What is the BNC? What is Xaira? How to use the BNC for: › Language teaching and learning ›...
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Transcript of What is the BNC? What is Xaira? How to use the BNC for: › Language teaching and learning ›...
What is the BNC? What is Xaira? How to use the BNC for:
› Language teaching and learning › Research
A 100 million word collection of samples of British English from a wide range of sources (10% spoken, 90% written texts).
Available under licence; latest edition is BNC XML edition (2007)
Reference Book Publishing Natural language processing Language Teaching and Learning› Materials design› Classroom reference › Independent learning Linguistic Research› BNC as source of real language use› BNC as benchmark
http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/corpus/index.xml
XML Aware Indexing and Retrieval Architecture
A text searching tool Usable with any XML corpus Provided free with the BNC XML Edition
Word – the different word forms in the corpus
Phrase – the multi-word phrase or single word form
Addkey – words with additional keys such as POS codes
Pattern – word patterns
XML – specific XML start- or end- tags
Query builder – a complex query
CQL – commands in CQL, the language Xaira uses to represent its queries internally
How Xaira looks How the solutions are displayed
Manage the windows on the screen
Solutions No solutions Too many solutions dialogue box
Page mode/ Line mode Plain text / XML text Scope of context Reference (status bar)
‘It's an interesting idea.
<s n="105"><c c5="PUQ">‘</c><w c5="PNP" hw="it" pos="PRON“>It</w><w c5="VBZ" hw="be" pos="VERB">‘s</w><w c5="AT0" hw="an" pos="ART">an</w><w c5="AJ0" hw="interesting" pos="ADJ">interesting</w><w c5="NN1" hw="idea" pos="SUBST">idea</w><c c5="PUN">.</c></s>
Case studies 1: She’ll (turn/ go) mad!! 2: Men are handsome/ women are
beautiful› Language teaching and learning
Materials design, classroom reference, independent learning
3: Words in my corpus vs. ‘standard’ use› Research
Task: › comparing use of “Turn” and “Go”› Turn + adj. vs. Go + adj.
Language point: Semantic prosody Xaira functions:
› Open the BNC› New query – query builder
(word query + Addkey)› Sort
Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective
Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective
Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective
Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective
Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective
Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective
Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective
Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective
Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective
Link type: - Next - Not next- one-way- two-way
Go + adj. (a-z) Turn + adj. (a-z)
2 keys: 1. Examples of ‘go’, then ‘turn’2. Adj. (a-z)
TwoThree
Task: › Comparing the frequencies of collocates
Men vs. Handsome/ Beautiful Women vs. Beautiful/ Handsome
Language point: collocations Xaira functions:
› Word query › Collocation
Source: The BNC Handbook (1998)
__
1
Men with Handsome 15 Men with Beautiful 8 Women with Beautiful 83 Women with Handsome 2
Data: Bumrungrad and Vitallife websites
“Linguistic keywords reflect the content of a particular text (Scott, 1997; 2000) through their high frequency”
Task/ research purpose› Identifying keywords to see which words are used
particularly frequently on the websites› Comparing words in a website against ‘standard’
use
Source: Watson Todd, R.
BIH and Vitallife BIH only Vitallife only
and center and
center and Vitallife
about a to
the us about
us the management
Words Frequencies
Corpus size
Frequencies
Corpus size
and Known Known Unknown Known
centre .
about .
the .
… .
BNCWebsit
es
http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/llwizard.html
BIH and VL BIH only VL onlyVitallife center VitallifeBumrungrad Bumrungrad wellnesscenter overview programswellness hospital nutraceuticalsus international medicine
Words relating to the hospital itself or its location
Words associated with websites Words relating to medical priorities Words relating to promotional
priorities Words relating to non-traditional
interpretations of health
Keyword Freq.
LL Source Example
Words relating to the hospital itself or its location
Vitallife 23 282.92
Vitallife At Vitallife we understand
Bumrungrad 21 258.32
Bumrungrad Bumrungrad serves over a million patients
hospital 20 123.26
Bumrungrad the largest private hospital
international 21 116.48
Bumrungrad Bumrungrad International is a complete medical campus
Thailand 10 87.05 Bumrungrad best quality service in Thailand
Bangkok 8 82.87 Bumrungrad located in the heart of Bangkok
Collocation› Definition of the word› Phrase› Semantic prosody
Contrastive studies › Geographical varieties and languages› Categories of users
Language teaching and learning › Word meaning › Grammatical structures
Source: The BNC Handbook (1998)
Aston, G. and Burnard, L. (1998), The BNC Handbook: exploring the British National Corpus with SARA. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Oxford University Computing services (All About Xaira)http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/rts/xaira/
Reference guide for the BNC (XML edition)http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/docs/URG/
The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition). 2007. Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. URL: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/