Online English Language Corpora

A language corpus (plural: corpora) is a collection of either spoken or written works.  Corpora can usually be searched, and can be used for many purposes, such as determining the frequency of word usage in a language, or normal collocation patterns.  (A collocation is a group of words that are often used together in a language.)

Five very useful and free online corpus sites are these:

• BYU-BNC (Brigham Young University-British National Corpus)
• http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

• BYU-COCA (Brigham Young University-Corpus of Contemporary American English)
• http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/

• BYU-Wikipedia Corpus
• http://corpus.byu.edu/wiki/

• MICASE (Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English)
• http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/c/corpus/corpus?c=micase;page=simple

• MICUSP (Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers)
• http://micusp.elicorpora.info/

As an example of how to get started using an online corpus, we will look at the BYU-BNC web site and how to use it to determine which prepositions typically follow the verb "rely."

When you first enter the COCA web site, you will see that the left-hand panel looks like this:

To change this to examine the prepositions that follow the verb "rely" in frequency order, make the following changes:  

• In the "WORD(S)" field, enter "rely.[v*]" without the quotation marks
• In the "COLLOCATES" field, enter "[ii*] without the quotation marks
• Change the dropdown boxes to read "0" and "1" respectively.

Once the changes above are made, click the "SEARCH" button, and the results below will be displayed.  (Note that the results may be slightly different when you run this, as new data may have been entered since the time I wrote this entry.)

This shows that the most common preposition to follow the verb "rely" is "on," with a frequency of 1807 out of a total of 2072 entries.  The second most common preposition to follow "rely" is "upon" with 229 uses out of a total of 2072.

Perhaps the most difficult thing about using the BYU corpus interface is finding which abbreviations are used for each part of speech (POS).  The list is currently hosted at http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/claws7tags.html.  I have also pasted the current set below.

