly, has a high total frequency in the corpus concerned.(Mautner 2007, 52, 65)

Analyses carried out
To evaluate semantic preference and semantic prosody, we analyzed the collocations containing a near-synonymous adjective related to old age followed by a noun referring to a human being.Xiao and McEnery (2006, 108) define synonyms and near synonyms as follows: "[lexical pairs] that have very similar cognitive or denotational meanings, but which may differ in collocational or prosodic behavior.As such, synonymous words are not collocationally interchangeable."Hu confirms this non-interchangeability: In particular, even though two words may share similar cognitive or denotational meanings, they may demonstrate not only different collocational behavior but also distinct semantic prosodies.(Hu 2015, 118) To do so, we adopted a statistical method, conceptualized from a discourse standpoint, which entails "analysing, via a concordance, how a node is actually instantiated many times in many texts" (Partington 2015, 292).As reminded by Ben Ghozlen: Specifically, by exploring the patterns of co-occurrence that are evidently inaccessible to the naked eye, the researcher can statistically pin down the type of semantic polarity that prevails and the evaluative force that the node acquires as a result of its collocational behavior.In biogenetics terms, this prosodic behavior will be instantiated in the DNA of the item, and progressively built up in the minds of speakers [...] by the number of exposures to uses.(Ben Ghozlen 2022, 64) To retrieve the most frequently used sequences of words in the English Web 2020 corpus, we used Complex Query Language (CQL), "a special code or query language used in Sketch Engine to search for complex grammatical or lexical patterns or to use search criteria which cannot be set using the standard user interface" (SketchEngine 2017-2024).The CQL searches were carried out using the attributes tag for part of speech, with the value "J.*" representing a sequence of adjectives, word for wordforms, and lemma for lemmatized forms. 7Additionally, the question mark wild card ?for one unspecified character, and the asterisk * for any number of a specified character were used. 8A random selection of 10 000 occurrences for each query was 7.For example, sequences of adjectives followed by specific nouns: [tag="J.*"][word="people"], or [tag="J.*"]man / men, or [tag="J.*"][lemma="man"], or [tag="J.*"][lemma="woman"].
8. For example, m?n finds both man and men, and wom?n finds both woman and women.
JLAR 2 (2024) 10.15460/JLAR.2024.2.1.1183carefully examined, and the most frequent sequences used to refer to AP were retrieved (Table 1).The adjectives shared by people, man and woman are respectively old, older, elderly and mature.Given their high frequency, we decided to focus more specifically on those four adjectives old / older / elderly / mature followed by what will be termed the head noun, i.e., a noun referring to a human being or a group of human beings: man / men or woman / women or people.We nevertheless added to the list the adjective middleaged which seemed quite productive with man and woman, even if it was not found in collocations with people in the first 10 000 rows. 9 This selection of five adjectives resulted in 25 combinations. 10To retrieve these sequences, we performed a basic search in the English Web 2020 corpus.Figure 1 is a visual representation of the results of the most frequent lemmatized forms (see Appendix Table 4; for the most frequent non-lemmatized forms, see Table 3).As shown in Figure 1, depending on the head noun, the most frequently used adjective is either old or older, which are clearly the two most frequent adjectives in terms of normalized frequency, followed by elderly, middle-aged and mature, the last two showing a relatively low productivity when combined with the head nouns m?n, wom?n and people.In terms of frequency, the most frequently used phrases containing an attributive adjective are [adjective + old m?n], [adjective + old wom?n], [adjective + older m?n], [adjective + older wom?n], showing a clear predominance of old and older used to premodify m?n and wom?n.Middle-aged and elderly show a relatively lower frequency of use, either in combination with m?n and wom?n.Mature is relatively infrequent compared to the other adjectives under scrutiny.The second 9.We did not include the adjective senior in our analyses as it was not tagged as an adjective in SketchEngine but as a noun.Further research may focus on the collocational profile of expressions including senior.10. old woman, old women, old man, old men, old people; older woman, older women, older man, older men, older people; elderly woman, elderly women, elderly man, elderly men, elderly people; mature woman, mature women, mature man, mature men, mature people; middle-aged woman, middle-aged women, middle-aged man, middle-aged men and middle-aged people.Semantic preference and prosody JLAR 2 ( 2024 type of CQL searches was intended to retrieve the most frequently used adjectives premodifying the sequences under scrutiny, so as to analyze the axiology conveyed by the attributive adjectives.To retrieve the sequences [adjective + old / older / elderly / middle-aged / mature + head noun] and analyze in a gender perspective the evaluation through the adjective used, we performed several CQL searches. 11Looking at the adjectives preceding the selected phrases was deemed an appropriate way of studying their semantic preference and semantic prosody through the choice of adjectives, as reminded by Ben Ghozlen (2022, 68), "[u]ndeniably, the study of the semantic prosody of a given term basically implies the extraction and scrutiny of its typical collocates." The results are exemplified in Appendix Table 5, showing the CQL searches carried out and ranked by normalized frequencies. 12The first type of analyses carried out was to consider the most frequent adjectives used in combination with the head nouns.

