Mother daughter relationship in Mary Gordon's Cleaning Up (short Essay

Mother daughter relationship in Mary Gordon's Cleaning Up (short story) - Essay Example ut working for what you receive; therefore, Loretta never bathes for fear that she would be â€Å"putting herself in the camp of the Lavins’ children† (p. xx). Although she doesn’t like children, she makes an effort to engage herself in play with the oldest child, John Lavin, as her way of â€Å"pa[ying] her board† (p. xx). She knew her mother would have expected this of her. Although it is never written that the Lavin family is anything but accommodating during Loretta’s stay, Loretta constantly feels like an outsider. She is convinced that her mother’s actions caused Martine Lavin, the matriarch of the family, and other community members to see her as an inferior person. Later, when she becomes a well-educated woman, she still feels that her old community would condemn her because of her mother’s earlier behavior. â€Å"Cleaning Up† is, in parts, consistent with Gordon’s life. In the story, Loretta attains the same leve l of education that Gordon currently has. Loretta’s pre-college schooling is better than what Gordon was provided, but both earn a Master’s degree and use it to teach. Mother Perpetua is Loretta’s greatest influence. According to an Internet biography, Gordon received the same kind of influence from Elizabeth Hardwick and Janice Thaddeus. Gordon actually considered becoming a nun, a lifestyle that Loretta also briefly contemplates. Finally, Loretta’s work ethic is similar to Gordon’s. Gordon worked to support herself, just like Loretta. Against her mother’s advice, Gordon performed secretarial work and babysat for Thaddeus to put herself through school. Gordon’s own mother, though disfigured from and afflicted with polio, also worked as a secretary to support her family because her husband wouldn’t. The fact that Loretta strives as hard as her mother would have wanted her to, makes it clear that Loretta loved her mother despite the turmoil she’d created. Even though Loretta never saw her mother again, she thinks about

Research assignment Thesis Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Research assignment - Thesis Proposal Example It is as if the country encourages technology diffusion within its boundaries, but its relations with other countries are tied to impeding technology. Iraq’s war with Iran is the prime example of impeding technology diffusion. The rate of acquiring technology accelerated in weapon and warfare tactics. According to reports almost $94 million worth of US computer technology was sold to Iraq during that war (Hurst 58). But sadly all other areas of the governance were ignored. The economy of both countries suffered severe blows due to war. Technology progress was pushed back. The only beneficiary of the war is weapon industry. Education system is probably one of the biggest losers in this bloody game. Well developed countries nurture their education system to produce brilliant generation. Such an output contributes to the society. Iraq had not had the peace and resources to invest technology into its school system. Now the country is slowly rising from the ashes. Maybe in a few years’ time the country will start producing excellent technology. The Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq is an old problem. Iraq’s history is plagued with these conflicts since the sixteenth century. The Ottoman Empire (Sunnis) and Iran (Shiites) were frequently fighting over Iraqi territory during that time span. Technology does not have religion, and it does not have sects. It needs a peaceful environment to bloom. Conflicts like Shias and Sunnis in Iraq are a major cause of impeding technology in that region. Shias and Sunnis can contribute much towards technology by cooperating but sadly they are involved in a tussle of power. No technology company would want to invest in an area where there is uncertainty. Even the well renowned universities would hesitate in opening research centers in a place where there is anarchy and chaos. Iraq is one such place where tech companies feel hesitant in putting up their factories and research & development centers. In

