Self-Test: Computer Jargon & Corpora

What is a corpus?

any large collection of words; e.g. a collection of books or  newspapersan electronic database similar to a dictionarya theory of languagea collection of texts stored on a computer

What is the main reason for using corpora?

Computers help us discover interesting patterns quickly and reliably.With corpora we can answer all research questions about language.Other methods of language analysis are not reliable.Computers can confirm our intuitions about language.

Which of these is NOT a type of corpus?

observer corpusdiachronic corpuslearner corpusmultilingual corpus

What is a concordance?

An alphabetical list of words that appear in a text.A list of words and their frequencies.Listing of examples of a word searched in a corpus with some context.Information about word frequencies normalised per million words.

What is a collocation?

The tendency of sentences to create meaning.The tendency of speakers to talk over each other.The tendency of words to appear in unique and different contexts.The tendency of words to co-occur with one another.

What is a frequency distribution in a corpus?

Information about how frequent a word is per million words.Sociolinguistic information about the gender of the speakers.Information about how frequent a word is in a corpus.Information about frequency of use of a term across texts and speakers.

• a collection of English-language material available for computer processing CALUSBWWWROMKIWCHTMLMTICAMEICERAMISPVLECALLPDFHTTP
• a company which gives individuals|companies|etc. access to the Internet ICAMEROMCALLHTTPWWWMTVLEPDFISPRAMKIWCHTMLICECALUSB
• a database of different samples of spoken and written English USBKIWCROMICEMTPDFRAMVLEICAMECALLCALISPHTTPWWWHTML
• a huge collection of documents that are connected by hypertext links and can be accessed through the Internet KIWCICEWWWCALHTMLPDFICAMEISPVLERAMUSBCALLHTTPMTROM
• a set of rules for transfering files on the WWW|usually included at the beginning of a website address (e.g. http://www. ) CALUSBVLECALLICAMEWWWKIWCMTPDFHTTPISPHTMLRAMICEROM
• a standard way to connect things like printers and scanners to a computer PDFICEKIWCUSBCALROMHTMLICAMEVLECALLRAMHTTPISPWWWMT
• a type of permanent computer or disk memory that stores information that can be read or used but not changed ISPVLEICAMEKIWCRAMWWWCALLUSBHTMLMTICEHTTPROMPDFCAL
• a way to write documents so they can be displayed on a website ICEWWWUSBRAMCALVLEMTICAMEKIWCPDFROMCALLISPHTMLHTTP
• an online classroom VLEHTMLICAMERAMISPROMCALHTTPPDFICEMTUSBKIWCWWWCALL
• documents in this format look exactly like the original documents and can be viewed and printed on most computers|without the need for each computer to have the same software|fonts|etc. 1:MULTICHOICE:PDFCALLHTMLICEICAMEWWWISPHTTPUSBCALROMKIWCMTVLERAM
• the memory which the computer uses for basic processes ICAMEICEVLEISPHTTPROMUSBPDFMTCALLKIWCHTMLCALWWWRAM
• the most common format of concordance lines when conducting corpus searches ICERAMVLEUSBWWWHTMLCALLHTTPISPROMPDFKIWCCALICAMEMT
• using computers to help you learn ISPPDFHTTPHTMLICAMEROMWWWMTKIWCCALLUSBCALVLEICERAM
• using computers to help you learn languages CALLKIWCVLEHTTPICAMEWWWICEHTMLMTCALROMPDFRAMUSBISP
• using computers to translate language KIWCROMRAMWWWCALCALLUSBHTMLICEPDFISPHTTPICAMEVLEMT