Re: [Corpora-List] Unsuccessful BNC word search

From: Ramesh Krishnamurthy (r.krishnamurthy@aston.ac.uk)
Date: Mon May 22 2006 - 12:49:58 MET DST

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    Hi Linda

    Yes, as BNC was mainly compiled by 1994, most of the occurrences will
    actually be from the
    period before 'ordinary people' started using email.

    http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx
    will give you 40 examples (type "e+mail"), plus a collocation list
    if you want it, + 11 examples for "email" (surely now the preferred form?).

    You may get even more current usage examples from
    <http://www.webcorp.org.uk/>http://www.webcorp.org.uk/
    Or from
    http://www.highbeam.com/library/index.asp

    Best
    Ramesh

    At 20:56 21/05/2006, Linda Bawcom wrote:
    >Dear friends, colleagues and list members,
    >
    >I have two sentences from two separate newspaper articles:
    >
    >The e-mail indicated that they were going scuba diving off the coast
    >of Thailand.
    >
    >The message indicated that they were going to be scuba diving off
    >the coast of Thailand.
    >
    >For the moment, though interesting, my concern is not with the
    >change of tense. My problem is finding strings with 'e-mail'. The
    >BNC's 60 examples seem to be almost entirely from computer magazines
    >(although I haven't checked David Lee's Index) and so
    >discuss functions of e-mail and similar and are of no use to me. My
    >own small corpus only has this one instance; and of course, earlier
    >corpora does not have this word.
    >
    >Any advice would be very much appreciated and I wouldn't mind buying
    >the corpus/corpora (providing it's within reason for a single
    >researcher). My apologies for not keeping prior e-mails that
    >discussed different corpora. In my certitude that the BNC would be
    >all I needed, I deleted them (well, live and learn).
    >
    >Kindest regards (from Liverpool at the moment),
    >Linda
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >"Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind." John Donne

    Ramesh Krishnamurthy
    Lecturer in English Studies
    School of Languages and Social Sciences
    Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
    [Room NX08, North Wing of Main Building]
    Tel: +44 (0)121-204-3812
    Fax: +44 (0)121-204-3766
    http://www.aston.ac.uk/lss/staff/krishnamurthyr.jsp

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