www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk

Dave Beavan Department of English Language

University of Glasgow

Discourse on disk: Tales from the Scottish Corpus

Scottish Corpus

§  Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech (SCOTS)

§  Modern day (1945 to present) §  Scottish English and Scots §  Written and spoken documents §  Wide range of genres §  4,000,000 word corpus §  20% (800,000 word) spoken

Scottish Corpus

§  Externally funded •  2 years

Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in collaboration with Language Technology Group, University of Edinburgh

•  3 years Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

§  Project completed June 2007

The team

Distinctive features

§  Free – no cost §  Free – no access limitations §  Entirely internet delivered §  Must solicit all corpus contents §  Legal concerns

•  Copyright •  Data protection

Comparison

SCOTS ICE-GB BNC Cost Free £750 £500 Words 4m 1m 100m Regional ü Spoken ü ü ü Audio ü ü CD-ROM ü ü Internet ü *

* 3rd party tools available

Corpus building

§  Contact management §  Tracking of paperwork §  Mail merges §  Analysis and ad-hoc reports §  Ensure adherence to legal issues §  Entry of corpus data

§  All under one roof

Website

§  Access to corpus data §  Search and browse functions §  Common analysis features

§  Focus on usability §  Employ new web technologies §  Mash it up

Transcriptions

§  Orthographic transcription §  Multiple speakers

•  Overlap •  Interruption

§  Synchronise •  Orthographic transcription •  Audio/video footage

Maps

§  Geographic data held •  Place of birth/residence •  Place of birth for mother/father

§  Normalise locations §  Source map imagery §  Incorporate navigation

§  Google Maps mashup

Mashup

+

Mashup

+

=

Is this Glasgow?

Flat x/x xx Fergus Drive North Kelvinside Glasgow Strathclyde Gxx xxx

xx Dumbarton Road Partick North Lanarkshire Gxx xxx

xx Great Western Road Anniesland Glasgow Gxx xxx

Maps

§  Locations •  Postcodes too local •  Counties too general •  Cities/towns/villages good compromise

§  Ordnance Survey Gazetteer •  Automatically find equivalents •  Manually assign ‘awkward’ cases

Public awareness

§  Media •  Press releases •  Magazine articles •  Radio interviews •  Online articles

§  Web •  Open up entire corpus to search engine •  Submit site in directories and catalogues

Popular authors

burns 99 852 66 begg 22 corbett 15 leonard 15 the driver 15 blackhall 14 gibbon 14 scott 14 harrison 12

Popular documents

SKARRS 1599 een fur d pyoorists 1490 The Annals of Arbuthnott Part One 763 A Blether an wee Bevvy 703 Buchan Words and Ways 626 A Bit of a Wally 554 BBC Voices Recording: Glasgow 542 Learning Through Reading and Writing: Informational Texts

535

A Sair Fecht 508 Katie Morag and the Two Grandmothers 476

Web hits

0

100000

200000

300000

400000

500000

600000

700000

800000

900000

1000000

Aug-04 Feb-05 Sep-05 Mar-06 Oct-06 Apr-07 Nov-07

Emails

“I'm curious as to why none of my Scots work is included in the corpus. I'm fairly well known as a Scots-writing poet and anthologist. I recorded poems for <person> some years ago and assumed they would be here. Maybe I'm not searching properly but <surname> seems to be a non-person here.”

“<long list of books> … Which one of us is missing these wonderful works? I hope it's me for if it's you this corpus is sorely under developed.”

Emails

“I don't know how to spell the word - it sounds like "bahouchie" and I think it means "behind" or rudely -"bum". What is the correct spelling and is the meaning correct?”

“This is just a note to thank the people who worked so very hard to bring this online resource to the world. It's a fabulous help, and I, for one, am incredibly grateful! Thank you.”

“Think I'm going to have to download the whole thing very very soon...”