Voltaire In Writing Candide History Essay

Voltaire In Writing Candide History Essay Elaborate upon what advantages there might be for Voltaire in writing Candide as a satire (albeit a philosophical one), as opposed to an out-and-out philosophical essay. Satire: An artistic work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit. Irony or caustic wit used to expose or attack human folly. American Heritage Dictionary. Voltaire was a French writer, philosopher and one of the leaders of the Enlightenment movement. Voltaire wrote with a critical attitude, yet presented the story of Candide in a humorous manner. The story is fictional, but based on real situations happening in the world at the time Voltaire wrote the story. Voltaire wrote Candide using a lot of satire and irony to get his philosophical points across regarding the main theme of book, optimism. The plot of the story is fast paced, and comes across pretty incredulous as the main characters narrowly escape death over and over again, allowing the chance for the tragedies to compound over and over again using the same characters. It is through all of these horrible experiences the characters in Candide endure that he mocks the idea of a perfect world (optimism), and ends up pointing out how indifferent the world is to humanity in general. One of the advantages to Voltaire writing Candide as a satire instead of a philosophical essay was that it kept him from getting thrown into jail, and potentially helped him to avoid persecution and death. At the time he wrote the book there were some significant events happening in history, and writing Candide was a way for Voltaire to convey information and opinion about the events without necessarily getting himself into trouble. Writing in this manner gave Voltaire the opportunity to make fun of the rich and famous, religion, and events prominent at that point in history. Additionally, writing his accounts in a satirical manner allowed him to criticize what was happening in Europe, by putting his fictional characters in realistic settings allowed him to explore current events. I can almost picture him using the excuse: Why, I wasnt talking about you, its just part of the story! A great example of optimism and irony is expressed in chapter five, where he draws attention to the Lis bon earthquake and the devastation it caused. Candide, injured in the earthquake and trapped underneath a pile of rubble, cries out for help from Pangloss, who comes back simply saying -But these earthquakes are nothing new. The city of Lima in America experienced the same tremors last year: same causes, same effects: there must certainly be a seam of sulphur running underground from Lima to Lisbon. Pangloss continues to assure all that This is all for the best. In chapter four, Pangloss is telling the story of how he contracted syphilis passed down through multiple encounters when he indicates that one of the encounters à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦was a Jesuit who passed it to a page boyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ insinuating the Jesuits being homosexual, a sin in the Roman Catholic Church. He later then goes on to state that if it wasnt for Columbus bringing syphilis to the Americas in the spirit of all is for the bestà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ we wouldnt have the enjoyment of chocolate (the association of syphilis to chocolate in this story has sort of ruined it for me). Another example, leaning more towards a political genre regarding the Seven Year War, is in chapter 23 when Voltaire satirizes the actual death of British Naval Commander John Byng by execution on the deck of his own ship in Portsmouth harbor. In the story, Candide and Martin sail into the Portsmouth Harbor on a Dutch ship, discussing the conflict in North America between the French and the British over Canadian territory, Candide expressing his disdain for the fight over land that had more consequences than what was worth fighting for. In the story they come into Portsmouth Harbor spying on a British admiral who is being executed for failing to engage the enemy properly to win the battle. Candide speaks out What is all thisà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦and what the devil is at work in this world? Why kill this admiral? the answer being à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦He did not get enough people killed when he had the chanceà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦but in this count ry it is considered useful now and again to shoot an admiral, to encourage the others. Candide being stunned and shocked by what he heard, refused to set foot on English soil and fled to Venice. This could have made a strong statement to readers, affecting their opinions of England during wartime, especially since the execution of John Byng was such significant event. Candide reminds me of a 1700 version of Saturday Night Live, with all the political and historical satire, done in a clever way as to not get the author in trouble with the masses, yet gets his points across to those who get it and understand the meaning behind the satire. Reflection: Part Two Identify some aspect of contemporary culture (in art, politics, media, science, religion, etc) that has been profoundly shaped by one (or more) of the philosophers weve studied during this course explain the reasons why you make this claim. The Age of Enlightenment, also referred to as the Age of Reason, is centered around a time in history when philosophy centered on reason being the primary source of authority and legitimacy. Enlightenment philosophers believed that science and reason led to progress, that knowledge was attainable by man, (not just a revelation from God), and that man wanted to free himself from existing religious worldview through scientific understanding. The Enlightenment movement developed simultaneously in Europe and the American colonies, and culminated with the liberation of America from England during the American Revolution. Enlightenment principles, developed by philosophers such as Voltaire, Hume and Locke, greatly influenced how the United States government was formed. Since Voltaire is the philosopher I understood the most, I will focus on his philosophies and beliefs. These Enlightenment philosophers had broadened their scope of criticism during this time in history to include religion and politics. Their opinions and ideals influenced the authors of the Declaration if Independence, and the United States Bill of Rights. Voltaire, famous for his satire and advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade, are ideals that are alive and well today. He was outspoken on social reform despite the strict censorship and penalties in place that prosecuted the violators of that day and age. It is apparent that his philosophies on religion and politics have influenced our government and that those philosophies are still in play today. At the time Voltaire was writing his philosophical ideals, the idea of the Unites States was just being born, and as changes began taking place, like the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it indicated that individuals in Americas history were going beyond discussion o f enlightened ideas, like Voltaires philosophies, but were taking action on them. As far as religious influence, Voltaires ideals about the separation of church and state have probably been one his biggest influence in the American government. The concept of separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state. This all came about from Voltaires critical views on religion, reflecting his belief in the separation of church and state, formed after he had been exiled to England for a time. To explain, during the eighteenth century there was a big push to use rationalism to demonstrate the existence of God. Devotion, reverence and belief were integral parts in the exploration of natural philosophy and ethics in addition to political theories of the age. Voltaire considered himself a deist, expressing the idea what is faith? Is it to believe that which is evident? No. It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason. Deism is the philosophical belief in a deity based on reason, rather than religious revelation or dogma. Deism greatly influenced the thought of intellectuals and Founding Fathers, including James Madison, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. It is noted that The First Amendment to the Constitution states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, of course lending itself to individual interpretation, the establishment of separation of church and state. Philosophers like Voltaire really got the ball rolling and changed how people were thinking about government. People began to look more intuitively at how the government was run, and started questioning the authority of the rulers. The philosophers believed that written law needed to reflect the general will of the people. The Enlightenment is named so for good reasonà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the new ideas that sprang from this movement stated that individuals had rights and that government was a contract between the people and their ruler, and that under this contract both the ruler and citizens had rights and responsibilities. One sided rule was not acceptable anymore. The people wanted change from absolutism and the divine right of kings, and they wanted to have a say in how things were being done. An excellent example of enlightenment thinking is the Declaration of Independence, which marked the beginning of self government in America. In conclusion, Voltaire, along with other Enlightnement philosophers, had great influence in laying the foundation of law and shaping of our country.