APPGE	possessive pronoun, pre-nominal (e.g. my, your, our)
AT	article (e.g. the, no)
AT1	singular article (e.g. a, an, every)
BCL	before-clause marker (e.g. in order (that),in order (to))
CC	coordinating conjunction (e.g. and, or)
CCB	adversative coordinating conjunction ( but)
CS	subordinating conjunction (e.g. if, because, unless, so, for)
CSA	as (as conjunction)
CSN	than (as conjunction)
CST	that (as conjunction)
CSW	whether (as conjunction)
DA	after-determiner or post-determiner capable of pronominal function (e.g. such, former, same)
DA1	singular after-determiner (e.g. little, much)
DA2	plural after-determiner (e.g. few, several, many)
DAR	comparative after-determiner (e.g. more, less, fewer)
DAT	superlative after-determiner (e.g. most, least, fewest)
DB	before determiner or pre-determiner capable of pronominal function (all, half)
DB2	plural before-determiner ( both)
DD	determiner (capable of pronominal function) (e.g any, some)
DD1	singular determiner (e.g. this, that, another)
DD2	plural determiner ( these,those)
DDQ	wh-determiner (which, what)
DDQGE	wh-determiner, genitive (whose)
DDQV	wh-ever determiner, (whichever, whatever)
EX	existential there
FO	formula
FU	unclassified word
FW	foreign word
GE	germanic genitive marker - (' or's)
IF	for (as preposition)
II	general preposition
IO	of (as preposition)
IW	with, without (as prepositions)
JJ	general adjective
JJR	general comparative adjective (e.g. older, better, stronger)
JJT	general superlative adjective (e.g. oldest, best, strongest)
JK	catenative adjective (able in be able to, willing in be willing to)
MC	cardinal number,neutral for number (two, three..)
MC1	singular cardinal number (one)
MC2	plural cardinal number (e.g. sixes, sevens)
MCGE	genitive cardinal number, neutral for number (two's, 100's)
MCMC	hyphenated number (40-50, 1770-1827)
MD	ordinal number (e.g. first, second, next, last)
MF	fraction,neutral for number (e.g. quarters, two-thirds)
ND1	singular noun of direction (e.g. north, southeast)
NN	common noun, neutral for number (e.g. sheep, cod, headquarters)
NN1	singular common noun (e.g. book, girl)
NN2	plural common noun (e.g. books, girls)
NNA	following noun of title (e.g. M.A.)
NNB	preceding noun of title (e.g. Mr., Prof.)
NNL1	singular locative noun (e.g. Island, Street)
NNL2	plural locative noun (e.g. Islands, Streets)
NNO	numeral noun, neutral for number (e.g. dozen, hundred)
NNO2	numeral noun, plural (e.g. hundreds, thousands)
NNT1	temporal noun, singular (e.g. day, week, year)
NNT2	temporal noun, plural (e.g. days, weeks, years)
NNU	unit of measurement, neutral for number (e.g. in, cc)
NNU1	singular unit of measurement (e.g. inch, centimetre)
NNU2	plural unit of measurement (e.g. ins., feet)
NP	proper noun, neutral for number (e.g. IBM, Andes)
NP1	singular proper noun (e.g. London, Jane, Frederick)
NP2	plural proper noun (e.g. Browns, Reagans, Koreas)
NPD1	singular weekday noun (e.g. Sunday)
NPD2	plural weekday noun (e.g. Sundays)
NPM1	singular month noun (e.g. October)
NPM2	plural month noun (e.g. Octobers)
PN	indefinite pronoun, neutral for number (none)
PN1	indefinite pronoun, singular (e.g. anyone, everything, nobody, one)
PNQO	objective wh-pronoun (whom)
PNQS	subjective wh-pronoun (who)
PNQV	wh-ever pronoun (whoever)
PNX1	reflexive indefinite pronoun (oneself)
PPGE	nominal possessive personal pronoun (e.g. mine, yours)
PPH1	3rd person sing. neuter personal pronoun (it)
PPHO1	3rd person sing. objective personal pronoun (him, her)
PPHO2	3rd person plural objective personal pronoun (them)
PPHS1	3rd person sing. subjective personal pronoun (he, she)
PPHS2	3rd person plural subjective personal pronoun (they)
PPIO1	1st person sing. objective personal pronoun (me)
PPIO2	1st person plural objective personal pronoun (us)
PPIS1	1st person sing. subjective personal pronoun (I)
PPIS2	1st person plural subjective personal pronoun (we)
PPX1	singular reflexive personal pronoun (e.g. yourself, itself)
PPX2	plural reflexive personal pronoun (e.g. yourselves, themselves)
PPY	2nd person personal pronoun (you)
RA	adverb, after nominal head (e.g. else, galore)
REX	adverb introducing appositional constructions (namely, e.g.)
RG	degree adverb (very, so, too)
RGQ	wh- degree adverb (how)
RGQV	wh-ever degree adverb (however)
RGR	comparative degree adverb (more, less)
RGT	superlative degree adverb (most, least)
RL	locative adverb (e.g. alongside, forward)
RP	prep. adverb, particle (e.g about, in)
RPK	prep. adv., catenative (about in be about to)
RR	general adverb
RRQ	wh- general adverb (where, when, why, how)
RRQV	wh-ever general adverb (wherever, whenever)
RRR	comparative general adverb (e.g. better, longer)
RRT	superlative general adverb (e.g. best, longest)
RT	quasi-nominal adverb of time (e.g. now, tomorrow)
TO	infinitive marker (to)
UH	interjection (e.g. oh, yes, um)
VB0	be, base form (finite i.e. imperative, subjunctive)
VBDR	were
VBDZ	was
VBG	being
VBI	be, infinitive (To be or not... It will be ..)
VBM	am
VBN	been
VBR	are
VBZ	is
VD0	do, base form (finite)
VDD	did
VDG	doing
VDI	do, infinitive (I may do... To do...)
VDN	done
VDZ	does
VH0	have, base form (finite)
VHD	had (past tense)
VHG	having
VHI	have, infinitive
VHN	had (past participle)
VHZ	has
VM	modal auxiliary (can, will, would, etc.)
VMK	modal catenative (ought, used)
VV0	base form of lexical verb (e.g. give, work)
VVD	past tense of lexical verb (e.g. gave, worked)
VVG	-ing participle of lexical verb (e.g. giving, working)
VVGK	-ing participle catenative (going in be going to)
VVI	infinitive (e.g. to give... It will work...)
VVN	past participle of lexical verb (e.g. given, worked)
VVNK	past participle catenative (e.g. bound in be bound to)
VVZ	-s form of lexical verb (e.g. gives, works)
XX	not, n't
ZZ1	singular letter of the alphabet (e.g. A,b)
ZZ2	plural letter of the alphabet (e.g. A's, b's)

NOTE: "DITTO TAGS"

Any of the tags listed above may in theory be modified by the addition of a pair of numbers to it: eg. DD21, DD22 This signifies that the tag occurs as part of a sequence of similar tags, representing a sequence of words which for grammatical purposes are treated as a single unit. For example the expression in terms of is treated as a single preposition, receiving the tags:

                in_II31 terms_II32 of_II33  

The first of the two digits indicates the number of words/tags in the sequence, and the second digit the position of each word within that sequence.

Such ditto tags are not included in the lexicon, but are assigned automatically by a program called IDIOMTAG which looks for a range of multi-word sequences included in the idiomlist. The following sample entries from the idiomlist show that syntactic ambiguity is taken into account, and also that, depending on the context, ditto tags may or may not be required for a particular word sequence:

at_RR21 length_RR22  a_DD21/RR21 lot_DD22/RR22  in_CS21/II that_CS22/DD1