The present essay seeks to problematize the concept of urban well-being through reflections rooted in the socio-spatial conditions of the city of Saltillo, Coahuila, located in northern Mexico, which despite official narratives- reveals profound social and spatial tensions that hinder the development of its inhabitants. Drawing on the proposals of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, well-being is understood here as the real possibility of leading a dignified life through the development of capabilities and freedoms. The city is thus conceived not (...) merely as a physical territory, but as a political and symbolic space that can enable or restrict such possibilities. The analysis shows that Saltillo, in its orientation toward industrial and economic growth, operates as an obstacle to a dignified life. Issues such as access to water diverted to industrial use, gender-based violence, and a mobility model centered on private vehicles are mentioned as factors that limit equitable access to opportunities for development. The reflection warns that under capitalism, urban space is conceived as a commodity rather than as a place for shared life. Saltillo thus becomes a fragmented, hostile, and consumption-oriented city, where conditions of habitability are distributed unequally. In conclusion, the essay proposes envisioning an urban ethics of well-being that recognizes the right to the city as an indispensable condition for a dignified life. (shrink)

SummaryIn the Corpus Aristotelicum are numerous items suggesting that the assertion of the fifth postulate in Euclid'sElements had been preceded by attempts to demonstrate this postulate itself, or some equivalent fundamental proposition, within the rigorous frame of Absolute Geometry in Bolyai's sense. Thus geometers contemporary with Aristotle tried to solve the problem which became known commonly in later centuries as the Problem of Parallels.Probably these geometers first attempted a direct solution. Only one text at our disposal supports this hypothesis: (...) (1) Anal. Prior. 65 a 4–7. My analysis below in Chapter I shows that a mathematical meaning can be read from this somewhat obscure text only if it is interpreted as an allusion by Aristotle to those geometers who believe they are demonstrating, obviously in an absolute way, the proposition Elem. I 29, equivalent to the fifth postulate, but do not realize that in the process they are using lemmas which result themselves from the proposition to be demonstrated. Such a lemma would assert the uniqueness of the parallels, existence of which was shown in an absolute way in Elem. I 27. My conjecture and reconstruction afford a natural explanation for an inconsequence singular for Book I of the Elements, namely, the presence of the proposition Elem. I 31 in the purely Euclidean part of the book, in spite of the fact that the assertion merely repeats the absolute proposition Elem. I 27 without explicitly containing any Euclidean element.It is probable that the failure of these direct attempts led to an indirect approach to the problem through reductio ad absurdum of some hypothesis contrary to what was to become Postulate V or to some equivalent proposition. Numerous texts survive from which it is clear that geometers contemporary with Aristotle followed fairly far the consequences of an hypothesis contrary to the fifth postulate, obtaining important results which are partly identical with some theorems of Saccheri. Some of these texts attest first of all that what Saccheri called the Hypothesis of the Obtuse Angle had been stated in an independent and explicit way and that the fundamental result, identical with Prop. 14 of Saccheri'sEuclides ab omni naevo vindicatus (1733), had been obtained, namely, that within Bolyai's Absolute Geometry this hypothesis leads to the remarkable formal contradiction that parallels intersect. This conclusion followed from two different formulations of the Obtuse Angle Hypothesis: (2) Anal. Prior. 66a 11–14, if the exterior angle (formed by a secant which intersects two parallel straight lines) is smaller than the interior angle (opposite and situated on the same side of the secant), and (3) 66a 14–15, if the sum of the angles in a triangle is greater than 2R. Finally, an item in (4) Ethica ad Eudemum 1222b 35–36 shows us that by investigating the Obtuse Angle Hypothesis, the Greek geometers also discovered the quadrilateral in which the sum of the angles is equal to 8R; this quadrilateral, which does not appear even in Saccheri's book, is the maximal quadrilateral of the Riemann geometry, a quadrilateral degenerated into a straight line closed upon itself (Chapter IV 20).Nowhere in the Corpus does the Hypothesis of the Acute Angle appear in an independent formulation. Nevertheless in (5) Anal. Poster. 90a 33–34 this Hypothesis is mentioned along with the other two: namely, Aristotle states that the essence of the triangle consists in the sum of its angles' being equal to, greater than or less than 2R (Chapter V 27). The formulation of the fifth postulate in the Elements allows greater probability to the conjecture of independent existence of the Acute Angle Hypothesis as well. Indeed, in its original formulation the fifth postulate is redundant, since it unnecessarily specifies in which of the half-planes (bounded by the secant) the intersection of the two straight lines occurs; this specification is itself a theorem. The Acute Angle Hypothesis must have been formulated not only symmetrically to (3) Anal. Prior. 66 a 14–15, that is, the sum of the angles of the triangle is less than 2R, as results from (5) Anal. Poster. 90 a 33–34, but also symmetrically to (2) Anal. Prior. 66 a 11–14. In the latter case the following final conclusion should have been reached in order to reduce to absurdity the Acute Angle Hypothesis: Two straight lines cut by a secant are incident if the sum of the interior angles (on the same side of the secant) is smaller than 2R, and the incidence occurs on that side of the secant where the sum of the angles is less than 2R. In the frame of the Acute Angle Hypothesis, this end conclusion is relevant only if this final specification (concerning the half-plane where the incidence occurs) is explicitly emphasised. According to my conjecture, it was precisely the practical impossibility of reaching this conclusion as a theorem of Absolute Geometry that later determined Euclid to transpose this decisive end conclusion from the Acute Angle Hypothesis, without changing its wording, and to include it among the postulates (Chapter II 13).A queer passage of Proklos (In primum Euclidis Elementorum, ed. Friedlein p. 368, 26–369, 1) in which the Acute Angle Hypothesis is presented in the form of a Zenonian paradox reinforces the conjecture that this hypothesis was studied independently by the ancient geometers (Chapter VI 33). Thus failure to solve the Problem of Parallels preceded not only the later Non-Euclidean geometry but also Euclidean geometry itself.The general undifferentiated Contra-Euclidean Hypothesis appears in the following form in all the other texts examined: The sum of the angles in the triangle is not equal to 2R. This hypothesis is nowhere qualified by Aristotle as being absurd or impossible: On the contrary, he takes it always as being just as much justified a priori as is the Euclidean theorem Elem. I 32 which contradicts it. For instance in (6) Anal. Poster. 93 a 33–35 Aristotle puts the problematical alternative: Which of the two propositions is right (or, which of the two constitutes the Logos, the raison d'être of the triangle), the one that states that the sum of the angles in the triangle is equal to 2R, or on the contrary, the one that states that the sum of the angles in the triangle is not equal to 2R (Chapter V 28)?In a number of texts the theorem Elem. I 32 itself and the general Contra-Euclidean Hypothesis are treated as being a sort of principle, and stress is laid on the idea that the logical consequences of each of these items invariantly preserve its specific (Euclidean or non-Euclidean) geometrical content [(7) 1187 a 35–38 (Chapter IV 18); (8) 1222 b 23–26 (Chapter IV 19); (9) 1187 b 1–2 (Chapter IV 18); (10) 1222 b 41–42 Chapter IV 21); (11) 1187 b 2–4 (Chapter IV 18)]; (12) Physica 200 a 29–30: If the sum of the angles in the triangle is not equal to 2R, then the principles of geometry cannot remain the same (Chapter V 25); (13) Metaph. 1052 a 6–7: It is impossible that the sum of the angles in the triangle be sometimes equal to 2R and sometimes not equal to 2R (Chapter V 24). Finally, the most important item of this sort is to be found in (14) De Caelo 281 b 5–7: If we accept as a starting hypothesis that it is impossible for the sum of the angles in the triangle to be equal to 2R, then the diagonal of the square is commensurable with its side (Chapter III).Another group of texts reveal Aristotle's attitude as regard these Contra-Euclidean theorems: (15) 1222 b 38–39 (Chapter IV 20); (16) 200 a 16–19 (Chapter VI 30); (17) 402 b 18–21 (Chapter VI 31); (18) 171 a 12–16 (Chapter VI 32); (19) 77 b 22–26 (Chapter V 26); (20) 101 a 15–17 (Chapter VI 31); (21) 76 b 39–77 a 3 (Chapter VI 31). These passages reveal Aristotle's conviction that these paradoxical Contra-Euclidean propositions (which cannot be annihilated by reductio ad absurdum) are nevertheless inacceptable as “bad”, probably because their graphical construction requires curved lines for representing the concept of straight lines.Finally, another group of texts show that Aristotle sensed in a way the necessity of adding to the foundations of Geometry a new postulate, from which the proposition Elem. I 32 should follow rigorously. (shrink)

