Re: Corpora: query

Hongyin Tao (ht37@cornell.edu)
Thu, 28 May 1998 20:59:40 -0400

This may not be exactly what you wanted, but could be useful.

International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 1:2 (1996)

The Borrowing of Classical and Romance Words into English: A Study Based
on the Electronic
Oxford English Dictionary
Jonathan Culpeper and Phoebe Clapham

Abstract

This paper describes a study designed to investigate the effect of
Classical and Romance vocabulary on the
English lexicon. The study involved a series of computer searches, using
the CD-ROM version of the
Oxford English Dictionary (1989). Our aim was to discover how many and
at what point in time words
were borrowed into English from Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish,
and Portuguese. The paper
describes the general obstacles and limitations - both with the Oxford
English Dictionary and the computer
searches - that circumscribe our results. We then present our findings,
relating them to extant research.

afc@nwnexus.com wrote:
>
> I'm looking for a list of high-frequency foreign words found in English
> text, e.g. words like "cafe" (with an acute accent over the final e),
> "resume" (acute accent over both e's) and facade (where c == c-cedilla), etc.
>
> Does anyone know of such a list? Or pointers to a listing from which
> the list I'm looking for could be extracted?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Alexander

Hongyin Tao
Cornell University
Department of Modern Languages