Description
The BNC is a monolingual corpus as it records samples of language use in British English only, although occasionally words and phrases from other languages may also be present. It is a synchronic corpus as only language use from the late 20th century is represented; the BNC is not meant to be a historical record of the development of British English over the ages. From the beginning, those involved in the gathering of written data sought to make the BNC a balanced corpus and hence looked for data in various mediums.
Read more about this topic: British National Corpus
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The great object in life is Sensation—to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this “craving void” which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)