Reseña de: Un corpus olvidado: la tragedia fragmentaria y sus héroes, Colección Estudios Sociales y Humanidades, Bahía Blanca: Editorial de la Universidad Nacional del Sur (Ediuns), 2020, 196 pp. ISBN: 978-987-655-251-6. ISBN electrónico: 978-987-655-260-8.

Texts in Corpus Studies and Scaling ProblemsWe introduce observations from corpora in order to handle scale in discourse studies. Expository texts in French belonging to similar contexts but varying in size are screened under the same theoretical model. Computer aided and manual experiments show that forms do not have a single function, but instead that contrast, agreement use whatever can be used in text at various granularity levels. Relative positions are studied in individual texts and small press folders. The (...) correct measures to be used by programmes hint at the resolution question in computer mediated analysis. (shrink)

Ignatius’ hymnographic corpus is still composed by the scattered group of compositions listed a century ago. But it is to be noted that on many of the compositions attributed to Ignatius, however, there is often the doubt of Theophanes’ authorship. This contribution starts from an analysis of the elements offered by the manuscript tradition in order to proceed to a complete redefinition of production and style of the hymnographer, according particular attention to the great number of Ignatius’ unedited compositions. (...) On one hand, in fact, it is possible to attribute to Ignatius, on the basis of the testimony of the liturgical Typikon of Evergetis, some canons already known by other means. On the other hand, in the manuscripts there is other hymnographic material, still completely unedited, which could be attributed to Ignatius and be useful to a comprehensive picture of the matter. (shrink)

Stilemi e corpus generici : un tentativo di confronto al servizio della stilistica dei generi Chi s’interessa alla stilistica dei generi letterari si può chiedere se ci sono delle marche caratteristiche, per ogni genere, dal punto di vista stilistico. Per uno stesso autore, il confronto fra testi dedicati allo stesso referente, in generi letterari diversi, può fornire elementi di rilievo per una risposta a questo difficile argomento proposto, tempo fa, da Pierre Larthomas. Bisogna però procedere ad una selezione molto (...) attenta del corpus di riferimento, di quello di ricerca, nonché degli strumenti d’indagine. Questo studio sarà dedicato ad un esempio di confronto : quello delle descrizioni ispirate dai viaggi compiuti da diversi scrittori francesi fra la fine del ‘700 e la fine dell’800, descrizioni che si ritrovano sia nella narrativa di finzione sia nei racconti di viaggio di questi autori. Si darà particolare rilievo ad uno schema significativo : quello dell’analogia e del suo uso. (shrink)

Analysing Representation: A Corpus and Discourse Textbook guides readers through the process of researching how people and phenomena are represented in discourse and introduces them to key tools they can use from corpus linguistics and (critical) discourse analysis. The book takes a step-by-step approach to introducing each concept and includes exercises and further reading to help readers check their progress and prepare for independent research. It is unique in introducing readers to a range of experts representing the full (...) range of work in this area. It is aimed at final-year undergraduate, taught postgraduate and doctoral level students, as well as scholars who are new to combining corpus and discourse methods to investigating representation. (shrink)

The autograph corpus of the Damascene scholar Ibn Ṭūlūn is dispersed throughout collections in North America, Europe, and West Asia. As an initial probe into these materials, I will describe, identify, and analyze two compendia in the Princeton University collection: Garrett MSS 196B and 1011H. They contain, among other things, a portion of al-Thaghr al-bassām, an autograph draft of his biographical dictionary of Damascene judges, which is later than the one edited and published in 1959, and a heretofore missing (...) portion of al-Qalāʿid al-jawhari- yya, his topography of al-Ṣāliḥiyya. I will also positively identify an anonymous, untitled manuscript in the Bodleian Library and show its relationship to the al-Thaghr al-bassām autograph. (shrink)

Paul D. Halliday: Habeas Corpus. From England to Empire Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11572-012-9141-5 Authors Lindsay Farmer, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK Journal Criminal Law and Philosophy Online ISSN 1871-9805 Print ISSN 1871-9791.

