[Corpora-List] Re: 'Standard European English' ?

[Martin Wynne]

Ramesh et al,

The examples from the Bank of English (BoE) are very interesting (see 
below). There do seem to be examples fo the kind that I called 
'non-native' in my earlier posting (although it would be useful to look 
at a bit more co-text). It seems that there are none of these in the BNC.

My intuition tells me that you can have simple pasts, but that the 
temporal meaning has to be continuous, e.g. (made-up examples):

a. "Already in 1976, he ate too much"

meaning 'he was in the habit of eating too much', but not punctual 
events like:

b. "Already in 1976, he ate too much cake at his wife's funeral"

The presence of examples of type (b) in the BoE could be attributed to:
- my intuition being wrong
- non-native authors in the BoE
- language change in progress (the BNC texts being at least 14 years old 
and the BoE at least 4)
- an effect of the bigger sample in the BoE (400+ million compared to 
100 million in the BNC)
- an effect of different sampling procedures, that different text types 
and regional varieties are represented in the two corpora.

On the last point, it may be of particular note that the BNC tried to 
only select native speaker speech and writing from the UK, while the BoE 
aims for international coverage.

Martin

Ramesh Krishnamurthy wrote:
> Hi Nick
> The Bank of English (HarperCollins, regularly updated until 2002)
> has 4412 examples of "already+in", of which at least 55 are for
> "already+in+YEAR", from a variety of British and North American sources, 
> mostly written
> rather than spoken, e.g.
> -------------
> usbooks/US ngland: 1550---1750, 109. Already in 1584 Scot described these
> npr/US erms of history - but I think already in 1600 when opera was 
> invented,
> strathy/CA in the white lime quarry. Already in 1658, a few years after the
> brbooks/UK inst itself- Romanticism. Already in 1750 Rousseau wrote that 
> reason
> strathy/CA ports of its proceedings. Already in 1764 one finds a 
> ministerial
> usbooks/US  lost control (1775). But already in 1770, Governor Hutchinson
> usbooks/US who drifted on their own. Already in 1776 an observer noted
> strathy/CA  ministers of state." <p> Already in 1780 the press was 
> facetiously
> usbooks/US n in the state of repose. Already in 1790 the implications 
> disturbed
> times/UK liked to write things down. Already in 1795 he used the word
> usnews/US 8. Success had come early. Already in 1822, he was excused from
> usacad/US pletely with this thought, already in 1856, before the 
> coronation,
> brmags/UK  an assistant, until 1872. Already in 1866 the Faberge firm was
> indy/UK azy paintings under one arm. Already in 1900 he seemed to his
> brbooks/UK natural human creativity. Already in 1915, Hobson had alluded 
> `to
> strathy/CA ts. It had not known that already in 1915 one <p> of the 
> conditions
> strathy/CA ts. It had not known that already in 1915 one <p> of the 
> conditions
> usbooks/US d Army were provided for. Already in 1918, at least one-third 
> and
> usbooks/US y exploited this fallacy: already in 1918, Ioffe and Krasin 
> had with
> usbooks/US leadership had determined already in 1918 to shift to personal
> brbooks/UK  a tremendous outcry. But already in 1919, among the military 
> and
> usbooks/US thority over the country. Already in 1920 it was common for the
> --------
> Best
> Ramesh
> 
> At 20:26 07/03/2006, Nicholas Sanders wrote:
> 
>> Does the panel agree that the use of "already" in the following is an
>> example of SEE?
>>
>>         Already in 1976, UNESCO itself mentioned that this practice 
>> should
>> only be used where absolutely necessary...
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> Nicholas J A Sanders
>> _____________________
>> semiotek
>>
>> T: +44 [0]7092 153 409
>> F: +44 [0]8707 059 093
>>
>> nick at semiotek.org
>> _____________________
>>
>>
>>
> 
> Ramesh Krishnamurthy
> Lecturer in English Studies
> School of Languages and Social Sciences
> Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
> Tel: +44 (0)121-204-3812
> Fax: +44 (0)121-204-3766
> http://www.aston.ac.uk/lss/english/ 
> 
> 


-- 
Martin Wynne
Head of the Oxford Text Archive and
AHDS Literature, Languages and Linguistics

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