Corpora: the thing

[Marco Antonio Esteves da Rocha]

Dear all,

I am looking for material on noun phrases such as "things" and related
forms such as "this/these/that/those/such (sort of/kind of) thing(s)". I
think "stuff" and perhaps "line" and "game" in some discourse environments
could be also included.
Material may be bibliography in general (preferably corpus-based
studies of course) and computational handling solutions (if there are
any). Downloadable material for free would be particularly useful, as our
library is not too rich and funds for the acquisition of books and
subscription of periodicals are short.
Thanks in advance,
Marco Rocha
marcor at cce.ufsc.br