Corpus linguistics is becoming a respected method of statutory and constitutional interpretation in the United States over the past decade, yet it has also generated a backlash from a group of scholars that engage in empirical work. This essay attempts to demonstrate both the contributions and the risks of using linguistic corpora as a primary tool in legal interpretation. Its legitimacy stems from the fact that courts routinely state that statutory terms, when not defined as a matter of law, (...) are to be given their ordinary meaning. Judges have responded to this challenge, with the assistance of the linguistics community, by using corpora to determine which meanings are ordinary. However, legal analysts have not determined exactly what makes one meaning ordinary and another not ordinary. This gap has led to a level of disagreement in the field. Moreover, while linguists who engage in corpus linguistic analysis typically emphasize the importance of context, the legal application is peculiarly context-free, in keeping with legal philosophies that eschew reliance on reference to a law’s purpose and the intent of the legislature that enacted it. This move adds a political dimension to corpus analysis as a means of legal interpretation. Yet, the article concludes that by relying on a blend of general and specialized corpora, the legal system can substantially reduce the problem of contextualization, as some linguists and practitioners have already recognized. (shrink)

In this chapter we use methods of corpus linguistics to investigate the ways in which mathematicians describe their work as explanatory in their research papers. We analyse use of the words explain/explanation (and various related words and expressions) in a large corpus of texts containing research papers in mathematics and in physical sciences, comparing this with their use in corpora of general, day-to-day English. We find that although mathematicians do use this family of words, such use is considerably (...) less prevalent in mathematics papers than in physics papers or in general English. Furthermore, we find that the proportion with which mathematicians use expressions related to ‘explaining why’ and ‘explaining how’ is significantly different to the equivalent proportion in physics and in general English. We discuss possible accounts for these differences. (shrink)

In this paper, we address a key question that has been central to discussions on rationality: is the concept of rationality normative or merely descriptive? We present the findings of a corpus-linguistic study revealing that people commonly perceive the concept of rationality as normative.

The experimental philosophy movement advocates the use of empirical methods in philosophy. The methods most often discussed and in fact employed in experimental philosophy are appropriated from the experimental paradigm in psychology. But there is a variety of other (at least partly) empirical methods from various disciplines that are and others that could be used in philosophy. The paper explores the application of corpus analysis to philosophical issues. Although the method is well established in linguistics, there are only a (...) few tentative attempts of philosophers to utilise it. Examples are introduced and the merit of corpus analysis is compared to that of using general internet search engines and questionnaires for similar purposes. (shrink)

Corpus analysis allows researchers to inform, illuminate, and investigate many problems. This chapter provides easy access to some of the central tools commonly used in corpus linguistics. After a short exploration of pre-built corpora and a brief literature review surveying corpus-analytic studies in philosophy, we illustrate these tools by running several corpus analyses on the term “conspiracy theory.” These analyses show that “conspiracy theory” is a strongly evaluative term. The reader of this chapter can follow each (...) of the steps of the corpus analyses using the online material that is freely available. (shrink)

There are many different ways in which modern Corpus Linguistics can be used to enrich and broaden our understanding of legal discourse. Based on the central principle of co-occurrence and co-selection in language construction, this paper reviews current applications of Corpus Linguistics in the area of legal discourse focusing on issues ranging from phraseology, variation in legal discourse, legal translation, register and genre perspectives on legal discourse, legal discourse in forensic contexts to evaluative language in judicial settings. It (...) revisits the notion of ‘corpus’ and it highlights the relevance of various types of legal corpora and computer tools in legal linguistic research. (shrink)

L’usage de corpus n’est pas réservé aux linguistes. Néanmoins ceux-ci en sont des utilisateurs patentés, du fait, entre autres, que leurs analyses portent sur des productions linguistiques ou langagières non finies dont l’étude ne peut s’opérer que sur un échantillon. Mais pour que l’analyse prétende à quelque validité, cet échantillon doit être représentatif. Représentatif de quoi? D’une réalité qui à la fois préexiste à l’analyse et qu’il contribue à cerner et à établir. D’où toute une palette de corpus (...) dont les principaux types en usage dans la discipline, selon les matériaux utilisés, selon la clôture imaginée, selon la fonction assignée…, sont brièvement rappelés. La réflexion est ensuite centrée sur la délimitation de la place et de la fonction du corpus entre faits, analyses et théories ; il est montré, quelques exemples à l’appui, empruntés à la démarche du dialectologue et du lexicologue, que le corpus ne saurait être qu’un construit et que sa construction fait partie intégrante du prisme théorique à travers lequel le linguiste entend appréhender le réel. (shrink)

