Features of Corpora for Language Learners.

1. Features of Corpora
Bruno
Martin

2. What are corpora?
Corpora can be defined as a collection of digitized texts,
compiled according to certain criteria, considered to be
representative of a language or of the part one intends to
study. (TAGNIN, 2014)

3. What can we do with corpora?
● Observe authentic ocurrences of language in various
contexts.
● Compare the results so we can infer meaning of words and
expressions.
● And more

4. Features of corpora
● A vast amount of sources.
● Examples clearly showed.
● Search engine that can do things such as:
○ Find single words and all forms that a word can have.
○ Create chart in which we can observe the frequency of a word in
the different sections of the corpus.
○ See which words occur near other words.
○ Compare two words and their collocates, so you can see how they
differ in meaning.
○ See the patterns in which a word occur.

5. How to use a corpus - Example 1
In the sentence:
“In his seminal article ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’, James
Holmes argued for the adoption of ‘translation studies’ ‘as the standard term
for the discipline as a whole’ (1972/1988: 70) and other scholars have since
followed suit.”
Dictionary definition: Followed suit: to follow an example
set.
I want to know the frequency of the expression “follow
suit”.

6. How to use it

7. Here we can see that the expression “follow suit” is more
frequent in written English than in spoken English.

8. Since it is the first time I see the expression, I wonder if
anyone says “follow the suit”, too.

9. When we Google the expression, the expression doesn’t exist
either. Therefore we should not say “follow the suit”.

10. Example 2
Original sentence:
“For example theories of human as opposed to machine
translation or written translation as opposed to oral
interpreting)”
I didn’t find an explanation of “as opposed to” in the
dictionary. I wonder whether it’s a random combination with
as or “as opposed to” can be used itself.

12. As we can see, in most texts, the components before and after
“as opposed to” are similar in grammatical structure and
contrast in meaning. We can draw from these example a conclusion
that as opposed to has a similar meaning with but not, rather
than, instead of.

13. Example 3
Original Sentence:
“Moreover, by contrast to Holme’s insistence on the
dialectical relationship between all three areas, Toury
seems to see the relationship between theoretical and
descriptive translation studies on the one hand and what he
calls the ‘Applied Extensions’ of the discipline on the
other as strictly unidirectional (1995: 18)”.
As I remember, I only saw in contrast with instead of by
contrast to. So I want to see which one is right or more
frequently used.

17. Example 3
The numbers on the top shows that in contrast to is more
frequently used than the other two.
If we study the example a little more carefully, we can see
that these three phrases share the same meaning. But by
contrast to is much less used to form a predicative
structure in a sentence (, that is, it rarely follows verbs
like is, are, stand, etc). And it is more often used to
start a sentence.

18. Example 4
Original text:
“At a conference held in Dublin in May 1994 for instance,
some delegates called for establishing an independent
discipline of interpreting studies, because theoretical
models in translation studies by and large ignore
interpreting and are therefore irrelevant to those
interested in this field.”
Dictionary definition: by and large: on the whole; in
general

19. Example 4
This is my first time that I see this phrase. I want to know
how often it is used in different sections (spoken, fiction,
academic, newspaper, etc.) compared with synonyms like on
the whole and in general.

20. “by and large”

21. “on the whole”

22. “In general”

23. Example 4
Observing the search results we can notice that “in general”
is the most common expression used, ocurring more in
academic texts.
“By and large” is more used in spoken language.

24. Example 5
Original phrase:
“This is true to a large extent, just as it is true that
within interpreting studies itself far more attention has
traditionally been paid to simultaneous CONFERENCE
INTERPRETING than to other areas such as COMMUNITY
INTERPRETING and liaison interpreting.”
I can’t find the meaning of liaison interpreting in the
dictionary. Then I turn to a corpus.

26. Example 5
Well, since it’s hard to draw an explanation of the phrase
from these example, this time we’d better turn to a search
engine.

27. Example 6
Original sentence:
“Similarly, the threat of fragmentation sometimes looms high
in the kind of literature which deliberately sets different
theoretical approaches or research programmes in
opposition.”
Dictionary definition of loom: to appear in an impressively
great or exaggerated form

28. Example 6
I wonder if the verb loom is often combined with subjects
like threat or the adjective/adverb high.

31. Example 6
As it shows, loom does frequently follow threat and other
words with a negative impression, and is often followed by
large and high.

32. Example 7
Original sentence:
“Translation studies can and will hopefully continue to draw
on a variety of discourses and disciplines and to encourage
pluralism and heterogeneity.”
I want to know if there are any differences between
pluralism and heterogeneity.

34. Example 7
Comparing this two words we can see which words are usually
associated with which one of them.

35. Example 8
One last example we can try, is to see if some determined
word is being more used nowadays.
Let’s try the word tattoo:

37. Example 8
Looking to the chart we can see that the word tattoo have
much more occurances in the period of 2010 - 2015 than in
past years.

38. Functions of corpora
For Language learners:
● From a large amount of examples of the language, we get to know the
general usages of words or phrases.
● We can learn to use vocabulary correctly and commonly, like the
native speakers do.
● By reading those examples, we strengthen our memory of new vocabulary
at the same time.
● By comparing various words or phrases with similar meanings, we get
to choose the better ones to make ourselves understood.
● Sometimes by analyzing the examples, with a little guessing, we can
conclude the meaning of words or phrases.

39. Functions of corpora
For Linguists:
● It can be inferred from corpora how the meaning of words slightly
change along history and how some of the words become more popular or
old-fashioned.
● It helps write dictionaries.
● By comparing different corpora with different sources (eg. I.
American English and British English, II. noble English and English
among folks), they can know the differences between different types
or fields of English.

40. Corpora or dictionaries?
For language learners, dictionary always come ahead of
corpora.
1. To save time. Turning to a dictionary is the fastest and
easiest way to know the definitions and meanings. Most
frequent collocations and idioms are listed in big
dictionaries (such as Oxford English Dictionary).
2. If we couldn’t find the word or phrase in the dictionary,
then try out a corpus.

41. Corpora or dictionaries?
3. If we want to read more examples of the word or phrase,
try out a corpus.
4. If we’re writing and we’re not sure how to use a word of
phrase, we can either turn to a dictionary or a corpus.

42. Bilingual Corpora
Another type of corpora that can be very useful is the
biligual, in which we have texts in different languages
allowing us to compare translation and the meanings a word
can have in different languages.

43. Example 1
I want to know which words in english are equivalent to the
portuguese word “mexer”

45. Example 1
Observing the results we can see that the word “mexer”, is
usually translated to “stirring”, and its meaning usually is
related to mix something together.
In one case the word was not translated.
And also we had the translation “move”, but in this case
“mexer” was with a different meaning from mix.

46. Bibliography
● TAGNIN, S.E.O.. What can I do with Corpus Linguistics?.
2014 (EAGILE - USP).
● http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
● http://comet.fflch.usp.br/cortrad

47. THANK YOU