Treść książki
Przejdź do opcji czytnikaPrzejdź do nawigacjiPrzejdź do informacjiPrzejdź do stopki
22
Chapter1Stateoftheart
thetheoreticalassumptionstheyhaveaboutlanguageinsteadofstickingto
previousanalyticalschemaandimposingthemonthedata.6
1.4.1.UnannotateddiachroniccorporaofEnglish
ThefirstcorpustobementionedhereistheHelsinkiCorpus,whichwas
thepioneeringworkintheconstructionofelectronicdiachroniccorpora.As
Kohnen(2007)7pointsout,it“brokenewgroundinhistoricalcorpuslinguistics
andsetthesceneforallfollowingdiachronicEnglishcorpora.Ifonewanted
tounderstandhistoricalcorpuslinguisticsasatriptopastcenturies,onecould
saythattripsofthiskindhavestarted,asfaraselectronicdiachroniccorpora
areconcerned,fromHelsinki.”
TheHelsinkiCorpusofEnglishTexts:DiachronicandDialectal
Kytö(1996)notesthattheHelsinkiCorpusofEnglishTexts:Diachronic
andDialectal,whichisusuallyreferredtoastheHelsinkiCorpus,isaproject
whichbeganin1984andwasdirectedbyMattiRissanenandOssiIhalainenat
theUniversityofHelsinki.Itwasreleasedin1991.Thecorpusisacomputerised
collectionofextractsofcontinuoustexts(around450ofthem)anditcontains
adiachronicpart,whichcoverstheperiodfromc.750toc.1700,andadialect
part,whichisbasedontranscriptsofinterviewswithspeakersofBritishrural
dialectsfromthe1970s.AsregardsthediachronicpartoftheHelsinkiCorpus,
itincludesabasicselectionoftextscompiledfromtheOld,MiddleandEarly
Modern(British)Englishperiods,andasupplementarypartfocusingonregional
varieties(ScotsandearlyAmericanEnglish).Thelengthoftheextractsvaries
from2,000to10,000wordsandtheshortertextsaregivenintoto.Kytö(1996)
saysthattheOldEnglishsectionofthecorpuscontains413,300words,the
MiddleEnglishsection608,600wordsandtheBritishEnglishsection551,000
words,atotalof1,572,800words.Thesefigures,however,excludepassagesin
foreignlanguages,thecommentsofthecompilersofthecorpusandoftheeditor.
Astothesupplementarypart,theScotssectioncontains870,000words,whereas
theearlyAmericanEnglishsectioncontains300,000words.Furthermore,the
individuallargeperiodsofEnglisharefurthersubdividedintodifferentsub-
periods,whicharerepresentedasshowninthefollowingtable:
6
Cf.Sinclair(2004a:4)
7
Source:http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/02/kohnen/.
