[Corpora-List] Corpora Digest, Vol 13, Issue 14

[Antoinette Renouf]

Dear Tina and others

Briefly, as my colleagues from Cobuild days have told you, Cobuild is simply an acronym for 'Collins Birmingham University International Language Database', though it did strike us that the 'Co' and the 'Build' could also be construed as 'Cooperative Building', which we hoped would characterise the spirit of the endeavour. So no prizes for originality of title, though hopefully so for the content of the subsequent publications.

The corpus which underpinned the bulk of the Collins-Cobuild English Language Dictionary began in 1980 as the 'Birmingham Corpus', part of the 'Birmingham Collection of Text', and became re-cast as the 'Bank of English' in the second half of the decade. It has grown from a modest but ground-breaking 10m words in 1981 to many hundreds of millions of words today. 

In addition to sources mentioned by your other respondents, historically accurate information about Cobuild can be found in 'Sinclair, J McH. (ed.). (1987). Looking Up. London and Glasgow:Collins. ISBN 0-00-370256-1'. Contents:

 

I hope this helps.

Antoinette Renouf

(coordinator, COBUILD Lexicographic Project 1980-83; COBUILD corpus developer 1980-86)

 
--------------------------------------
From: corpora-bounces_AT_uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces_AT_uib.no] On Behalf Of Tina Waldman
Sent: 15 July 2008 09:31
To: corpora_AT_uib.no
Subject: [Corpora-List] cobuild

Hi,
could someone please tell me whether Cobuild is an acronym and what it stands for.
Thanks
Tina Waldman




Birmingham City University is the new name unveiled for the former University of Central England in Birmingham
For more information about the name change go to http://www.bcu.ac.uk/namechange/official_announcement.html

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/corpora/attachments/20080716/3c8c2c17/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
Corpora mailing list
Corpora at uib.no
http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora