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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>With the vast change from printing literature to
electronic literature, I think it is unlikly for anyone to get a pour BE
or AE corpus from the Internet, where editorial gatekeeping is rather
limited. The globalisation enables people to travel and work in any part of
the world. E-data are in most cases anonomous. We can hardly know who
the authors are. The data collected in America may be produced by Britons
working in the States. The non-native English users may have been educated
in the States, UK, Canada, ect and they may have got the citizenship of these
countries. So, how can we know the authorship of the texts
collected?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>HK is supposed to follow British English
convention, as stipulated in governmental or institutional documents, but
in my trilingual business corpus, BE and AE spellings co-exist; BE
spelling prevails, of course.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Regards</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>
<DIV>**********************************************<BR>Dr Li Lan<BR>Assistant
Professor<BR>Department of English<BR>Hong Kong Polytechnic University<BR>Hung
Hom KLN <BR>Hong Kong<BR>Tel: 852 27667978
Fax: 852 23336569</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=ide@cs.vassar.edu href="mailto:ide@cs.vassar.edu">Nancy Ide</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=CORPORA@UIB.NO
href="mailto:CORPORA@UIB.NO">CORPORA@UIB.NO</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=ide@cs.vassar.edu
href="mailto:ide@cs.vassar.edu">Nancy Ide</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, November 04, 2006 3:14
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Corpora-List] American and
British English </DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><BR>
<DIV>
<DIV>On Nov 3, 2006, at 5:15 AM, Eric Atwell wrote:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">I wonder if American corpora eg ANC have evidence
of British spellings?</DIV>
<DIV style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN: 0px"><BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR>
<DIV>We do indeed. A quick sampling of the 22 million words in the ANC so far
gave us about 240 instances of "colour" and 160 of "behaviour". Some were in
quotations and several were in a blog which is supposedly "guaranteed" to be
produced by native speakers of American English. A few others were in the
Berlitz Travel guides written especially for an American audience.</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>More generally, as Paul Heacock pointed out, the differences between
British and American English are becoming increasingly obscure, although we
see continued differences in syntactic structures, adverbial usage, etc. as
in <FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#121212>“She could not
</FONT><I><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#121212>endure to
live</FONT></I><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#121212> with him” vs. “She
could not </FONT><I><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#121212>endure
living</FONT></I><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#121212> with
him”, <FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#050505>“Immediately I get home”
vs. “As soon as I get home” and of course the famous "make a decision" vs.
"take a decision".</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#050505><BR
class=khtml-block-placeholder></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#050505>E</FONT><FONT
class=Apple-style-span color=#050505>ven worse for us, a definition of
American English is becoming very hard to provide--we could not get a
definitive answer of a native speaker of American English from the American
Dialect Society or LSA. Furthermore, with the influx of so many non-native
English speakers who are learning and speaking English here in the US, we see
the emergence of a brand of English spoken primarily (only?) in the US that is
not exactly like what we might regard as "native American" English. The
emergence of "Chicano English" is one obvious example, but this is slowly
broadening to other language groups. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#050505><BR
class=khtml-block-placeholder></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#050505>We are planning for the future
to include data that may not be produced by those we have so far considered to
be native American English speakers in the ANC, but we *hope* to provide
identification where possible of the linguistic background of the
producer. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#050505><BR
class=khtml-block-placeholder></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#050505>Nancy Ide</FONT></DIV><BR>
<DIV><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
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<DIV>=======================================================</DIV>
<DIV>Nancy Ide</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>Professor and Chair</DIV>
<DIV>Department of Computer Science</DIV>
<DIV>Vassar College</DIV>
<DIV>Poughkeepsie, New York 12604-0520 </DIV>
<DIV>USA</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=khtml-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>tel: (+1 845) 437 5988</DIV>
<DIV>fax: (+1 845) 437 7498</DIV>
<DIV>email: <A href="mailto:ide@cs.vassar.edu">ide@cs.vassar.edu</A></DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~ide">http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~ide</A></DIV>
<DIV>=======================================================</DIV><BR
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