Corpus Paraensis Resumo: A condição de possibilidade primária para a existência de uma filosofia é que os seres humanos pensem e, pensando, transmitam suas memórias e reflexões em escritos, ou seja, que exista uma traditio philosophica – uma herança e uma transmissão – desse pensar. O que identifica, grosso modo, a experiência do pensamento é seu registro na palavra-texto (escrita) e não apenas na palavra-oral (discurso). A condição secundária, portanto, é a existência de textos ou escritos filosóficos e, neste (...) caso, a hipótese a se levantar refere-se aos escritos filosóficos coloniais do Pará, que nomeamos Corpus Paraensis. Provar a existência de uma filosofia colonial brasileira depende, por um lado, de reconhecermos o que resta daquela traditio philosophica colonial e, por outro, da análise desses escritos enquanto exercícios de pensar consignados em textos. Por isso, este artigo não só identificará alguns escritos filosóficos coloniais paraenses quanto exemplificaremos essa herança com a edição de dois inéditos: um texto de caso de consciência (ou filosofia moral) e um de filosofia transnatural ou teodiceia (metafísica teológica). Com isso, convencemo-nos de que existiu uma traditio philosophica colonial brasileira? Palavras-chave: Corpus Paraensis; segunda escolástica; filosofia moral; filosofia transnatural. Corpus Paraensis Abstract: The condition of primary possibility for the existence of a philosophy is that human beings think and, thinking, transmit their memories and reflections in writing, that is, that there is a traditio philosophica – an inheritance and a transmission – of this thinking. What roughly identifies the experience of thought is its registration in the text-word (written) and not just in the oral-word (discourse). The secondary condition, therefore, is the existence of philosophical texts or writings and, in this case, the hypothesis to be raised refers to the colonial philosophical writings of Pará, which we named Corpus Paraensis. Proving the existence of a Brazilian colonial philosophy depends, on the one hand, on recognizing what remains of that colonial traditio philosophica and, on the other, on analyzing these writings as exercises in thinking contained in texts. Therefore, this article will not only identify some colonial philosophical writings from Pará, but we will also exemplify this heritage with the edition of two unpublished papers: a text on a case of conscience (or moral philosophy) and one on transnatural philosophy or theodicy (theological metaphysics). With that, are we convinced that there was a Brazilian colonial traditio philosophica? Key words: Corpus Paraensis; second scholasticism; moral philosophy; transnatural philosophy. Corpus Paraensis Resumen: La condición de posibilidad primaria para la existencia de una filosofía es que el ser humano piense y, pensando, transmita sus recuerdos y reflexiones por escrito, es decir, que haya una traditio philosophica – una herencia y una transmisión – de este pensamiento. Lo que identifica a grandes rasgos la experiencia del pensamiento es su registro en la palabra-texto (escrita) y no solo en la palabra-oral (discurso). La condición secundaria, por tanto, es la existencia de textos o escritos filosóficos y, en este caso, la hipótesis a plantear se refiere a los escritos filosóficos coloniales de Pará, a los que denominamos Corpus Paraensis. Probar la existencia de una filosofía colonial brasileña depende, por un lado, de reconocer lo que queda de esa traditio philosophica colonial y, por otro, de analizar estos escritos como ejercicios de pensamiento contenidos en textos. Por tanto, este artículo no solo identificará algunos escritos filosóficos coloniales de Pará, sino que también ejemplificaremos esta herencia con la edición de dos artículos inéditos: un texto sobre un caso de conciencia (o filosofía moral) y otro sobre filosofía o teodicea transnatural (metafísica teológica). Con eso, ¿estamos convencidos de que hubo una tradicio philosophica colonial brasileña? Palavras clave: Corpus Paraensis; segunda escolasticismo; filosofía moral; filosofía transnatural. Data de registro: 16/09/2021 Data de aceite: 01/12/2021. (shrink)

Style, corpus and genesisThe article addresses the relationship between style and corpus from the point of view of the genesis of literary works. What is a corpus when viewed from the perspective of a genetic study of the style (of styles) of a work in the making? What of the relationship between text and reader? The article also explores what such an approach can reveal about style, envisioned no longer as a collection of discontinuous traits but rather (...) as the very process of a creating work. (shrink)

Corpus informatisés de français médiéval : contraintes sur leur constitution et spécificités de leurs apports Partant du constat que le linguiste médiéviste ne peut que travailler sur corpus, cet article envisage les contraintes spécifiques qui pèsent sur la constitution de ces corpus, désormais numériques, en particulier en ce qui concerne leur représentativité. La nature de l’étude et la perspective temporelle (synchronique ou diachronique) sont deux facteurs décisifs. Sont ensuite envisagés les apports des corpus, enrichis ou non, (...) tant du point de vue de la quantification des faits que de leur interprétation qualitative. (shrink)

In medieval writers we find a distinction between body as a substance – corpus-substantia – and body as a quantity – corpus-quantitas (or quantum). One of the earliest uses of this distinction is in works written by Robert Grosseteste in the 1220s. In this paper I explore his use and understanding of this distinction. I argue that he understands corpus-substantia as such as a dimensionless composite of a first corporeal form, corporeity, and prime matter. Corporeity itself is (...) an active power for three dimensions. Through its infinite and necessary self-multiplication corporeity extends the prime matter it informs into three dimensions, thereby resulting in corpus-quantum. I explore how Grosseteste’s conception of corporeity, though probably based on ideas found in Avicenna, diverges from different understandings of Avicenna’s conception of corporeity proposed by medieval and modern commentators. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es doble. Primero, investigar y evaluar la situación en la que se encuentra actualmente la filosofía experimental del lenguaje. Para ello, expondré las dos metodologías predominantes en el campo: los cuestionarios y los métodos de corpus, mostrando los problemas comunes y los específicos. Segundo, defender que los métodos de corpus suponen un nuevo horizonte metodológico para la investigación en filosofía experimental del lenguaje por dos razones. Por un lado, porque cuentan con menos problemas (...) que los cuestionarios. Por otro lado, porque tienen ciertas ventajas adicionales: i) consideran una cantidad mayor de evidencia; ii) al emplearlos tenemos la posibilidad de contar con información adicional que puede iluminar otros aspectos de la investigación; iii) cuentan con una mayor replicabilidad. (shrink)

Un des enjeux actuels du traitement sémantique des corpus textuels concerne la nécessaire tentative de contrôle et d’objectivation de l’intertexte. Les corpus réflexifs, que nous définissons dans cet article, poursuivent cette exigence d’objectivation et de mise en forme des ressources sémantiques et interprétatives, en se proposant d’être, dans la mesure du possible, des tout-textuels sémantiquement auto-suffisants – c’est-à-dire des univers interprétatifs clos, définis parmi d’autres – pour une exploitation certes pas exhaustive, mais raisonnable et raisonnée du texte.

