Corpora: Corpus of English proverbs and set phrases

[Andrew Harley]

At 04:20 PM 24/01/2000 +0100, you wrote:
>       I wondered whether anybody on the list knows  about an online corpus
>available for download and consisting of English proverbs and/or set
>phrases. The objective is to turn the corpus  into a data base that could
>be used as an aid for reading comprehension by  helping learners of English
>as a second language to spot allusions to such  proverbs or expressions.  
>Thanking you all in anticipation   François MANIEZ
>Département de Langues  Étrangères Appliquées
>Centre de Recherche en Terminologie et en  Traduction
>Faculté des Langues
>Université Lyon II
>fmaniez at wanadoo.fr

Instead of a corpus, you might want to consider using an existing
dictionary which gives examples of idioms in context, e.g. the Cambridge
International Dictionary of Idioms. This is available as SGML data for
prices from 300 pounds (university research use) to 3000 pounds (full
development licence). See http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/elt/reference/data.htm
for more information.

Andrew Harley
Systems Development Manager - ELT Reference
Cambridge University Press

Direct line: (01223)325880
Fax: (01223)325984

Try Cambridge International Dictionaries online (over 1 million searches
since August 1999) at:
http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/elt/dictionary

We have recently published the Cambridge Dictionary of American English
(book and CD-ROM combined for only $20.95): see http://www.cup.org/esl/cdae
for more details and to order online.