Corpora: corpus evidence that runs counter to intuition?

[wmfisher at attglobal.net]

> I'm looking for the kind which would result in a
> "wow - I wouldn't have thought that!"-reaction from the average
> language user. ;-)

  I had quite a reaction like that several decades ago on first looking into
the Brown Corpus and finding out that the word "rhode" was in the elite
4k most frequent words of the English Language.   Who'da thunk it?
So much for intuition!

 - Bill F.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Sebastian Hoffmann" <sebhoff at es.unizh.ch>
To: <corpora at hd.uib.no>
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 7:15 AM
Subject: Corpora: corpus evidence that runs counter to intuition?


> Dear corpus list subscribers
>
> I'm looking for "nice" examples where corpus evidence (radically)
> runs counter to intuition (of a native speaker) or to standard
> perception of the language. Of course there are many findings in
> corpus-based studies that could not have been established by
> introspection - but I'm looking for the kind which would result in a
> "wow - I wouldn't have thought that!"-reaction from the average
> language user. ;-)
> Many thanks in advance!
>
> Sebastian Hoffmann
> University of Zurich
> --
>