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

Wed Mar 8 14:42:17 UTC 2006

Another observation coming from a non-native speaker, but with extra corpora at hand.  The expression "already in YEAR" occurs 7 times in the corpus of British newspapers (200 MW from the four major broadsheets from 2004), including many references to punctual events:

m Prada, but quite another to buy the wrong piece from Graff or SJ Phillips. "      Already       in 2001 questions were being asked about the couple living beyond their means.

time to time. But then he did inherit Europe 's fastest-growing large economy ,     already       in 1997 four years into its long boom. Your own legacy is not quite so glitteri

ud of this invention, for which he was awarded a Certificate of Merit in 1948 .     Already       in 1946, Whipple was taking an interest in the possibility of space flight. Mi

en if it is possible to be a good guy in the moral quagmire of a post-war Iraq .    Already       in 1999, Three Kings came across loud and clear as a Hollywood war movie like n

ore ghost story than navigational aid. Yet the geographer Gerardus Mercator had     already       in 1569 produced the famous projection named after him, through which it was,

on, the World Bank, to write off more of the debts it is owed, as it did once already     in 2000. " We propose to the international community that we consider anew all

articularly treasure some of his shrewd essays on the " European project " which    already       in 1990, long before I woke up to what it was about, he was describing as " on
---end of concordance---

Having said that, the expression is much more frequent in my English Internet corpus (19 examples for 120 MW):

http://corpus1.leeds.ac.uk/cgi-bin/cqp-direct.pl?searchstring=already+in+%5Blemma%3D%22%40card%40%22%5D <http://corpus1.leeds.ac.uk/cgi-bin/cqp-direct.pl?searchstring=already+in+%5Blemma%3D%22%40card%40%22%5D&corpuslist=INTERNET-EN> &corpuslist=INTERNET-EN

Is it correct to say that this expression is firmly established in SEE and in the process of gaining popularity in BrE and AmE?

Serge

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-corpora at lists.uib.no [mailto:owner-corpora at lists.uib.no] On
> Behalf Of Martin Wynne
> Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 2:21 PM
> To: Ramesh Krishnamurthy
> Cc: corpora at lists.uib.no
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Re: 'Standard European English' ?
> 
> 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
> 
> Oxford University Computing Services
> 13 Banbury Road
> Oxford
> UK - OX2 6NN
> Tel: +44 1865 283299
> Fax: +44 1865 273275
> martin.wynne at oucs.ox.ac.uk