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<DIV><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="COLOR: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Dear
Xiotian</SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>
<P style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN
lang=EN-US
style="COLOR: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"></SPAN></FONT></FONT> </P>
<P style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN
lang=EN-US style="COLOR: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Although the summary
you've posted suggests that the discussion of your query has come to an end I
thought it necessary to add a little pointer to another online corpus which does
not figure in your list but seems well worth mentioning particularly because it
meets your criterion of user-friendliness so perfectly - <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">BNCweb</I>, available at: </SPAN><SPAN
lang=EN-US
style="COLOR: #ccccff; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode'; mso-font-kerning: 12.0pt"><A
href="http://bncweb.lancs.ac.uk/">http://bncweb.lancs.ac.uk/</A><FONT
color=#000000>.</FONT> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 35.4pt"><SPAN
lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US">This
web application of the British National Corpus was created in the late 1990s
expressly as a more user-friendly alternative to SARA, the retrieval tool issued
as part of the official BNC distribution (in its current incarnation known as
XAIRA). To those, like me, who have sat through many hours of trying to come to
grips with SARA and XAIRA, the discovery of <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">BNCweb</I> has truly been exciting. BNCweb
is not only much richer in (crucial) functionality (you can, for example, add
annotations and generate frequency lists and keyword lists) but it also
makes life for the user infinitely easier. To illustrate, consider the example
of the pronoun <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">me</I> used as a
possessive, as in <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<TABLE class=MsoNormalTable
style="BACKGROUND: white; WIDTH: 100%; mso-cellspacing: 1.5pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; mso-padding-alt: 1.5pt 1.5pt 1.5pt 1.5pt"
cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0>
<TBODY>
<TR style="mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes">
<TD
style="BORDER-RIGHT: #f0f0f0; PADDING-RIGHT: 1.5pt; BORDER-TOP: #f0f0f0; PADDING-LEFT: 1.5pt; BACKGROUND: #dddddd; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1.5pt; BORDER-LEFT: #f0f0f0; PADDING-TOP: 1.5pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: #f0f0f0"
vAlign=top noWrap>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: DE"><A
href="http://bncweb.lancs.ac.uk/cgi-binbncXML/fileInfo.pl?text=F8P&urlTest=yes"><FONT
color=#0000ff>F8P 15</FONT></A> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P></TD>
<TD
style="BORDER-RIGHT: #f0f0f0; PADDING-RIGHT: 1.5pt; BORDER-TOP: #f0f0f0; PADDING-LEFT: 1.5pt; BACKGROUND: #dddddd; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1.5pt; BORDER-LEFT: #f0f0f0; PADDING-TOP: 1.5pt; BORDER-BOTTOM: #f0f0f0"
vAlign=top>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: normal"><B><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: DE">Me
mother</SPAN></B><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: DE">
wasn't very pleased with me going to work there but I said well it's a
start so I stopped<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 35.4pt"><SPAN
lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US">If
you want to find out, for instance, what type of noun immediately
follows possessive <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">me</I>, to get
you there, XAIRA requires more than 20 clicks and manouvering between
various windows. In <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">BNCweb</I> all
you do is type in the string <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">me_DPS
_NN*</I> .</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 35.4pt"><SPAN
lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US">For
a brilliant introduction to <EM>BNCweb</EM> (and, to an extent, to corpus
linguistics in general) see: </SPAN><SPAN lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><SPAN
lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB">Hoffmann, Sebastian, Stefan Evert,
Nicholas Smith, David Lee and Ylva Berglund Prytz. (2008). <I
style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Corpus Linguistics withthe BNCweb–a
practical guide.</I> Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang.</SPAN></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 35.4pt"><SPAN
lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 35.4pt"><SPAN
lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Chris</SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 35.4pt"><SPAN
lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-INDENT: 35.4pt"><SPAN
lang=EN-US
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US"></SPAN> </P></DIV>
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