Re: Corpora: Corpus of English proverbs and set phrases

From: Ute Röme (ute.roemer@uni-koeln.de)
Date: Thu Jan 27 2000 - 20:44:33 MET

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    -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
    Von: Oliver Mason <oliver@clg.bham.ac.uk>
    An: CORPORA@hd.uib.no <CORPORA@hd.uib.no>
    Datum: Donnerstag, 27. Januar 2000 17:16
    Betreff: Re: Corpora: Corpus of English proverbs and set phrases

    >François Maniez writes:
    >> I wondered whether anybody on the list knows about an online
    corpus
    >>available for download and consisting of English proverbs and/or set
    >>phrases. The objective is to turn the corpus into a data base that could
    >> [...]
    >
    >Andrew Harley replies:
    >> Instead of a corpus, you might want to consider using an existing
    >> dictionary which gives examples of idioms in context, e.g. the Cambridge
    >> International Dictionary of Idioms. This is available as SGML data for
    >
    >Sorry to appear pedantic, but how would a `corpus of proverbs' look
    >like? I would think no such thing could exist, just like you couldn't
    >have a corpus of past tense sentences. Instead, you have a corpus of,
    >say, written fiction, which you can use to compile a list/database of
    >proverbs, but that would not be a corpus, but a, erm, list or
    >database (or even a dictionary).
    >
    >My understanding of `corpus' is that it is some more or less
    >homogeneous collection of utterances, but not `filtered', ie if you
    >selected all sentences containing proverbs you would end up with a
    >list, not a (sub)corpus.
    >
    >Do other people think different/the same?
    >
    >Oliver
    >
    I think Oliver is right. All the existing English (computer) corpora I know
    are (more or less representative) collections of huge amounts of written or
    spoken language (or both). Of course you can search for English proverbs (e.
    g. in the British National Corpus) butyou have to start a phrase query for
    each single proverb you are interested in.

    Greetings, Ute

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