Self-Test: Computer Jargon & Corpora

• a collection of English-language material available for computer processing HTMLISPPDFWWWUSBCALLICEMTCALICAMEROMKIWCVLERAMHTTP
• a company which gives individuals|companies|etc. access to the Internet USBICAMEISPCALLVLEWWWROMICEHTMLCALKIWCMTHTTPRAMPDF
• a database of different samples of spoken and written English HTTPISPCALRAMWWWUSBICEROMMTHTMLKIWCVLEPDFCALLICAME
• a huge collection of documents that are connected by hypertext links and can be accessed through the Internet HTTPPDFKIWCISPUSBRAMMTCALWWWVLEHTMLICAMECALLICEROM
• a set of rules for transfering files on the WWW|usually included at the beginning of a website address (e.g. http://www. ) RAMPDFMTROMCALHTTPCALLHTMLICAMEICEUSBISPKIWCWWWVLE
• a standard way to connect things like printers and scanners to a computer WWWUSBVLEICEMTCALHTTPKIWCICAMEISPROMPDFCALLRAMHTML
• a type of permanent computer or disk memory that stores information that can be read or used but not changed RAMPDFICAMEMTCALROMKIWCWWWVLECALLHTMLUSBHTTPICEISP
• a way to write documents so they can be displayed on a website MTWWWPDFHTMLCALRAMICAMEKIWCICEHTTPUSBVLEISPCALLROM
• an online classroom ICAMEUSBHTTPHTMLCALMTROMVLEWWWRAMPDFISPCALLKIWCICE
• 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. CALWWWRAM1:MULTICHOICE:PDFKIWCMTISPVLEHTMLICAMEICEHTTPCALLROMUSB
• the memory which the computer uses for basic processes MTISPICEROMUSBCALRAMHTTPPDFHTMLVLEKIWCCALLWWWICAME
• the most common format of concordance lines when conducting corpus searches KIWCICEUSBHTTPROMISPRAMVLECALCALLICAMEWWWHTMLMTPDF
• using computers to help you learn ROMICAMEMTVLECALLWWWPDFICEUSBHTTPISPKIWCCALHTMLRAM
• using computers to help you learn languages HTTPMTWWWVLEPDFHTMLCALLISPCALROMRAMICAMEICEKIWCUSB
• using computers to translate language PDFISPCALUSBVLEHTMLWWWCALLMTKIWCRAMHTTPICEICAMEROM

What is a corpus?

an electronic database similar to a dictionaryany large collection of words; e.g. a collection of books or  newspapersa theory of languagea collection of texts stored on a computer

What is the main reason for using corpora?

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

Which of these is NOT a type of corpus?

diachronic corpuslearner corpusobserver corpusmultilingual corpus

What is a concordance?

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

What is a collocation?

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

What is a frequency distribution in a corpus?

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