Text Variability Measures In Corpus Design For Setswana Lexicography

This book is about the design of a Setswana corpus for lexicography. While various corpora have been compiled and a variety of corpora-based research has been attempted in African languages, no effort has been made towards corpus design. Additionally, although extensive analysis of the Setswana language has been done by missionaries, grammarians and linguists since the 1800s, none of this research is in corpus design. Most research has been largely on the grammatical study of the language. The recent corpora research in African languages in general has been on the use of corpora for the compilation of dictionaries and little of it is in corpus design. Pioneers of this kind of corpora research in African languages are Prinsloo and De Schryver (1999), De Schryver and Prisloo (2000 and 2001) and Gouws and Prisloo (2005). Because of a lack of research in corpora design particularly in African languages, this book attempts to fill that gap, especially for Setswana. It is hoped that the finding of this study will inspire similar designs in other languages comparable to Setswana. We explore corpus design by focusing on measuring a variety of text types for lexical richness at comparable token points. The study explores the question of whether a corpus compiled for lexicography must comprise a variety of texts drawn from different text types or whether the quality of retrieved information for lexicographic purposes from a corpus comprising diverse text varieties could be equally extracted from a corpus with a single text type. This study therefore determines whether linguistic variability is crucial in corpus design for lexicography.

Native and Non-Native Teacher Talk in the EFL Classroom explores and compares the linguistic features of native and non-native English teacher talk with the aid of corpus linguistics. Setting aside the wide range of audio and video materials available, the EFL teacher is in many instances the main model of English to which students are exposed in secondary-level education. The basis of this book is to work towards a framework for the language that teachers of English need to be proficient in, based on an empirical study of language used in the ELT classroom by both native and expert non-native users. Presenting a corpus-informed treatment of the precise linguistic features used by EFL teachers within the framework of their most common teaching functions, this book: • Relates directly to the teacher talk of secondary-level EFL teachers; • Combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to data analysis; • Looks into pedagogical implications for ELT and proposes a flexible language development model based on evidence from the teacher training classroom; • Provides a corpus-based repertoire of language for the classroom which is of relevance to native and non-native student-teachers and practising teachers. Highlighting the need for much greater awareness of the impact of language use in both learning and teaching, this book is a major resource for advanced students and researchers of TESOL, classroom discourse, corpus linguistics, ELT, English for professional purposes, and teaching placement preparation.

Principles and Practice of South African Lexicography is directed at experts in the field of practical and theoretical lexicography in South Africa, applying the general theory of lexicography to the South African lexicographic environment. The authors of this book are leaders in the field of South African lexicography and active participants in the international lexicographic arena, publishing regularly in national and international journals and giving papers at international conferences and workshops.

This volume contains a selection of the papers delivered at the Corpus Linguistics 2003 conference, held at Lancaster University in April 2003. The papers selected address a wide range of world languages - Basque, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Maltese, Russian, Spanish, and Slovene. Both synchronic and diachronic studies are included, as well as studies of learner language. In addition to mainstream linguistic analyses of phonetics, vocabulary, syntax, semantics, and rhetoric, application areas covered in the volume include financial forecasting, cross-cultural research, corpus processing, and language teaching.

A contribution to racial understanding dedicated to the memory of a great man, Robert Moffat of Kuruman.

This book provides a broad overview of current work on South African languages, language resources and language technologies. While it provides a fairly comprehensive overview, it also ties together the most recent knowledge state here, and is therefore truly innovative ? The book is therefore informed by current international trends in the respective fields of science, and feeds back into them ? There is absolutely no doubt that the book has an academic peer audience and is directed at specialists in the field. - Prof. Axel Fleisch, University of Helsinki, Finland