Re: [Corpora-List] Numpties and bennies: Google searches as linguistic evidence

From: Ramesh Krishnamurthy (r.krishnamurthy@aston.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Dec 08 2006 - 11:05:36 MET

  • Next message: Ramesh Krishnamurthy: "Re: [Corpora-List] Google searches as linguistic evidence"

    Hi Roger

    >Ramesh, of course, meant to write contrapuntal

    I'm sorry, but you have not checked your facts - and should not assume typos!
    :-)

    I wrote "contrapunctual" and meant "contrapunctual".
    (I am well aware of the musical term
    contrapuntal, being a drummer of long standing myself).
    My "research" was solely to do with forms derived from "punctual".
    Today's Google for 'contrapunctual' (sic) yielded 1710 hits.
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=contrapunctual&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

    I do not know whether there is a genuine
    distinction in meaning in musical terminology
    between 'contrapuntal' and 'contrapunctual'.

    But I noticed in today's Google hits that there
    seems to be an extension (of the linguistic term?)
    in the legal and political domains:

    >Secondly the discussion aims at showing that
    >contrapunctual law principles have ... It is
    >proposed however that since this limitation of contrapunctual law ...
    hermes.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=934067
    >SSRN-European Constitutional Pluralism and the
    >European Arrest Warrant: Contrapunctual
    >Principles in Disharmony by Jan Komárek.
    papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=934067

    Best
    Ramesh

    At 16:44 07/12/2006, Roger Shlomo Harris wrote:
    >Thursday 7th December 2006. London, U.K.
    >
    >
    >
    >Dear All
    >
    >Ramesh Krishnamurthy wrote:
    >
    > >>> and most hits for contrapunctual were from music texts.
    >
    >That's surprising. Contrapunctual suggests music which is played erratically
    >so that notes are played too early or too late - that's how I play the piano
    >after drinking too much beer. Ramesh, of course, meant to write contrapuntal
    >which is a genuine music term but he was just testing to see whether we were
    >asleep.
    >
    >Kind regards,
    >
    >Roger.
    >(who periodically moonlights as a proof-reader.)
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >----- Original Message -----
    >From: <mailto:r.krishnamurthy@aston.ac.uk>Ramesh Krishnamurthy
    >To: <mailto:d.maynard@dcs.shef.ac.uk>Diana Maynard
    >Cc:
    ><mailto:harold.somers@manchester.ac.uk>Harold
    >Somers ; <mailto:corpora@lists.uib.no>corpora@lists.uib.no
    >Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 12:06 PM
    >Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Numpties and
    >bennies: Google searches as linguistic evidence
    >
    >Hi Diana
    >Sorry about the brevity of my previous email.
    >I didn't mean to be rude, just in a hurry as usual...
    >
    >But I was raising a genuine concern of mine. An
    >experience last year: challenged in
    >my daughter's school playground by 2 mothers who
    >had heard of my involvement with
    >writing dictionaries, I was asked to resolve
    >their dispute: "is unpunctual a word, can I
    >say unpunctual".
    >
    >It was not listed in any of the printed 6 or 7 native-speaker (US and UK) and
    >learner's dictionaries I looked at. There were
    >15 occurrences in Bank of English (5 in British
    >Magazines, 4 in Independent, and a few
    >one-offs), so below the normal threshold for inclusion
    >in Cobuild at the time.
    >
    >But I found 4320 hits on Google (43,100 today!
    >- so has its usage increased, or has Google's
    >trawl just got bigger?), mostly entries in
    >online dictionaries (based on each other?)...
    >but also 9000+ for impunctual, 5000 for non-punctual,
    >500 for nonpunctual, 400 for contrapunctual, 11
    >for apunctual, and 7 for anti-punctual...
    >
    >When I looked closer at the hits, most of the
    >hits for impunctual were from a 1913 USA dictionary,
    >most of the hits for non(-)punctual were
    >(technical use) from linguistics texts, and
    >most hits for contrapunctual were from music texts.
    >
    >So I told the mothers that unpunctual was a valid word form
    >(ie created according to valid derivational rules)
    >but that it wasn't very widely used.
    >
    >PS I've just noticed a discussion on unpunctual at
    >http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=105391
    >
    >Best
    >Ramesh
    >
    >
    >
    >At 09:36 07/12/2006, Diana Maynard wrote:
    >>Yes, I should have been more explicit, I didn't mean in all cases!
    >>Diana
    >>
    >>Ramesh Krishnamurthy wrote:
    >>>
    >>>>>I guess this demonstrates the power of the
    >>>>>internet over the BNC as a corpus.....
    >>>
    >>>For rare events, events post-1994, and events
    >>>beyond British English, perhaps...
    >>>There's still the problem of reliability...
    >
    >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
    >
    >Project Leader, ACORN (Aston Corpus Network): http://corpus.aston.ac.uk/

    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

    Project Leader, ACORN (Aston Corpus Network): http://corpus.aston.ac.uk/



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Dec 08 2006 - 11:03:42 MET