Corpus investigation: semantic preference of words referring to AP
This section presents the results of the quantitative and qualitative corpus-based analyses carried out through AntConc (Anthony 2019).We will consecutively analyze and comment on each sequence of adjective + old / older / elderly / middle-aged / mature + m?n / wom?n to see whether similarities and/or differences can be pointed out regarding semantic preference.

old m?n and old wom?n
The Free USAS English web tagger (Rayson 2023) was used to analyze the semantic preference for the sequences under scrutiny.This tool was chosen as it enables researchers to tag semantically each adjective used in combination with said sequences.Some semantic tags (from now on, "Semtags") were considered erroneous, for two main reasons: (1) the word was not recognized by USAS (Rayson 2023), and tagged Z99 "Unknown," such as crotchety, yr (for year), wizened, etc.; to be able to label unknown words with the appropriate Semtag, we used various synonyms, and when the tagger labeled the word with the same Semtag, we used this Semtag; (2) due to polysemy, some words were inappropriately tagged. 13The most frequent semantic domains (Semtags) for the adjectives used in attributive position to premodify old m?n 11.For example, the query [tag="J.*"][word="old"] [lemma="man"] retrieves all occurrences of sequences containing an adjective followed by the word old and the lemma MAN, finding occurrences of man and men.12.To analyze the most frequently used adjectives, the Excel file generated with the CQL searches was cleaned, and some occurrences were removed for two main reasons.The first reason was due to tagging mistakes by SketchEngine ( 2014): words such as many, several, few, a few, fewer, such were tagged as adjectives, and not as determiners (predeterminer for such) by SketchEngine (2014); only and very were systematically tagged as adjectives, even when they were used as adverbs; much and less were tagged as adjectives, when they were used as adverbs premodifying the adjective, etc.The second reason was due to typing mistakes, such as lobeAn, i.e., most frequently words stuck together and tagged as adjectives because of their prenominal position.Once the Excel documents were cleaned, other files were created to keep only the adjectives modifying the expressions referring to AP. 13.For example, sweet, which was tagged X3.1 "Sensory: Taste," and which was changed to O4.2+ "Judgment of appearance;" straight, which was tagged O4.4 "Shape" and hot, which was tagged O4.6+ "Temperature," and which were both changed to S3.2 "Relationship: intimate / sexual;" single, which was tagged N5 "Quantities," and which was changed to S4 "Kin," etc., see italics in Appendix  6) are respectively Emotional actions, states and processes (E), Substances, materials, objects and equipment (O), and Social actions, states and processes (S).This is in keeping with the most frequently used attributive adjectives used in collocation with the sequence old m?n (see Appendix Table 11 (a) and Figure 8 (a)).They are essentially related to mental, psychological characteristics (grumpy, wise, grand, cranky, bitter, lonely, strange, creepy, crotchy, vulnerable, nice, etc.).The physical characteristics are rarely alluded to with old m?n, except with bearded and fat, which exhibit a relatively low frequency of use (to which could be added dirty, referring both to physical and psychological properties), as illustrated in ( 1) and ( 2): (1) These are his adventures in that innocent time long before he became the grumpy old man with white hair and a stick.(pearsecom.co.uk) (2) The archetypes that Gandalf epitomizes include those of the wizard or magician, the wise old man who acts as a teacher and/or manipulator and whose principle role is to see that the major actors complete their quest.(silmarillionwritersguild.org) The most frequent semantic domains (Semtags) for the adjectives used in attributive position to premodify old wom?n (see Appendix  frail, good, mysterious, grumpy, silly, eccentric, wicked, rich, etc.), but there seems to be a tendency to also refer to physical characteristics for old wom?n (ugly, fat, toothless, wizened (3)), even if the majority of occurrences refer to mental, psychological attributes ((4), ( 5) and Appendix Table 11).
(3) "Come here, Aunt Milly," she called out, and she sat down on the highest step and waited till the fat old woman, enveloped in a coarse gray blanket, joined her.(gutenberg.org)(4) A large group of college students gathered around a wise old woman as she spoke wisdom into their lives.Now in her eighties, she had a wealth of knowledge and experience from a life well.(christianitytoday.com) (5) He had heard people speak of her as "a wicked old woman."Perhaps she was inside the carriage... but he only saw the Castle coachman and footman and the coronet on the door.(readcentral.com) The semantic preference for adjectives used attributively with old m?n and old wom?n is thus relatively similar, showing no real gender differences for the expressions containing old.We will now see if there are any differences for older m?n / wom?n.
(11) [...] Kyle goes outside to check his mailbox.On his way to the mailbox he spots an attractive older woman stepping outside her apartment in a white robe.The semantic preference for adjectives used attributively with older m?n and older wom?n is thus relatively similar, showing no major gender differences, and relatively positive; this can be accounted for by the fact that older people are not necessarily old.We will now see that there are differences for elderly m?n / wom?n.Semantic preference and prosody JLAR 2 (2024) 10.15460/JLAR.2024.2.1.1183

