online corpus: literacy teachers' best friend
DESCRIPTION
Presentation delivered at Dyslexia Guild Summer Conference 2011 in Oxford. (Slideshow updated based on feedback from the session).TRANSCRIPT
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training.dyslexiaaction.org.uk
Online CorpusLiteracy Teachers’
Best Friend
Dominik Lukešhttp://dominiklukes.net
Dyslexia Guild Summer Conference 2011
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Outline
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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
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Corpus / Corpora
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????
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of about
language
knowledge
http://www.flickr.com/photos/missturner/3029700617/
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Prescriptivism
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… how language should be used
Descriptivism
… how language is used
v
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“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…”
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“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! “
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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
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Corpus
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Key modern tool for finding out about how language works…
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Corpus
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… is a large database of representative language samples …
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Corpus
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… 100s of millions of words from (mostly) written language in different genres in small samples (~2000 words) …
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Corpus
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… used for linguistic research, making dictionaries, writing grammars, …
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Corpora available for teachers
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http://corpus.byu.edu
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Access to COCA and related BYU corpora is free…
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…but free registration required for more than ~10 queries a day
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Brown – the grandfatherCOCABNCWebcorpGoogle
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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.
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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.
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ConcordanceBNC:dyslexic [n*]
COCA: dyslexic [n*]
http://www.americancorpus.org/
http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc
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COCA:dys*
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Suffixing rules
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*yed
*ied
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Suffixing rules
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*yed
*ied
playedstayed
portrayedenjoyed
unemployedsurveyed
diedtried
marriedworried
identifiedapplied
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The Corpus Magic
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*
[ ]
?
Different corpora use slightly different codes. Read the
manual.
[n* ]
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The Corpus Magic
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*[ ]
?Any one character
Any number ofcharacters (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)
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**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, …
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??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, …
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[Lemma]
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Part of speech tags
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[run].[n*]
[run] [n*]
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Common tags
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[n*] noun[NN2] plural nouns
[v*] verb[VVD] verb past tense
[aj*] (BNC) / [j*](COCA) adjective[av*] (BNC) / [r*](COCA) adverb
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Help
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You can also
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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:
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Concordance + KWIC
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*ies.[N*]
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KWIC – Key-Word In Context
*ies.[N*]
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Limit searches by genre
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Other questions corpus can answerAre 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]
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Corpus, rules, and regularity
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/51505078@N00/352492687
pre*
*ed
*ies.[V*]
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CollocationsLimits on variability
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See also Kennedy, p. 80-23
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Collocations (cont)Limits on variability
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See also Kennedy, p. 80-23
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Collocations (cont)
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[teacher] must [v*]
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Idioms and set phrases
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275 results
359 results
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Google as a Corpus
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"put the search text in quotes"
use * for the search item
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Google as a Corpus Pros & Cons
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PRO: rare, low frequency usage, uptodate usage
CON: no sampling, no frequency sort, no genre limit, no part of speech tags
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Google results counts are only rough estimates…
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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
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…but Google fights can be fun training.dyslexiaaction.org.uk
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WebCorp is makes Google search results linguist-friendly
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Avoid Common Corpus Errors
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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
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Check examples and sources
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Always check low frequency results
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must [v*] [n*]
…sometimes they come from the same source
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False roots
http://etymonline.com
corner, silly, preface, cockroach, protest, stable …
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Make your own corpus with TextSTAT
http://neon.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/en/textstat
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Make your own corpus with AntConc
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http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html
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Corpus in the classroom
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teacher preparation
student discovery
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Teacher preparation
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find relevant, common examples prepare worksheets check for exceptions find out answers to student
questions about rules and usage
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Student discovery
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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
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For heavy classroom use…
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register for group access to prevent spam lock out
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Corpus v dictionary
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Non-classroom corpus use
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supplement dictionary
cross-word puzzles
check typical usage when writing
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Where to go next?
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http://www.corpora4learning.net
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Thank youContact http://dominiklukes.net
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