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/