[Corpora-List] diachronic corpus tool

[Antoinette Renouf]

Dear Chris and Angelo
To query 1:
Assuming you are interested in constructing tools for the analysis of modern language, I would refer you to the publication details and demos of diachronic tools on the web-site of the Research and Development Unit for English Studies, University of Central England in Birmingham, at http://rdues.uce.ac.uk/. Our tools analyse change across time (15 years) in terminology, word meaning and use, morphology, the structure of the lexicon, sense relations and topic/aboutness. 
To query 2:
You can use your tools to monitor change in an unbroken stretch of electronic text (e.g. 15 years), and/or contrast the language use in sequential finite comparable corpora at a given timespan apart, (e.g. 30 years, as with the LOB/FLOB; Brown/Frown corpora - contact Chris Mair at
 christian.mair at anglistik.uni-freiburg.de <mailto:christian.mair at anglistik.uni-freiburg.de> )
If you are also interested in historical diachronic study, there are several major centres of expertise - 
you could approach the creators of the HELSINKI and ARCHER corpora for guidance. Modern and historical diachronic study are actually in the process of overlapping somewhere in the 20th century.
There are many theoretical and practical choices, and linguistic, statistical and computational issues, 
involved in your proposed initiative. You are welcome to contact us in the R&D Unit if you need advice at the next stage.
-------------------------
Antoinette Renouf
Professor of English Language and Linguistics
School of English
University of Central England in Birmingham
Birmingham B42 2SU
       
tel: +44 (0)121 331 7230
fax: +44 (0)121 331 6622
mob: +44 (0)7980 750037
email: ajrenouf at uce.ac.uk
url: http://rdues.uce.ac.uk


	-----Original Message----- 
	From: owner-corpora at lists.uib.no on behalf of Christopher Brewster 
	Sent: Sun 07/11/2004 21:13 
	To: corpora at uib.no 
	Cc: angelo at maltalinks.com 
	Subject: [Corpora-List] diachronic corpus tool
	
	

	We are in the process of constructing a tool for the analysis of diachronic
	corpora.
	
	I would be grateful for:
	1. Pointers to previous research on diachronic corpora, especially
	concerning vocabulary development, terminological innovation etc. rather
	than style.
	
	2. Any suggestions as to the kind of questions that would be of interest to
	be able to put to such a tool.
	 By this I mean, what are the abstract questions one would like to answer.
	This is in order to design the query facility more effectively.
	
	I have my own research questions but we do not want to make the tool very
	narrow.
	
	Thanks in advance,
	
	Christopher Brewster
	Angelo Dalli
	
	
	*****************************************************
	Natural Language Processing Group,
	Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield
	Tel: +44(0)114-22.21967  Fax: +44 (0)114-22.21810
	Regent Court, 211 Portobello Street 
	Sheffield   S1 4DP   UNITED KINGDOM
	Web: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~kiffer/
	*****************************************************
	A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of an
	idea within a wall of words.---  Samuel Butler
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	
	

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/corpora/attachments/20041108/a96c2042/attachment.htm>