Dyslexia Guild Conference 2013 - Online Corpus

dyslexiaaction.org.uk

Online Corpus Literacy Teachers’

Best Friend

Dominik Lukeš http://dominiklukes.net

Dyslexia Guild

Summer Conference 2013

Outline


http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/3563832656

What is a corpus

Answering questions with a

corpus

The language of corpus

searches

The corpus and the

classroom

Practice

Corpus / Corpora


????


of about

language

knowledge

http://www.flickr.com/photos/missturner/3029700617/

Prescriptivism


… how language should be used

Descriptivism

… how language is used

v


“Most of the prescriptive rules

of the language mavens

make no sense on any level.

They are bits of folklore that

originated for screwball

reasons several hundred

years ago… For as long as

they have existed, speakers

have flouted them…”


“intellectual abdication”

“should be ashamed”

“current around 1900”

“a perversion of grammatical

education”

“blind to textual evidence even

when he himself exhibits it”

“dishonest and stupid”

“vile little compendium

of tripe about style”

Grammarian

Geoffrey K Pullum on …

“More passives in Orwell's

pompous essay with the

warning about how you

mustn't use them than in any

periodical you can lay your

hands on! “

This usage stuff is not straightforward and

easy. If ever someone tells you that the rules

of English grammar are simple and logical

and you should just learn them and obey

them, walk away, because you're getting

advice from a fool.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2790

Corpus


Key modern tool for finding out

about how language works…

Corpus


… is a large database of

representative language

samples …

Corpus


… 100s of millions of words

from (mostly) written language

in different genres in small

samples (~2000 words) …

Corpus


… used for linguistic research,

making dictionaries, writing

grammars, …

Corpora available for teachers


http://corpus.byu.edu

Access to COCA and related

BYU corpora is free…


…but free registration

required for more than

~10 queries a day


Brown – the grandfather

COCA

BNC

Webcorp

Google


http://www.flickr.com/photos/atoach/3900591006/

Searching a corpus early on in the

process of making a generalization

can save you a lot of unpleasant

surprises later.

How do we use the word

dyslexia?

We speak more often of dyslexic children

than adults.

We speak more often of dyslexia than any

other dys- word.


Concordance BNC:

dyslexic [n*]

COCA:

dyslexic [n*]

http://www.americancorpus.org/

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc

http://www.americancorpus.org/

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc


COCA:

dys*

Suffixing

rules


*yed

*ied

Suffixing

rules


*yed

*ied

played

stayed

portrayed

enjoyed

unemployed

surveyed

died

tried

married

worried

identified

applied

The Corpus Magic


*

[ ]

?

Different corpora use slightly

different codes. Read the

manual.

[n* ]

The Corpus Magic


*

[ ]

? Any one character

Any number of

characters (incl 0)

Lemma

(all inflectional

forms of a word)

Different corpora use slightly

different codes. Read the

manual.

[n* ] Part of speech tags

(e.g. nouns)


*each each, reach, beach, teach,

outreach, …, impeach, …

teach* teachers, teaching, …,

teachable, teacher-librarians, …

t*ch touch, teach, tech, torch,

trench, twitch, …, three-inch, …

teach * teach the, teach us, teach

students, …


?each reach, beach, teach, peach,

leach, keach, …

each? each- (1), each# (1) [ie nothing]

?each? peachy, bleachy, teacha, reachs

(2) [ie spelling error], …

t?ch tech, tach, toch, tuch, tsch, tich

t??ch touch, teach, torch, tisch, …

[Lemma]


Part of speech tags


[run].[n*]

[run] [n*]

Common tags


[n*] noun [NN2] plural nouns

[v*] verb [VVD] verb past tense

[aj*] (BNC) / [j*](COCA) adjective

[av*] (BNC) / [r*](COCA) adverb

Help


You can also


cats and dogs search for idioms

?each*s combine wildcards

[=pretty] search for synonyms

car|bike|horse search for alternatives

used -car exclude searches

For more details see:

Concordance + KWIC


*ies.[N*]


KWIC – Key-Word In Context

*ies.[N*]

Limit searches by genre


Other questions corpus can

answer Are there more nouns or verbs ending in -ies?

*ies.[V*] vs. *ies.[N*]

Are there four-letter verbs ending in -ed in the present

tense? ??ed.[VVB]

What are the most common adjectives describing students

vs. pupils. [j*] [student] vs. [j*] [pupil]

What do we say teachers do most often?

[teacher] [vvb]


Corpus, rules, and regularity


http://www.flickr.com/photos/51505078@N00/352492687

pre*

*ed

*ies.[V*]

Collocations Limits on variability


See also Kennedy, p. 80-23

Collocations (cont) Limits on variability


See also Kennedy, p. 80-23

Collocations (cont)


[teacher] must [v*]

Idioms and set phrases


275 results

359 results

Google as a Corpus


"put the search text in quotes"

use * for the search item

Google as a Corpus

Pros & Cons


PRO: rare, low frequency usage,

uptodate usage

CON: no sampling, no frequency

sort, no genre limit, no part

of speech tags

Google results counts are only

rough estimates…


http://searchengineland.com/why-google-cant-count-results-properly-53559

Different people searching in different geographic locations can get different

numbers

Sometimes searching for A gives fewer results than searching for A without B

…but Google fights can be fun


WebCorp is makes Google

search results linguist-friendly


Avoid Common Corpus Errors


Be aware of limitations: sampling,

coverage, size, presence of typos

and errors, bad part of speech

tagging

Beware of low frequency results

Beware of homographs

Check results come from multiple

sources

Check KWIC to confirm relevance

Limit search by genre http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreassolberg/433734311

Check examples and sources


Always check low frequency

results


must [v*] [n*]

…sometimes they come from the

same source

False roots

http://etymonline.com

corner, silly, preface,

cockroach, protest, stable …

Make your own corpus with

TextSTAT

http://neon.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/en/textstat

Make your own corpus with

AntConc


http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html

Corpus in the

classroom


teacher preparation

student discovery

Teacher preparation


find relevant, common examples

prepare worksheets

check for exceptions

find out answers to student

questions about rules and usage

Student discovery


show search results to students to

work out rules or word meanings

teach students how to search for

questions

ask students to give each other

puzzles for searching

For heavy classroom use…


register for

group access

to prevent

spam lock out

Corpus v dictionary


Non-classroom

corpus use


supplement dictionary

cross-word puzzles

check typical usage

when writing

Where to go next?


http://www.corpora4learning.net

Thank you Contact http://dominiklukes.net


Dyslexia Guild Conference 2013 - Online Corpus

Education

Transcript of Dyslexia Guild Conference 2013 - Online Corpus