Elderly m?n and elderly wom?n
The most frequent semantic domains for the adjectives used to premodify elderly m?n (see Appendix Table 8) are: General and abstract terms (A), The body and the individual (B), and Social actions, states and processes (S).The adjectives used (see Appendix Table 13) seem more varied and tend to be used in more specialized contexts: missing, unidentified, disabled, local, etc., ( 17) and ( 18)).They mostly refer to health (frail, vulnerable, disabled, sick (19)), i.e. to a position of vulnerability, as developed by Mautner (2007) The tendencies for elderly wom?n are very similar to those found with elderly m?n: the most frequent semantic domains for the adjectives used to premodify elderly wom?n (see Appendix Table 8) are identical: General and abstract terms (A), The body and the individual (B), and Social actions, states and processes (S).The adjectives used (see Appendix Table 13) also seem more varied and tend to be used in more specialized contexts, and are the same as the ones found with elderly m?n: missing, unidentified, disabled, local, etc., (20) The semantic preference for elderly m?n and elderly wom?n is very similar and the connotation was initially quite neutral, probably due to the euphemistic origin of elderly to refer to AP, even if the passivity and vulnerability of elderly people is generally highlighted.This is in sharp contrast with the semantic preference of older m?n and older wom?n.The analyses confirm Mautner's results regarding the semantic preference of elderly: "Dominant semantic preferences include disability, illness, care, and vulnerability to crime, with the associated semantic prosodies often negative" (2007,63).Yet, the connotations we found for elderly are not so negative in our corpus, which reminds us of Nuessel's hesitation between the neutral, non-stereotyping qualities of elderly (Nuessel 1982) and the negative connotation he called "stigmatic because this word has been employed by media reporters who have traditionally portrayed this social subdivision in a negative and derisive fashion" (Nuessel 1984(Nuessel -1985, 18), 18).Let us now consider the semantic preference for middle-aged m?n / wom?n.

Middle-aged m?n and middle-aged wom?n
The most frequently used semantic domains for the attributive adjectives modifying middle-aged m?n (see Appendix Table 9) are: General and abstract terms (A), Substances, materials, objects and equipment (O), and Numbers and measurement (N).The adjectives (see Appendix Table 14) mostly refer to physical characteristics (white, looking, balding, handsome, dressed, tall, etc., ( 22) and ( 23), with an emphasis on weight (overweight, portly, fat, obese, stout, (24)), a fact confirmed by the frequency of the N semantic domain: The semantic preference for middle-aged m?n and middle-aged wom?n is similar on the whole, even if it is more negative for wom?n than for m?n.We will now see that the trend is reinforced for the last sequence, mature m?n / wom?n.

mature m?n and mature wom?n
The most frequently used semantic domains for the adjectives premodifying mature m?n (see Appendix Therefore, there appears to be a significant gender difference for mature m?n and mature wom?n as exemplified by the adjectives used in combination: if the adjectives used with mature m?n are positive and refer both to mental and physical attributes, those used with mature wom?n are rather negative and mostly insist on physical properties, especially sexual ones.This gender difference leads us to finally consider the role of semantic prosody in the representations of aging men and women, and to assess its effect in relation to the semantic preference of said collocations.