Créer une nouvelle revue est une aventure, stimulante certes, mais risquée aussi, et particulièrement gourmande en temps et en énergie. Il y faut donc de bonnes raisons. Au nombre de celles qui nous ont poussés à créer se trouve le constat que la linguistique de corpus, actuellement très en vogue, ne disposait d'aucun périodique qui lui fût spécifiquement consacré. Les ouvrages collectifs, les manuels de haut niveau, les numéros spéciaux fleurissent, mais de revue régulière, point. L'UMR « B...

The heuristic corpus : a tool that shows the way, but does not demonstrate anythingThis article proposes to recognise two different functions that a corpus can endorse: heuristic and validating. The latter is common: a corpus is used in order to demonstrate the plausibility or the validity of a hypothesis which has an independent existence. By contrast, the former shows the way, rather than demonstrating anything. The linguist does not try to convince anybody - he tries to (...) understand. He ventures into unknown land with a question, but without solution, not even with a hypothesis, holding in hands only a few pieces of the puzzle that needs to be put together. It is the corpus itself which will provide new pieces, a hypothesis and, ideally, a solution. The corpus acts as a counsellor, makes appear the "reality" in a new light and restricts the pool of possible solutions. The property of the corpus which allows it to play this role is consubstantial with its existence: classification. There is no corpus without classification of the data at hand. And it is a peculiar classification that will shed light on the "reality" in a way so to produce the "heureka" situation on the linguist's side. As a consequence, there could not be any corpus, in linguistics or elsewhere, without a project of exploitation or without theoretical activity prior to its actual genesis. Any corpus, of the heuristic as much as of the validating kind, is an oriented, hence a theoretical object.The heuristic corpus is also peculiar in that it is promised to oblivion: as soon as it has served, the linguist will transform it into a validating corpus (he wants to convince the world). This change of orientation supposes an organisation and a presentation that are quite different from those that have promoted the discovery in the first place. Therefore, the present article also aims at rescuing the heuristic corpus from oblivion: after the battle, its only existence are often some sheets of paper in a forgotten folder or some old file lost on a harddisk, and the linguist will have completely forgotten that there is any such file, and how it helped him to discover what now has become a reality. I attempt at isolating some invariable properties of heuristic corpora: the moment when they enter the scene (i.e. when the linguist is facing a dead-end), the situations where they may be helpful and those where they will not advance the research.The overall purpose of the article is illustrated by a case study from my own experience, i.e. the alternations in vowel length that are found in Czech iteratives. (shrink)

The PhraséoRoChe corpus focuses on the French-language chivalric romance written in prose. It brings together texts from works produced between the 13th and 17th centuries, a period marked by the birth and disappearance of this textual genre. To enable modern readers to effectively interrogate a corpus covering such a long diachronic period, choices have to be made concerning the evolution of language, not only by addressing the differences between contemporary French and the language of the selected texts, but (...) also by confronting the difficulties associated with the heterogeneity of Old French, Middle French and Pre-Classical French. What methodological choices are necessary to enable the defined objective of linguistic, stylistic or literary exploitation? The project's collaborators faced the three-fold challenge of remaining faithful to the texts, integrating the diversity of editorial practices among researchers at different stages in the history of French, and unifying processing principles as far as possible to make the corpus as useful as possible. This article reports on two aspects of the creation of the corpus: the selection and transcription of a set of 40 texts, and annotation using structural tags, lexical labels and morphosyntactic labels. (shrink)

Considered an iconic symbol of indigenous legal heritage, Islamic law is adopted nowadays in whole or in part in the legal systems of the Muslim world and is also of significance in Muslim-minority European countries, where it typically finds its niche in civil and financial domains. This article sets out to investigate the norms of translating Islamic family law discourse using a mixed methods approach based on ‘qualitising’ quantitative data, i.e., an approach in which quantitative data are interpreted qualitatively. Drawing (...) on a self-built monolingual English corpus of over three million words covering diverse genres, the analysis will harness the power of corpus processing to enable the study of ten iconic lexical profiles (individual concepts/conceptual systems and their corresponding Arabic and English terms) that are specific to Islamic family law. Profile-based correspondence is also employed to investigate the probability of lexical variation in expressing a conceptual category—a profile refers to a set of synonymous variants or linguistic labels that can be used to designate the same concept. The corpus analysis seeks to identify the key loanwords that represent cultural icons featured in the English-language discourse of Islamic family law and to explore the different mechanisms used to render shariʿa-based concepts. The aim is to investigate concomitant translation norms based on linguistic frequency in the corpus and to interpret ideological implications with reference to the theory of translation norms, which postulates that translation decision making is subject to norms dictated by extralinguistic factors (e.g., socio-political or ideological). The study finds that Islamic family law relies significantly on Arabic loanwords (constructing an ‘Islamgish’ discourse) to maintain shariʿa-based linguistic heritage, which can be seen as a kind of ‘working for one’s own good’. Thus, what is at play here is the ethics of self-interest, which is very typical of postcolonial agendas. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore some of the possibilities, advantages and difficulties of corpus-based analyses of semantic and pragmatic aspects of language in one particular field, namely the linguistic expression of emotion concepts. For this purpose, a methodological procedure is proposed and an exemplary analysis of the emotion concept “fear” in English is performed. The procedure combines Kövecses' lexical approach and Stefanowitsch's metaphorical pattern analysis with additional concepts from corpus linguistics such as semantic preference and (...) semantic prosody. The results of the study show that such a corpus-based analysis of emotion words offers several advantages. Firstly, by exploring the surroundings of the search word in a vast amount of text, we are not only able to find evidence of conceptual metaphor and metonymy that structure the emotion concept and of related emotion concepts, but also we can enrich the description of the emotion concept with information from a series of dimensions and add a pragmatic viewpoint by revealing an explicit or implicit evaluation of the emotion. The second advantage offered by a corpus-based approach lies in the possibility of quantifying results, i.e., comparing the frequency, productivity and creative use of individual metaphors and metonymies, which is especially interesting in view of contrastive studies. (shrink)

