Date

Geogr

Size

Content

Notes

SEU ("index" cards)
(Survey of English Usage)

1959-
(1953-87)

UK

1m
(200 x 5000w)

1/2 wr, 1/2 sp

Randolph Quirk
Spoken in 1980 as London/Lund Corpus (LLC)

Brown

1961

US

1m
(500 x 2000w)

All written
75% informative
25% imaginative

Indifference/hostility
News, rel, pop, bios, misc, learned
Gen, mystery, SF, adv/West, romance, humor
Problems: size, little regional diffs

 

Brown = (on average) 1/400th the number of tokens
~ #10,000 (~1,600 tokens in COCA): turbulent 4, exaggerated 13, wooded 5, tidy 1, smoky 5, shimmering 3 (=5 average)
~ #30,000 (~150 tokens in COCA): decorous 1, kitschy, faithless, pulsating 3
~ #40,000 (~70 tokens in COCA): scorned, mistrustful, changeless, untalented

LOB

1961
(1970-78)

UK

1m
(500 x 2000w)

Approx same

Approx same

FLOB
FROWN

1991

US/UK

1m each

Approx same

Approx same

Australia
New Zealand
India

1978 India
1986 Aus/NZ

India
NZ/Aus

1m each

Approx same

Approx same (-Western, SF, romance in Kolhapur)

London-Lund

500k
(100 x 5000 w)

From the SEU
Lots of markup (tone, pause, stress, simult)

Cobuild/BoE
(more)

1980s>
 

70% UK
20% US
10% other

7.3m 1982
>500m 2006

25% spoken

Monitor corpus has morphed into Bank of English
Joint commercial/academic

"MarkDavies"; ?Z6QZFz?
 

BNC (search)

1991-95

UK

100m

Spreadsheet
(download)
90% written
  75% informative
  25% imaginative
10% spoken

Help from British gov't

Spoken:
A) 2000 hours conv
B) controlled context

ANC

c2000 >

US

~11m

3.2m spoken
8.3m written

ICE

1990 >

Many countries
(e.g. UK)

1m each

Overview
600k spoken
400k written