Corpus Linguistic Key Words
In corpus linguistics, key words are words that appear with statistically unusual frequency in a text or a corpus of texts. They are identified by software that compares a word-list of the text with a word-list based on a larger reference corpus. A suitable term for the phenomenon is keyness. The procedure used, for example by WordSmith, to list key words and phrases and plot where they appear in texts. These items are very often of interest—particularly those human readers would not likely notice, such as prepositions, time adverbs, and pronouns.
See also: Scott, M. & Tribbe, C., 2006, Textual Patterns: keyword and corpus analysis in language education, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
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Famous quotes containing the words corpus, linguistic, key and/or words:
“By that bedes side ther kneleth a may,
And she wepeth both nyght and day.
And by that beddes side ther stondith a ston,
‘Corpus Christi’wretyn theron.”
—Unknown. Corpus Christi Carol (l. 11–14)
“It is merely a linguistic peculiarity, not a logical fact, that we say “that is red” instead of “that reddens,” either in the sense of growing, becoming, red, or in the sense of making something else red.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“The knight slew the dragon,
The lady was gay,
They rode on together,
Away, away.”
—Unknown. This Is the Key (l. 38–41)
“When Wilson got upon his legs in those days he seems to have gone into a sort of trance, with all the peculiar illusions and delusions that belong to a pedagogue gone mashugga. He heard words giving three cheers; he saw them race across a blackboard like Mexicans pursued by the Polizei; he felt them rush up and kiss him.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)