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Online Corpus

Literacy Teachers Best Friend


Dominik Luke
http://dominiklukes.net Dyslexia Guild Summer Conference 2011
training.dyslexiaaction.org.uk

Outline
What is a corpus Answering questions with a corpus The language of corpus searches The corpus and the classroom Practice
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/3563832656

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Corpus / Corpora
????

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knowledge

of

about

language
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/missturner/3029700617/

Prescriptivism
how language should be used

v
how language is used

Descriptivism
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Most of the prescriptive rules of the language mavens make no sense on any level. They are bits of folklore that originated for screwball reasons several hundred years ago For as long as they have existed, speakers have flouted them

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Grammarian Geoffrey K Pullum on

dishonest and stupid


More passives in Orwell's pompous essay with the warning about how you mustn't use them than in any periodical you can lay your hands on!

intellectual abdication should be ashamed


current around 1900 a perversion of grammatical education blind to textual evidence even when he himself exhibits it

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vile little compendium of tripe about style

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2790

This usage stuff is not straightforward and easy. If ever someone tells you that the rules of English grammar are simple and logical and you should just learn them and obey them, walk away, because you're getting advice from a fool.

Corpus
Key modern tool for finding out about how language works

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Corpus
is a large database of representative language samples

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Corpus
100s of millions of words from (mostly) written language in different genres in small samples (~2000 words)

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Corpus
used for linguistic research, making dictionaries, writing grammars,

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Corpora available for teachers

http://corpus.byu.edu

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Access to COCA and related BYU corpora is free


but free registration required for more than ~10 queries a day

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Brown the grandfather COCA BNC Webcorp Google

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/atoach/3900591006/

Searching a corpus early on in the process of making a generalization can save you a lot of unpleasant surprises later.
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How do we use the word dyslexia?


We speak more often of dyslexic children than adults.

We speak more often of dyslexia than any other dys- word.

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Concordance
BNC: dyslexic [n*]

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc

COCA: dyslexic [n*]

http://www.americancorpus.org/

COCA: dys*

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*yed
Suffixing rules

*ied
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Suffixing rules

played stayed portrayed enjoyed unemployed surveyed died tried married worried identified applied

*yed

*ied

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The Corpus Magic

Different corpora use slightly different codes. Read the manual.

* []
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? [n* ]

The Corpus Magic


Any number of characters (incl 0)

Different corpora use slightly different codes. Read the manual.

Any one character

* []
Lemma (all inflectional forms of a word)
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? [n* ]
Part of speech tags (e.g. nouns)

*each teach* t*ch teach *

each, reach, beach, teach, outreach, , impeach, teachers, teaching, , teachable, teacher-librarians, touch, teach, tech, torch, trench, twitch, , three-inch, teach the, teach us, teach students,

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?each each?

reach, beach, teach, peach, leach, keach, each- (1), each# (1) (2) [ie spelling error],
[ie nothing]

?each? peachy, bleachy, teacha, reachs t?ch t??ch


tech, tach, toch, tuch, tsch, tich touch, teach, torch, tisch,

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[Lemma]

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Part of speech tags

[run].[n*] [run] [n*]


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Common tags

[n*]
[NN2]

noun
plural nouns

[v*]
[VVD]

verb
verb past tense
(BNC)
(COCA)

[aj*] / [j*] [av*] / [r*]


(BNC)

(COCA)

adjective adverb

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Help

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You can also


cats and dogs ?each*s [=pretty] car|bike|horse used -car
For more details see:

search for idioms combine wildcards search for synonyms search for alternatives exclude searches

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Concordance + KWIC
*ies.[N*]

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KWIC Key-Word In Context


*ies.[N*]

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Limit searches by genre

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Other questions corpus can answer


Are there more nouns or verbs ending in -ies?

*ies.[V*] vs. *ies.[N*]


Are there four-letter verbs ending in -ed in the present tense? ??ed.[VVB] What are the most common adjectives describing students vs. pupils. [j*] [student] vs. [j*] [pupil] What do we say teachers do most often?

[teacher] [vvb]
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Corpus, rules, and regularity


pre*

*ed

*ies.[V*]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51505078@N00/352492687

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Collocations
Limits on variability

See also Kennedy, p. 80-23


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Collocations (cont)
Limits on variability

See also Kennedy, p. 80-23


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Collocations (cont)
[teacher] must [v*]

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Idioms and set phrases


275 results

359 results
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Google as a Corpus
"put the search text in quotes" use * for the search item

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Google as a Corpus Pros & Cons


PRO: CON: rare, low frequency usage, uptodate usage no sampling, no frequency sort, no genre limit, no part of speech tags

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Google results counts are only rough estimates


Different people searching in different geographic locations can get different numbers Sometimes searching for A gives fewer results than searching for A without B

http://searchengineland.com/why-google-cant-count-results-properly-53559

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but Google fights can be fun


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WebCorp is makes Google search results linguist-friendly

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Avoid Common Corpus Errors


Be aware of limitations: sampling, coverage, size, presence of typos and errors, bad part of speech tagging Beware of low frequency results Beware of homographs Check results come from multiple sources Check KWIC to confirm relevance Limit search by genre
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreassolberg/433734311

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Check examples and sources

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Always check low frequency results


must [v*] [n*]

sometimes they come from the same source


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False roots
corner, silly, preface, cockroach, protest, stable

http://etymonline.com

Make your own corpus with TextSTAT

http://neon.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/en/textstat

Make your own corpus with AntConc

http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html

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Corpus in the classroom


teacher preparation student discovery
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Teacher preparation
find relevant, common examples prepare worksheets check for exceptions find out answers to student questions about rules and usage
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Student discovery
show search results to students to work out rules or word meanings teach students how to search for questions ask students to give each other puzzles for searching
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For heavy classroom use


register for group access to prevent spam lock out

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Corpus v dictionary

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Non-classroom corpus use


supplement dictionary cross-word puzzles check typical usage when writing
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Where to go next?

http://www.corpora4learning.net
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Thank you
Contact http://dominiklukes.net

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