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<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff><STRONG><FONT color=#00007f>Thapelo Otlogetswe
said:</FONT></STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>>What are good corpora for lexicography?
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>Fred Jelinek (or was it Bob Mercer? -- one of those
guys at IBM)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>used to say, "More data is better data."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>I think we're still at the stage where we need more
data, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>even in English, for which big corpora, both
</FONT><FONT color=#0000ff>"balanced" and </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>"unbalanced", exist. For example, we </FONT><FONT
color=#0000ff>still need many more </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>texts </FONT><FONT color=#0000ff>for historical
</FONT><FONT color=#0000ff>corpora. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>> Hanks takes a position that is common amongst
corpora-dependent </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>> lexicographers - if it's very rare or doesn't
exist in broad-based </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>> corpora like the BNC one would be inclined not to
include it as </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>> a dictionary entry</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>Actually I take a sort of Popperian variant of this
position, viz.: </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>> if it's very commonly used (in a corpus,
or in conversation, or ...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>> anywhere),<FONT color=#0000ff> one may be
reluctantly forced to include it </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff>> as a dictionary entry. Otherwise, I'd prefer to
leave it out.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>Patrick </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
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