Contagious Caprine Pleuropneumonia in Beetal Goats Essay -- Health, Ou

Abstract Seroprevalence, clinical findings and lesions of contagious caprine pleuropneumonia (CCPP) in Beetal goats were recorded during an outbreak. The overall seroprevalence of CCPP was 32.50%. Confirmation of Mycoplasma mycoides in serum was carried out using counter immunoelectrophoresis (CIE) technique. The highest CIE positive cases were recorded in the older goats (51.72%) as compared to young ones. Nasal swabs were collected from 39 goats showing respiratory signs were found positive for Mycoplasma. The most and consistent clinical findings were mild to severe cough, purulent nasal secretion, emaciation, dysponea, increased respiration rate and pyrexia. Mortality due to CCPP was 9.17%. Consolidation of lungs exhibited the highest frequency (100%) followed by alveolar exudation (90.90%) and pleural adhesion (72.72%). Among the microscopic lesions, septal peribronchiolar fibrosis exhibited the highest frequency (81.81%) followed by fibrious pleuritis (63.63%) and peribronchio lar cuffing of mononuclear cells (54.54%) in lungs. From these results, it can be concluded that contagious caprine pleuropneumonia under subtropical conditions has great prevalence in Beetal goats and leads to significant mortality. Keywords: Beetal goat . Pakistan. CCPP . Seroprevalence . Pathology Introduction At present, there are 58.3 million goats in Pakistan and their population is increasing at the rate of more than 3% per annum (Afzal, 2010). Pakistan is the third largest goat producing country in the world after China and India. The goat farming in Pakistan is threatened by the prevalence of many infectious and non infectious diseases. Among the infectious disease, contagious caprine pleuropneumonia is a major threat to goat population... ...us pleuropneumonia in the acute stage were also observed in sheep (Momani et al. 2006). Similar lesion were also reported in animal suffering with CCPP from a longer duration exhibited chronic pleuropneumonia or chronic pleuritis (Gelagay et al. 2007). Histopathologically lungs tissue showed mucopurulent to fibrinopurulent exudates accumulation in the aveoli, septal peribronchiolar fibrosis, dilated hyperplastic bronchi, alveolar exudates was dominated by macrophages and with a variable component of neutrophils, and pulmonary fibrosis peribronchiolar mononuclear cuffing were also observed in present study. Similar histopathological changes with lesser intensity were also reported in sheep and goats (Goncalves et al. 2010). Clinico-pathological findings and seroprevalence of disease provided evidence and the presence of CCPP in beetle goats in district Faisalabad.