Corpus investigation: semantic prosody of words referring to AP
In this final section, special emphasis is laid on the role of semantic prosody in the representations of AP.The previous analyses showed that there are no real gender differences for elderly and old, which is the contrary for middle-aged, mature and older.One reason for that could be the fact that the old and the elderly can be used as nominalized adjectives referring to an entire, indistinct group of AP, which is not the case for *the mature, *the middle-aged or *the older.The final analysis consisted in aggregating the total number of adjectives used in combination with the headwords, to see whether some general tendencies could be pointed out.The adjectives used to premodify men of a certain age mostly insist on mental characteristics: grumpy, wise, grand, good, crazy, cranky, bitter, lonely, strange, creepy, angry, crotchety, nice, venerable.Yet, those characteristics seem predominantly negative, with 13 negatively connoted adjectives, 5 positively connoted adjectives and 3 neutral adjectives, contrary to our initial intuition.
The adjectives used to refer to aging women also insist on mental characteristics (wise, lonely, wealthy, mysterious, rich, sweet, crazy, strange, bitter, eccentric, good) but also on physical attributes (frail, beautiful, attractive, ugly, healthy, looking).The adjectives are surprisingly more positive than for men: 8 positively connoted adjectives, 8 negatively connoted adjectives and 3 neutral adjectives.
An analysis of the most frequent semantic domains of the adjectives used in attributive position with Wmatrix5 (Rayson 2009) confirms the tendency to find both Semantic preference and prosody JLAR 2 (2024) 10.15460/JLAR.2024.2.1.1183negative and positive evaluations for m?n and wom?n, as illustrated in Figures 3 (a) and 3 (b), which show the evaluative semantic domains shared by both: Evaluation: _Good; Evaluation: _Bad; Judgment_of_appearance: _Positive; Judgment_of_appearance: _Negative.Yet, as Figures 4 (a) and 4 (b) show, in terms of normalized frequency, the attributive adjectives used to premodify nouns referring to aging men are more negative (50 %) than those used to premodify nouns referring to aging women (26 %).If the positive semantic prosody is almost identical for men (23 %) and women (20 %), the main difference lies in the neutral semantic prosody (or absence of semantic prosody), which is unexpectedly much higher for women (54 %) than for men (27 %).

Concluding remarks and future investigations
This study attempted to show the relevance of combining the two concepts of "semantic preference" and "semantic prosody" to study the lexicalized sequences referring to AP in English and to bring out their collocational profiles.It brought to light the fact that apparently near-synonymous lexicalized sequences -old / older / elderly / middle-aged / mature m?n / wom?n -are not used interchangeably, and convey different usages, as exemplified in their different semantic preferences, as summarized by Turner (1998, 57): "Meaning is not a deposit in a concept container.It is alive and active, dynamic and distributed, constructed for local purposes of knowing and acting."Old lays emphasis essentially on mental, psychological characteristics, when older can be used both for mental and physical characteristics, often in a positive way, with the notion of stability attached to it.Elderly is used in more specialized contexts, to insist on the passivity and vulnerability of AP, mostly in physical, healthrelated contexts.Middle-aged mostly focuses on physical attributes, more specifically weight, and is more negative when applied to women than men.Finally, mature is predominantly used for mental or physical characteristics, positively for men, but negatively for women because of the overtly sexual overtones.The gender differences depend on the sequences, with no real differences for old and elderly, minor differences for older and middle-aged, and significant differences for mature.Those gender differences apply to various semantic areas: physical vs. mental; sexualization vs. non-sexualization; positive vs. negative connotations, etc. Contrary to our initial intuition, sequences with m?n exhibit a more negative semantic prosody than those with wom?n, which are predominantly neutral.The same study needs to be carried out on the collective nouns referring to AP (the old, the elderly, senior citizens, etc.) to see if the same tendencies can be brought out, and whether the axiology is identical, regardless of any gender bias.A contrastive analysis of the different Englishes may also prove relevant to see if AP are represented similarly or differently in the different regions where English is spoken.Semantic preference and prosody

