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dyslexiaaction.org.uk
Online Corpus Literacy Teachers’
Best Friend
Dominik Lukeš http://dominiklukes.net
Dyslexia Guild
Summer Conference 2013
Outline
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/3563832656
What is a corpus
Answering questions with a
corpus
The language of corpus
searches
The corpus and the
classroom
Practice
Corpus / Corpora
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
????
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of about
language
knowledge
http://www.flickr.com/photos/missturner/3029700617/
Prescriptivism
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… how language should be used
Descriptivism
… how language is used
v
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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…”
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
“intellectual abdication”
“should be ashamed”
“current around 1900”
“a perversion of grammatical
education”
“blind to textual evidence even
when he himself exhibits it”
“dishonest and stupid”
“vile little compendium
of tripe about style”
Grammarian
Geoffrey K Pullum on …
“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! “
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.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2790
Corpus
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Key modern tool for finding out
about how language works…
Corpus
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… is a large database of
representative language
samples …
Corpus
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
… 100s of millions of words
from (mostly) written language
in different genres in small
samples (~2000 words) …
Corpus
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… used for linguistic research,
making dictionaries, writing
grammars, …
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Corpora available for teachers
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http://corpus.byu.edu
Access to COCA and related
BYU corpora is free…
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…but free registration
required for more than
~10 queries a day
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dyslexiaaction.org.uk
Brown – the grandfather
COCA
BNC
Webcorp
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dyslexiaaction.org.uk
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
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.
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.
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
Concordance BNC:
dyslexic [n*]
COCA:
dyslexic [n*]
http://www.americancorpus.org/
http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc
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COCA:
dys*
Suffixing
rules
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*yed
*ied
Suffixing
rules
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*yed
*ied
played
stayed
portrayed
enjoyed
unemployed
surveyed
died
tried
married
worried
identified
applied
The Corpus Magic
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*
[ ]
?
Different corpora use slightly
different codes. Read the
manual.
[n* ]
The Corpus Magic
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*
[ ]
? Any one character
Any number of
characters (incl 0)
Lemma
(all inflectional
forms of a word)
Different corpora use slightly
different codes. Read the
manual.
[n* ] Part of speech tags
(e.g. nouns)
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
*each each, reach, beach, teach,
outreach, …, impeach, …
teach* teachers, teaching, …,
teachable, teacher-librarians, …
t*ch touch, teach, tech, torch,
trench, twitch, …, three-inch, …
teach * teach the, teach us, teach
students, …
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
?each reach, beach, teach, peach,
leach, keach, …
each? each- (1), each# (1) [ie nothing]
?each? peachy, bleachy, teacha, reachs
(2) [ie spelling error], …
t?ch tech, tach, toch, tuch, tsch, tich
t??ch touch, teach, torch, tisch, …
[Lemma]
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
Part of speech tags
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
[run].[n*]
[run] [n*]
Common tags
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[n*] noun [NN2] plural nouns
[v*] verb [VVD] verb past tense
[aj*] (BNC) / [j*](COCA) adjective
[av*] (BNC) / [r*](COCA) adverb
Help
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
You can also
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cats and dogs search for idioms
?each*s combine wildcards
[=pretty] search for synonyms
car|bike|horse search for alternatives
used -car exclude searches
For more details see:
Concordance + KWIC
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*ies.[N*]
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KWIC – Key-Word In Context
*ies.[N*]
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
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/51505078@N00/352492687
pre*
*ed
*ies.[V*]
Collocations Limits on variability
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See also Kennedy, p. 80-23
Collocations (cont) Limits on variability
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See also Kennedy, p. 80-23
Collocations (cont)
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[teacher] must [v*]
Idioms and set phrases
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275 results
359 results
Google as a Corpus
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"put the search text in quotes"
use * for the search item
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Google as a Corpus
Pros & Cons
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PRO: rare, low frequency usage,
uptodate usage
CON: no sampling, no frequency
sort, no genre limit, no part
of speech tags
Google results counts are only
rough estimates…
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http://searchengineland.com/why-google-cant-count-results-properly-53559
Different people searching in different geographic locations can get different
numbers
Sometimes searching for A gives fewer results than searching for A without B
…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
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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
Check examples and sources
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
Always check low frequency
results
dyslexiaaction.org.uk
must [v*] [n*]
…sometimes they come from the
same source
False roots
http://etymonline.com
corner, silly, preface,
cockroach, protest, stable …
Make your own corpus with
TextSTAT
http://neon.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/en/textstat
Make your own corpus with
AntConc
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http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html
Corpus in the
classroom
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teacher preparation
student discovery
Teacher preparation
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find relevant, common examples
prepare worksheets
check for exceptions
find out answers to student
questions about rules and usage
Student discovery
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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
For heavy classroom use…
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register for
group access
to prevent
spam lock out
Corpus v dictionary
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Non-classroom
corpus use
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supplement dictionary
cross-word puzzles
check typical usage
when writing
Where to go next?
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http://www.corpora4learning.net
Thank you Contact http://dominiklukes.net
dyslexiaaction.org.uk