Looking for a corpus of English...

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Howie - 16 Feb 2004 12:33 GMT

Hello all,

I am doing a dissertation which requires me to use a wide corpus
of English. I have looked at the BNC and the Bank of English but
the costs are prohibitive as I am funding this myself.

Has anyone any idea where I might get a corpus of a few million
words which I use for concordancing and word frequency-of-use
analysis?

I would really appreciate any help or advice you guys could give
me.

Thanks,

Howard.

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Howard Coakley
e-mail... howard<dot}coakleyatcoakley<dot].codotuk
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Dave Fawthrop - 16 Feb 2004 13:50 GMT

| Hello all,
|
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
| I would really appreciate any help or advice you guys could give
| me.

There are masses of On Line Newspapers with Modern English, beware the
Tabloids have different word frequencies from Broadsheets.

For pre 1923 works there is Project Gutenberg.
10,000 free e-books at Project Gutenberg! http://www.gutenberg.net

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Dave Fawthrop <dave@hyphenologist.co.uk>

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Brian {Hamilton Kelly} - 17 Feb 2004 07:55 GMT

> There are masses of On Line Newspapers with Modern English, beware the
> Tabloids have different word frequencies from Broadsheets.

Where does that leave The Independent, which now publishes in both
formats?

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Brian {Hamilton Kelly} bhk@dsl.co.uk
"We can no longer stand apart from Europe if we would. Yet we are
untrained to mix with our neighbours, or even talk to them".
George Macaulay Trevelyan, 1919

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Dave Fawthrop - 17 Feb 2004 08:06 GMT

| > There are masses of On Line Newspapers with Modern English, beware the
| > Tabloids have different word frequencies from Broadsheets.
|
| Where does that leave The Independent, which now publishes in both
| formats?

Betwixt and between?
Sitting on the fence?

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Quentin Burward - 17 Feb 2004 09:41 GMT

Howie at <to.reply.pls.see.sig@endofmessage.com> says in
<ptd1301eais8eo47ci19jdd7du2vfc4a2p@4ax.com>:

> Hello all,
>
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>
> I would really appreciate any help or advice you guys

Dolls need not reply? That's my four-word contribution. Will it help?

> could give me.

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Quentin Burward

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Howie - 21 Feb 2004 12:59 GMT

|Dolls need not reply? That's my four-word contribution. Will it help?

Well, it didn't help me, but it seemed to make you feel better.
That gives me a lovely warm feeling anyway.

H.

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Dave Swindell - 18 Feb 2004 08:15 GMT

>Hello all,
>
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>I would really appreciate any help or advice you guys could give
>me.

See "Computational Analysis of Present Day American English", Henry
Kucera and W Nelson Francis, Brown University Press, 1967. A little out
of date perhaps, but it includes samples of AmerEnglish from a very wide
variety of areas of interest.

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Howie - 21 Feb 2004 12:57 GMT

|See "Computational Analysis of Present Day American English", Henry
|Kucera and W Nelson Francis, Brown University Press, 1967. A little out
|of date perhaps, but it includes samples of AmerEnglish from a very wide
|variety of areas of interest.

Hi Dave,
Thanks for that.
I'm afraid I really need to do this from a text-file based
corpus. Having done some research on the Kucera et-al work, It
doesn't seem to be available in that format.

I'll keep looking...
H.

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Dave Swindell - 21 Feb 2004 17:41 GMT

>|See "Computational Analysis of Present Day American English", Henry
>|Kucera and W Nelson Francis, Brown University Press, 1967. A little out
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
>I'll keep looking...

I know it was done nearly 40 years ago, but it was done on a computer,
so there might just be an off-chance that one of the authors still has
the original files it was compiled from. If, of course, you can find
the authors $-}

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Howie - 01 Mar 2004 10:47 GMT

|>|See "Computational Analysis of Present Day American English", Henry
|>|Kucera and W Nelson Francis, Brown University Press, 1967. A little out
[quoted text clipped - 13 lines]
|the original files it was compiled from. If, of course, you can find
|the authors $-}

Hi again Dave,

Yes - it might be a possibility. Really, it might be a bit
pointless because the particular research I am doing is going to
produce better results with a newer corpus. It looks like the
only choice is to buy the BNC corpus, and load it into wordsmith.

Thanks for all replies.

H.

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Discussion Groups / British English / March 2004

Looking for a corpus of English...