Cet article présente les diverses manières de constituer un corpus en analyse du discours, et plus particulièrement dans le domaine de l’analyse du discours du côté de l’histoire. Il adopte une perspective historique, en prenant comme point de départ la configuration initiale des années 1970. Cependant, il s’agit aussi d’accorder une importance particulière à la formation de « corpus réflexifs », tant du côté de la lexicométrie que de l’archive et du matériau d’enquête. La notion de réflexivité du (...) discours apparaît alors au centre de toute interrogation sur la constitution des nouveaux corpus. (shrink)

This paper argues that neurolinguistics has the potential to yield insights that can feed back into corpus-based Cognitive Linguistics. It starts by discussing how far the cognitive realism of probabilistic statements derived from corpus data currently goes. Against this background, it argues that the cognitive realism of usage-based models could be further enhanced through deeper engagement with neurolinguistics, but also highlights a number of common misconceptions about what neurolinguistics can and cannot do for linguistic theorizing.

This paper explores the role of corpus linguistics in legal research, emphasizing the necessity of a representative and balanced corpus of legal language. While existing corpora provide valuable insights, they often focus on limited genres, risking an incomplete understanding of the complexity of legal discourse. The paper advocates for an empirical and comprehensive study of legal language and introduces KoPr, a pioneering representative corpus of Czech legal language, as an illustrative example. This corpus encompasses diverse legal (...) texts, including legislation, case law, academic literature, and communication by legal practitioners. The methodology for constructing KoPr is detailed, from defining legal genres to adapting corpus design principles specifically for legal discourse. Furthermore, the paper addresses practical and methodological limitations encountered during corpus development and proposes solutions for mitigating them. By systematically organizing legal texts within the corpus, the paper ensures representativeness and usability. Presenting KoPr’s parameters and applications, the study highlights the transformative potential of corpus-based research in legal linguistics, offering new insights into the linguistic foundations of the law. (shrink)

We present a novel system for corpus-based terminological evaluation of ontologies. Starting from the assumption that a domain of interest can be represented through a corpus of text documents, we first extract a list of domain-specific key-concepts from the corpus, rank them by relevance, and then apply various evaluation metrics to assess the terminological coverage of a domain ontology with respect to the list of key-concepts.Among the advantages of the proposed approach, we remark that the framework is (...) highly automatizable, requiring little human intervention. The evaluation framework is made available online through a collaborative wiki-based system, which can be accessed by different users, from domain experts to knowledge engineers.We performed a comprehensive experimental analysis of our approach, showing that the proposed ontology metrics allow for assessing the terminological coverage of an ontology with respect to a given domain, and that our framework can be effectively applied to many evaluation-related scenarios. (shrink)

This study puts the usage-based assumption that our linguistic knowledge is based on usage to the test. To do so, we explore individual variation in speakers’ language use as established based on corpus data – both in terms of frequency of use (as a proxy for entrenchment) and productivity of use (as a proxy for schematization) – and link this variation to the same participants’ responses in an experimental judgment task. The empirical focus is on transfer by native German (...) speakers living in the Netherlands, who oftentimes experience transfer from their second language Dutch to their native language German regarding the placement of prepositional phrases. The analyses show a large amount of variation in both the corpus and experimental data with a strong link across data types: individual speakers’ usage – but not the usage by other speakers – is a significant predictor for the speakers’ judgments. These results strongly suggest that, in line with a usage-based approach, variation between speakers in experimental tasks is linked to their variation in usage. At the same time, such usage-based predictions do not explain all of the variation, suggesting that other individual factors are also at play in such experimental tasks. (shrink)

For hundreds of years procedural rights such as habeas corpus have been regarded as fundamental in the Anglo-American system of jurisprudence. In contemporary international law, fundamental norms are called jus cogens. Jus cogens norms are rights or rules that can not be derogated even by treaty. In the list that is often given, jus cogens norms include norms against aggression, apartheid, slavery, and genocide. All of the members of this list are substantive rights. In this paper I will argue (...) that some procedural rights, crucial for the fair functioning of criminal proceedings, such as habeas corpus, should also have the status of jus cogens norms. I will begin by explaining what it means for a right to have jus cogens status. And I will follow this with a defense of having procedural rights like habeas corpus added to the list of jus cogens norms. I will then rehearse some of the debates about the jus cogens status of procedural rights in the European Commission on Human Rights. At the end of this paper, I will look at the attempts to deal with the abuses at Guantanamo by the American Commission on Human Rights, and by the US and Australian courts, as a way to understand why there needs to be a stronger support for habeas corpus than is today provided by regional courts. (shrink)

This study proposes an operational approach to a metaphorical framing analysis using large-scale data. We conducted a case analysis of how war metaphors are framed to address various societal issues in a corpus of public speeches by Hong Kong government officials. By investigating patterns of lexical choices under the source domain of WAR and the underlying reasons for the source-target domain mappings (i.e. Mapping Principles), we found that the target domain of social issues in Hong Kong is primarily conceptualized (...) in terms of a combat frame, and governmental issues are primarily talked about in terms of a protection frame, both of which are positively evaluated. Additionally, economic issues are primarily addressed in terms of a strategy frame, which is both positively and negatively evaluated. We show that analyzing the Mapping Principles of these conceptual metaphors captures the “selection” process of framing at the dimensions of frame frequency and frame sentiment, allowing for a principled way to propose a metaphorical framing analysis in corpora-based studies. The proposed approach enriches Critical Discourse Analysis studies of metaphorical framing and bridges the link between metaphor analysis at a conceptual level and framing analysis at a communication level. (shrink)

