Using the BNC

[Scott Sadowsky]

On 12/16/2002 10:16, Jonathon Green wrote the following:

>what it does not do, however, is give a page number for the material cited.
>It gives a page range (presumably those read for the Corpus), e.g. 'pp.
>62-165' and the number of  's-units' and the total word count, but, as I
>say, no page number as such. This, for my purposes, and I would imagine
>those of other lexicographers, renders it more interesting than practically
>helpful.

Traditionally, I suppose the main utility of page numbers was to allow
others to verify the existence and veracity of quotations without having to
wade through tens or hundreds of thousands of irrelevant words. But if
you're working with an electronic corpus, what's the point of page
numbers?  Anyone who wants to verify your claims can pull the word or
phrase in question up in a matter of seconds.

And sure, not everyone has access to the BNC, but not everyone has access
to the June 12, 1962 edition of the Bumford Times Herald, either.

Cheers,
Scott

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Scott Sadowsky
Centro de Estudios Cognitivos, Universidad de Chile
sadowsky at spanishtranslator.org · ssadowsk at icaro.dic.uchile.cl
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