Re: Corpora: Corpus of scientific texts

GCW (williams@ensinfo.univ-nantes.fr)
Fri, 23 Oct 1998 07:46:12 +0200 (MET DST)

On Fri, 23 Oct 1998, David Lee wrote concerning use of the BNC:

> (Caveat: not all of the above are necessarily academic journals... some
> look like 'popular' science magazines)

I like most people interested in specialised corpora are seeking domain
and topic specific material, the BNC is not spzecialised enough to cover
this, it wasn't their brief. If working on research it is vital to
distinguish between the different genre, mixing New Scientist and the
Lancet would be ridiculous. In addition the genre types in the Lancet
differ greatly from Nature which differs from specialised academic
research articles.
Personaly I believe specialisation means building your own corpus. Not
that tough, takes time but at least you control the parameters. All
depends on your purposes.

Geoffrey
williams@ensinfo.univ-nantes.fr