From Literary Corpus to Linguistic Corpus : dematerialization, restructuration, rhizomatic reading and linguistic analysis of the manuscriptsThe author, coordinator of the computational and linguistic aspects of the « Online Stendhal Manuscripts », describes the process of constituting a linguistic corpus within the framework of a highly interdisciplinary collaboration. He shows how this kind of collaboration allows building an archive answering the needs of literary researchers as well as bringing rich and rare language material to the linguist.Subsequently, the (...) linguistic study does not define the corpus to build, but reversely, the corpus delimits and constrains the linguistic observations, thus questioning the notion of corpus analysis. (shrink)

This article examines the sequence je sais pas (‘I don’t know’) in the context of its spontaneous usage in Quebec French. The interest of this sequence of units primarily stems from the observation of its particularly high frequency in the queried corpus, namely the Corpus de français parlé au Québec (CFPQ). Indeed, it is the most frequent sequence of three graphical units that appear in contiguity. This observation suggests that the sequence is strongly “entrenched” and that it is (...) likely to be memorized as a whole in a certain number of contexts, following the example of complex sequences or (semi-)fixed expressions. The article focuses on examples in which je sais pas acts as a verbal expression, and then as a discursive expression. (shrink)

The aim of this contribution is to review the national research project CoMeRe (Communication Médiée par les Réseaux - Networked-Mediated Communication) and, in particular, focus on the the complexity of the corpus it developed, structured, and disseminated. The CoMeRe corpus is a reference corpus for computer-mediated communication (CMC) in French comprising fourteen sub-corpora. Fourteen researchers from eight different laboratories were involved in the project and three key words guided their collaborations: variety, standards, and open access.The CoMeRe (...) class='Hi'>corpus is composed of a wide range of heterogeneous CMC genres (emails, text chat, SMS, Internet discussion forums, blogs, tweets, Wikipedia discussions, interactions from synthetic worlds). In the first section of the article, we underline their main characteristics of the different CMC genres and highlight their similarities and differences. We then describe the choices made to support corpus interoperability: the fourteen sub-corpora were structured in a standardized manner in accordance with the Interaction Space model developed within the project (Chanier & Jin, 2013) and, in collaboration with European partners, following guidelines for standardizing CMC corpora in TEI (Text Encoding Initiative, 2019). The CoMeRe corpus was released in an open-access format so as to encourage future use by the scientific community. In the article’s conclusion, we underline the different implications of the corpus’ dissemination. (shrink)

Recognized as a public health problem, the prevalence of dyslexia is between 5 and 10% in school-aged children (8-12 years), according to the European cross-linguistic study Neurodys (Becker et al., 2013). Learning written language means jointly mastering its two sides: reading and writing. Complex and dynamic, writing in dyslexic (DL) and dysorthographic (DO) French adolescents is the focus of this study. In order to initiate exchanges between practitioners and researchers, as suggested by Hayes & Berninger (2014), we examine chronometric data, (...) in a corpus of texts collected from 7 dyslexic-dysorthographic teenagers in the context of normal speech therapy sessions, to reveal the particular processes engaged in their production. The corpora of written productions of DL/DO teenagers followed in speech therapy provide by means of chronometric data analysis (writing speeds, durations of pauses as a function of their location in the text, lengths of the passages of writing between long pauses) insights on text production and on the modalities of revision of the text. This work opens perspectives for data collection in professional contexts, so as to question and even enrich the know-how of practitioners with tools developed in corpus linguistics. (shrink)

The present paper argues that there is ample corpus evidence of statistical preemption for learners to make use of. In the case of argument structure constructions, a verbi is preempted from appearing in a construction A, CxA, if and only if the following probability is high: P(CxB|context that would be suitable for CxA and verbi). For example, the probability of hearing a preemptive construction, given a context that would otherwise be well-suited for the ditransitive is high for verbs like (...) explain that overwhelmingly appear in the dative, and low for verbs like tell that readily appear in the ditransitive. Strength of statistical preemption is determined both by this probability, and by the frequency (ln (F)) of a verb in a preemptive construction when the context is at least as well suited to the preempted construction. The critiques of preemption by Stefanowitsch (Cognitive Linguistics 19: 513–531, 2008, this volume) are countered by arguing that the relevant probabilities were not considered. Moreover, we find evidence that constructions are somewhat less constrained when yoked to non-alternating verbs, as Stefanowitsch (cf. this volume) suggests should be the case. (shrink)

Large dialectological corpora or indiscrete phonologyThis article sets out to show how large corpora can contribute to the study of phonology. The grounding experience are the dialectological data-bases BDLC (Corsican) and THESOC (Occitan). A number of case studies are discussed, which reveal three ways in which large corpora can be useful : they help establishing data that serve as the input to phonological analysis, they can validate (or invalidate) pre-existing hypotheses, and they may open new lines of reasoning (heuristic function). (...) Large corpora unite a number of unrelated facts that cannot all be taken into account when an analysis is first put forth. Its confrontation with the richness and the diversity offered by the corpus may well estrange the initial viewpoint from its empirical foundation, transform its scope and suggest explanations that were not formerly envisioned. On the theoretical side, particular attention is paid to the notion of discrete entity, which is commonly applied to minimal phonological units (the phoneme), as well as to systematic units such as an idiom located in a geographic space. This kind of discreteness is challenged by the permanent continuum which is particularly salient in large corpora. For example, an idiolect is already a compositional entity, and a local idiom is but an element in the geographic continuum. Discrete units are thus a necessary instrument for linguistic analysis and constitute a reality in the representation that speakers have of their linguistic system. What the linguist can observe, however, is a continuum : a set of communicating cells where information seeps through membranes. In sum, thus, following Saussure, the Langue is deposited in the collective consciousness. (shrink)

