Corpora: Historical background of Corpus Linguistics

[Jean Veronis]

At 13:06 18/04/2002 +0100, Eric Atwell wrote:

>Does anyone have an earlier citation???

To my knowledge, the first who noticed that rank and frequency were related 
by a hyperbolic law was Jean-Baptiste Estoup. He analysed a corpus in order 
to determine grapheme frequencies for stenography. I had access to the 3rd 
edition (1912) at Bibliotheque Nationale de France, but I think that the 
first edition is from 1902. The book was a best-seller in French 
stenography for half a century.

Estoup, J.-B. Gammes sténographiques. Recueil de textes choisis pour 
l'acquisition méthodique de la vitesse, précédé d'une introduction par 
J.-B. Estoup,... 3e édition. Paris, Institut sténographique1912. In-8 °, 142 p.

Call number at BNF : FRBNF32084574

--j