Re: Corpora: Corpus Linguistics User Needs

lawson (lawson@ids-mannheim.de)
Thu, 30 Jul 1998 15:51:38 +0100 (WET DST)

Dear all,
As an interested but relatively inexperienced computer "user"
in the sense of getting what I want from a system (for the
reasons already mentioned by others) I wonder whether we aren't
really talking about two different things.
The "big" systems such as COSMAS really need the excellent backup
provided by the experts and I think everyone would agree that
amateurs would be out of their depth and could well either waste
a lot of time, make a mess or, most likely, give up at an early
stage. So I agree with Oliver C that this can be a waste of effort.
It is the "customised" material for which some fairly basic programming
is useful and will remain so for as long as people want to do
innovative research which isn't yet integrated into the "big" systems.

In my experience people adapt very well to their surroundings, ie.
if there is someone around who is expert, fast and efficient on the
programming side, then they get smiled at (nods here from Oliver M
and Cyril!), otherwise people either make do with already available
options, learn what they need to learn, or, possibly, give up. I
think non-programming CLers just haven't really _needed_ to learn
yet.

Of course there is no denying that it would be wonderful to have
a system where one could feed in text in any form, have various things
done to it and have it spew out fantastic results. Is the idea behind
this discussion to clarify what people need in such a system?
Of course, it should be able to support all the things Oliver C mentioned
in his mail :)
Just my tuppenceworth,
Ann Lawson

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Dr Ann Lawson Abteilung LEXIK
lawson@ids-mannheim.de Institut fuer deutsche Sprache
Tel: +49 621 1581 427 R5, 6-13
Fax: +49 621 1581 415 D-68161 Mannheim
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