Les vingt dernières années ont vu l’apparition d’une convergence forte entre une démarche appliquée se consacrant à la création de corpus de grande taille, à leur codage et à leur étiquetage, et diverses théories linguistiques dont les analyses reposent sur de tels corpus. Pour l’analyse de conversation (ou linguistique interactionnelle) une telle convergence ne semble pas possible, car son approche est qualitative et s’appuie sur de « petits » corpus. De plus, un examen approfondi du contexte social (...) des interactions recueillies est nécessaire, qui ne peut donc se réduire à la collecte de métadonnées. Une question surgit immédiatement : la notion de « petit » corpus a une validité sur le plan épistémologique? Le présent article montre qu’une réponse positive peut être apportée à cette question et qu’il est possible de fonder en raison une pratique qui, le plus souvent, se drape sous les oripeaux de l’évidence. (shrink)

This corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of news reports on air pollution published from 2008 through 2015 by China Daily, China’s largest official English-language newspaper, reveals a significant attitudinal shift around the end of 2011 as regards public awareness of increasing air pollution levels in China and related public criticism. It also constructs a clear image of the increasing determination and resolve of the Chinese central government over the course of this 8-year period to take action to effectively reduce air (...) pollution. This study highlights the submissive role played by the official Chinese press in their reporting on air pollution under the strict censorship system of the Communist Party of China, as well as the socio-political role that international sporting events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games played in raising both public and governmental awareness of environmental issues. (shrink)

As more and more sophisticated software is created to allow the mining of arguments from natural language texts, this paper sets out to examine the suitability of the well-established and readily available methods of corpus linguistics to the study of argumentation. After brief introductions to corpus linguistics and the concept of meta-argument, I describe three pilot-studies into the use of the terms Straw man, Ad hominem, and Slippery slope, made using the open access News on the Web (...) class='Hi'>corpus. The presence of each of these phrases on internet news sites was investigated and assessed for correspondence to the norms of use by argumentation theorists. All three pilot-studies revealed interesting facts about the usage of the terms by non-specialists, and led to numerous examples of the types of arguments mentioned. This suggests such corpora may be of use in two different ways: firstly, the wider project of improving public debate and educating the populace in the skills of critical thinking can only be helped by a better understanding of the current state of knowledge of the technical terms and concepts of argumentation. Secondly, theorists could obtain a more accurate picture of how arguments are used, by whom, and to what reception, allowing claims on such matters to be evidence, rather than intuition, based. (shrink)

The ESLO-Children module is a longitudinal variationist corpus derived from the large French-language corpus: Enquêtes SocioLinguistiques à Orléans (ESLO). It is variationist because it is based on a varied audience (children aged 2 to 7 with their close relatives) from families of different socio-economic and cultural categories and recorded in a variety of natural situations that form the daily lives of children. This corpus, which will be made available on both ESLO and Childes, was created with the (...) aim of studying the impact of the language environment (input) on children’s productions (ouput). For this study, liaison, an object that is both stable and variable, has been shown to be a sociolinguistic phenomenon that is conducive to observing its transmission on children in the process of language acquisition, but also to observing possible differences between families. (shrink)

This contribution presents a very heterogeneous type of small corpora, which still lacks a clear definition: small bi- and plurilingual corpora. First, it gives an overview of small corpora and discusses the terminological insecurity of research on and with bi- and plurilingual corpora. Then, the databases Talkbank, HZSK, Sketchengine and CLAPOTY are described in order to discuss the possibilities of visualization and availability of the corpus data. Finally, a concrete example is presented: The FM Corpus, a small French-English (...) bilingual corpus of a variety of Canadian French, spoken in Manitoba. (shrink)

This paper describes the conception and constitution of the International Ecological Corpus of French (Corpus International Écologique de la Langue Française CIEL-F). This corpus has been gathered and set up in a data bank in order to make available to the scientific community interactional data collected in ordinary, professional and institutional contexts. The aim is to make possible and promote comparative analysis of spoken French. Data were recorded in Algeria, the French Antillean islands, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, (...) Canada, Congo, Ivory Cost, Egypt, France, India, La Réunion, Maurice, Senegal, Switzerland and Togo. In the first part of the article, we present the issues and challenges of such a corpus. In the second part of the article, we offer an example of exploitation of the data bank. More particularly, we study some usages of the form là, which can be used as a locative deictic but also in more metaphorical way as well as a fully grammaticalized discourse particle. The analysis shows the way different usages are distributed in various communicative areas and proposes some thoughts about possibilities and limitations of comparative analyses of French as it is talked across the world. (shrink)

This article focuses on the potential of web corpora for foreign language teaching and learning. Web corpora are big datasets retrieved from the Internet. They are created in a largely automated way, which goes along with characteristics that may confuse researchers specialising in computer-assisted language learning. However, the following claims can convince even applied linguists: web corpora contain very large amounts of data that support, with the help of text statistics tools, the observation of language features which may be hidden (...) in other forms of text representation. The production method of such resources is both efficient and inexpensive. Moreover, they can be considered as the mirror of a perpetually changing society, organized as networks. In this paper, the terms "pedagogical corpus", "reflexive corpus" and "web corpus" will be defined, and the contribution of the latter two for foreign language teaching and learning will be evaluated. I will conclude by presenting elements of a learning scenario dedicated to writing classified ads for selling, giving or exchanging an item. Designed for a secondary school audience in the fourth year of German language learning, this scenario provides the framework for assessing the potential of web corpora in a given pedagogical context. (shrink)

Research in experimental philosophy has increasingly been turning to corpus methods to produce evidence for empirical claims, as they open up new possibilities for testing linguistic claims or studying concepts across time and cultures. The present article reviews the quasi-experimental studies that have been done using textual data from corpora in philosophy, with an eye for the modeling and experimental design that enable statistical inference. I find that most studies forego comparisons that could control for confounds, and that only (...) a little less than half employ statistical testing methods to control for chance results. Furthermore, at least some researchers make modeling decisions that either do not take into account the nature of corpora and of the word-concept relationship, or undermine the experiment's capacity to answer research questions. I suggest that corpus methods could both provide more powerful evidence and gain more mainstream acceptance by improving their modeling practices. (shrink)