Dominik Lukes - Online Corpus for Literacy Teachers - Dyslexia Guild Summer Conference 2011

8/6/2019 Dominik Lukes - Online Corpus for Literacy Teachers - Dyslexia Guild Summer Conference 2011

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training.dyslexiaaction.org.uk

Online Corpus

Literacy Teachers¶Best Friend

Dominik Lukehttp://dominiklukes.net

Dyslexia Guild

Summer Conference 2011



Outline


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

What is a corpus

Answering questions with a

corpus

The language of corpussearches

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




³Most of the prescriptive rules

of the language mavensmake no sense on any level.

They are bits of folklore that

originated for screwball

reasons several hundredyears ago« For as long as

they have existed, speakers

have flouted them«´





This usage stuff is not straightforward and

easy. If ever someone tells you that the rules

of English grammar are simple and logicaland 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


« used for linguistic research,making dictionaries, writing

grammars, «






Corpora available for teachers


http://corpus.byu.edu



Access to CO

CA and relatedBYU corpora is free«


«but free registrationrequired for more than

~10 queries a day






Brown ± the grandfather

COCA

BNCWebcorp

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 unpleasantsurprises 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.




ConcordanceBNC:

dyslexic [n*]

COCA:

dyslexic [n*]

http://www.americancorpus.org/

http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc




COCA:

dys*



Suffixingrules


*yed

*ied



Suffixingrules


*yed

*ied

played

stayed

portr ayedenjoyed

unemployed

surveyed

died

tr ied

mar r ied

wor r iedidentif ied

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, teachstudents, «




?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 synonymscar|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*]



CollocationsLimits 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 thesame 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 accessto 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 youContact http://dominiklukes.net


Documents

Dominik Lukes - Online Corpus for Literacy Teachers - Dyslexia Guild Summer Conference 2011