Most frequent adjectives used in attributive position
Figure 1: Normalized frequencies of sequences to refer to AP

( 22 )
He doesn't really have any remarkable features, physically speaking that is.A grey, balding middle-aged man with glasses and with an alleged dark side is the best way to describe him.(smh.com.au)(23) Madeleine accompanies me to the Youth Employment Bureau at the Town Hall in Crouch End, run by a Mr. Kingswell, a grey-haired handsome middle-aged man of above average height.(militantesthetix.co.uk) (24) Kymon is a tall, slightly overweight middle-aged man with sparse grey hair, intelligent, dark eyes, a short-trimmed beard and a beautiful, warm, baritone voice.(pandius.com)(25) Towards the beginning of the story, the reader gets the impression that she is an ordinary middle-aged woman who's living a normal life.However, this changes as the main character learns about the case of a missing girl.(termpaperwarehouse.com) (26) There was a pause.Maggie, a little calmer, realised Grace, who had sunk into a chair.She saw that stout middle-aged woman with the flat expressionless face and the dull eyes.She saw the flabby hands nervously trembling (readcentral.com)Semantic preference and prosody JLAR 2 (2024) 10.15460/JLAR.2024.2.1.1183(27) Also, everyone swooning over Palin needs to get out more.She's a reasonably attractive middle-aged woman, which makes her way hotter than every other Republican in national office, but sheesh.(unfogged.com)(28) Elizabeth Douglas might have appeared to Ann as being a somewhat overweight and plain middle-aged woman, indistinguishable from so many such women who frequented the loyalist bars at the weekend.(douglashistory.co.uk) ) and 2 (b) show the results for m?n and wom?n.

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Word cloud of most frequent adjectives used in attributive position with old / older / elderly / middle-aged / mature (a) m?n and (b) wom?n

Figure 8 :Figure 9 :Figure 10 :
Figure 8: Most frequent adjectives used in attributive position with (a) old m?n and (b) old wom?n

Table 1 :
Adjectives used to refer to AP in enTenTen 2020 with absolute and normalized frequency per million tokens (pmt)

Table 7
She wants the money/ It comes with his cream," Steen sings, spinning the tale of a gold-digging young woman who sleeps with a married older man in exchange for money, handbags, and other largess.(tinymixtapes.com)Themostfrequent semantic domains for the adjectives used attributively with older wom?n (see Appendix Table 7 (b) are Substances, materials, objects and equipment (O), Social actions, states and processes (S), and General and abstract terms (A), in other words the same ones used with older m?n, though not in the same order for the first two.The characteristics conveyed by the adjectives used to modify older wom?n (see Appendix Table 12(b) and Figure 9 (b)) are similar to those used with older m?n: (a)) are Social actions, states and processes (S), Substances, materials, objects and equipment (O), and General and abstract terms (A).The characteristics conveyed by the adjectives used to modify older m?n (see AppendixTable 12 (a) and Appendix Figure 9 (a)) are more positive than those used with old m?n: healthy, wealthy, nice, etc.They refer both to positive mental, psychological characteristics(powerful, mysterious, wise, lonely, nice, distinguished, etc., (6)) and physical characteristics (handsome, attractive, white-haired, sexy, bearded, tall, hot, charming, etc., (7)).The adjectives insist on stability, be it financial / economic (wealthy, rich (8)), intellectual (powerful, distinguished, successful, charismatic, experienced (9)) or marital (married (10)), in sharp contrast with elderly.This positive aspect is reflected in the main semantic domains mentioned above.(6)At that moment Jung envisioned a powerful older man within who he described as an elderly 18 th Century gentleman of wealth and position, sporting a white wig.(jungcircle.com)(7) feeling naughty (Quincy, 02171, Norfolk County) feeling naughty and looking for a sexy older man to satisfy my urges, I will come bi curious females you and be your toy.(curiousbi.com)(8) [...] numerous students have joined the Sugar Daddy "dating" website, where wealthy older men meet young women, or "Sugar Babies," helping them with university fees and rent.(stuff.co.nz) (9) George Gallo (Director/Writer) uses the voice of an experienced older man, who is a master artist, to express his feelings to a young artist about his views of life and art, which equals the wisdom [...] (bestmoviereviews.org)(10) "they are more positive than those used with old wom?n: healthy, wealthy, attractive, Kyle smiles at the woman.(sdc.com)(12) [...] Deborah the future judge of Israel becomes the prototype of the questing heroine.Taught by a mysterious older woman to develop spiritual power by meditating on the text "How good it is for people to live in peace," Deborah is both seer and leader (awpwriter.org)(13) Ivar the Boneless had suddenly lost his lust for battle, and was now just staring blankly at the beautiful older woman in front of him.Bjorn Ironside glanced down at his mother, Lagertha, who stood still in thought.(roleplaygateway.com) (14) In Agatha Christie's theatrical masterpiece, Leonard Vole is arrested for the murder of Miss Emily French, a wealthy older woman.Unaware that he was a married man, Miss French made him her principal heir, casting suspicion on Leonard.(theatreworks.us)(15) [...] an invitation for Dom training could be exactly what he needs to regain his self-confidence.Challenged with an experienced older woman, he soon realizes wielding a flogger isn't always enough to break down the emotional walls [...] (nightowlreviews.com)(16) Reveals that almost one-quarter (24%) of Canadian women are raising children on their own and 14% of single older women are poor.Describes barriers and opportunities for young women.(cwhn.ca) : (17) This call out was initiated by Greater Manchester Police.10TH Oct: A full scale search was conducted for a missing elderly man in the Mirfield area.Support was provided by Calder Valley SRT and also a Trailing dog was requested from Cheshire SAR.(holmevalleymrt.org.uk)(18) Salt Lake County Health Department spokesman Pam Davenport confirmed the gender Monday of first person in the continental United States to die while infected with the virus.The unidentified elderly man suffered symptoms of the disease and died after traveling abroad to an area with a Zika outbreak.
(medicalxpress.com)(19)A meeting was arranged for the following Wednesday at the sick man's home.We went upstairs and found this very sick elderly man lying in bed with boxes of medication lying around him and a large oxygen bottle nearby.(southallchristianfellowship.org.uk)

