[Corpora-List] What is corpora and what is not?

[kahmad]

Dear All
Here is what OED says about corpus and has 'concorded' citations about 
how the term 'corpus' has been used:

Definition: The body of written or spoken material upon which a 
linguistic analysis is based.
1956   W. S. Allen in Trans. Philol. Soc. 128   The analysis here 
presented is based on the speech of a single informant..and in 
particular upon a corpus of material, of which a large proportion was 
narrative, derived from approximately 100 hours of listening.
1963   Language 39 1   In the analysis of the data, the structural 
features of the corpora will first be described.
1964   E. Palmer tr. A. Martinet Elem. Gen. Ling. ii. 40   The 
theoretical objection one may make against the ‘corpus’ method is that 
two investigators operating on the same language but starting from 
different ‘corpuses’, may arrive at different descriptions of the same 
language.
1971   J. B. Carroll et al. Word Frequency Bk. p. xxvii,   How many 
types does one have to ‘know’ to know 95% of the tokens in the 
population of texts from which a corpus has been derived?
1983   G. Leech et al. in Trans. Philol. Soc. 25   We hope that this 
will be judged..as an attempt to explore the possibilities and problems 
of corpus-based research by reference to first-hand experience, instead 
of by a general survey.

OED, I am told, reflects standard British and American English usage 
and is based on a 'representative' corpus.  I am sure the same is true 
of Collins, Longmans and M. Webster

Best


On 09-10-2012 12:44, John F Sowa wrote:
> Undefined terms by scientists:
>
> No physicist can define the term 'physics' -- except in some
> verbal definition that is empty, such as "physics is the study
> of physical phenomena".
>
> No biologist can define the term 'biology' -- except in some
> verbal definition that is empty, such as "biology is the study
> of life".
>
> In each case, the defining term is just as undefined as the
> term that is being defined.
>
> You can replace the word 'physics' or 'biology' with the
> name of any science.
>
> Every philosopher from Kant to Wittgenstein has said that only
> arbitrarily stipulated terms, such as those in mathematics,
> can be defined by necessary and sufficient conditions.
>
> Many terms in physics are defined mathematically in terms of
> others, but physicists keep changing the definitions whenever
> they find new evidence and formulate new theories.
>
> John Sowa
>
>
>
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-- 
Best wishes

Khurshid Ahmad. PhD, FBCS, FTCD, CITP
Professor of Computer Science
School of Computer Science and Statistics
Trinity College
Dublin 2
IRELAND

Phone: 00353 1 896 8429 (Labs: 00 353 1 8968435)
Fax 353 1 677 2204
Webpage: www.cs.tcd.ie/khurshid.ahmad

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