Table 10
Depending on the point of view, the adjectives (see Appendix Table15) can be seen as positive, or extremely negative, as they tend to portray women as sexual objects (sexy, hot, attractive, nude, busty, ) are: Social actions, states and processes (S), General and abstract terms (A), and Emotional actions, states and processes (E).The adjectives (see Appendix Table15) are rather positive, and refer to mental characteristics (serious, strong, qualified, confident, (29)) but also to physical characteristics, with sexual connotations (active, horny, sexy, (30)):(29) That's why i am looking for someone who will give me wings to fly =) I am looking for a serious mature man, a real defender for me, a man who knows what he wants in life.I am looking for someone that still knows how to trust people (step2love.com)(30)Manyfathers are not reliable and you will be sure right after watching these movies where horny mature men are penetrating their sons girlfriends.No incest and only exclusive sons girlfriend fucking scenes.(smut-blogs.com)Themostfrequentsemantic domains for the adjectives used in combination with mature wom?n (see Appendix 26) are somehow different from those used with mature m?n: Substances, materials, objects and equipment (O), Social actions, states and processes (S), and General and abstract terms (A).(32) love to join you and hubby for some joy.where are you from?? e-mail me if you would like some pics.Beautiful sexy drop dead gorgeous mature woman with tits that are truly awesome!! (xelyd.com)Semanticpreference and prosody JLAR 2 (2024) 10.15460/JLAR.2024.2.1.1183

Table 2 :
Most frequent adjectives used in attributive position with (a) old/older/elderly/middle-aged/mature m?n and (b) old/older/elderly/middleaged/mature wom?n

Table 3 :
CQL searches and normalized frequencies for lemmatized and nonlemmatized tokens

Table 4 :
CQL searches and normalized frequencies for lemmatized tokens

Table 7 :
Most frequent semantic domains of adjectives used in attributive position with (a) older m?n and (b) older wom?n

Table 9 :
Most frequent semantic domains of adjectives used in attributive position with (a) middle-aged m?n and (b) middle-aged wom?n

Table 10 :
Most frequent semantic domains of adjectives used in attributive position with (a) mature m?n and (b) mature wom?n

Table 11 :
Most frequent adjectives used in attributive position with (a) old m?n and (b) old wom?n (values in italics are manually corrected)