Gay marriages should be made legal

Homosexuality has always been an easily misunderstood aspect of human's sexual life. People have diverse opinions but also very complex feelings over homosexuality. From the ancient years homosexuals were called â€Å"human garbage† and thought to be unclean by society. They were always isolated and rejected because of their sexual preferences, which were something different and unusual in comparison with the standards of society. However the way each of us deal with the fact of homosexuality depends on our own background, confusion, and personal experience with this issue. In the last years it has appeared the phenomenon of gay marriages, which actually worries society and raises many speculations about its probable legalization. Gay marriages happen more frequently in the recent years and they provoke disagreements and disputes among people. The moral issue that arises is whether gay marriages should be made legal or not. The majority of people are against legalization of this kind of marriages because they consider it as something abnormal and as a terrible sin against society, which unavoidably leads to disaster. According to the common belief gay marriages never existed in the past so there is no reason to change the already existing and well built foundations of this society. Whatever differs from the widely accepted establishment, is isolated and thrust aside. Consequently gay are not allowed to have a family and live their life as they dreamed it of. Furthermore, homosexuals are despised and rejected from the Christians and the religion in general. They are thought to be the â€Å"black ships† which do not deserve to be loved by God or by anyone else. According to our religion the two sexes have to married each other and anything else beside that is considered as blaspheme. They don't follow the â€Å"rules† of society and religion and they have to be punished. Consequently society, decides for the structure of the most appropriate kind of family and it actually excludes the minority of homosexuals by depriving them the right of getting married, creating a family and even have or adopt children. Additionally they are not suitable to bring up a child with the normal way because inevitably one of the two sexes is absent. According to Freud the lack of one of the two sexes in a marriage ends up to be disastrous for the personality of the child. This comes as a natural consequence because the child has only one sex model to imitate and learn from. Things become even more complicated when the child is of the opposite sex from the parents. On the other hand, according to homosexuals and their supporters same sex marriages should be legalized, because all people despite their sexual preferences must be able to get married with the person they love. Homosexuality is not something repulsive but just something different that heterosexuals are not used to. Gay support the opinion that sexual orientation is something, which seems to be â€Å"‘given† and it can't change. Homosexuals can't deny the truth about themselves and they get in a process of discovering and accepting themselves as they are. We must do the same thing and avoid criticizing them for their choices. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with morality. Homosexuals as well as heterosexuals can be involved in sexual sin, including promiscuity, infidelity and abuse. They are just like the rest of us, they have the same rights and they deserve the same opportunities in life. Consequently, they should be allowed to get married and create a family. They can be as good parents as the ordinary parents. They can offer love, tenderness and they can contribute to the formation of their children's personality. In conclusion homosexuality has many supporters but also many enemies. The problem that arises is whether it should be legalized or not. As we know from history all kind of discriminations led humanity straight to disaster in the past years. So as we accept every person with its benefits but also its disadvantages, we should also accept the homosexuals. Even if people cannot easily accept something new and different that inclines from what is considered as normal we must try to accept it and give homosexuals the chance to fulfil their dreams and live their lives without any unfair discriminations through legalization of gay marriages.

Corpus Linguistics Essay

Introduction This paper includes information about corpus linguistics, its connection with lexicology and translation. The latter is the most important one and I am keen on finding and introducing something which is mainly connected with my future profession. Frankly speaking that was not an easy journey but I am hopeful it is destined to be successful. A corpus is an electronically stored collection of samples of naturally occurring language. Most modern corpora are at least 1 million words in size and consist either of complete texts or of large extracts from long texts. Usually the texts are selected to represent a type of communication or a variety of language; for example, a corpus may be compiled to represent the English used in history textbooks, or Canadian French, or Internet discussions of genetic modification. Corpora are investigated through the use of dedicated software. Corpus linguistics can be regarded as a sophisticated method of finding answers to the kinds of questions linguists have always asked. A large corpus can be a test bed for hypotheses and can be used to add a quantitative dimension to many linguistic studies. It is also true, however, that corpus software presents the researcher with language in a form that is not normally encountered and that this can highlight patterning that often goes unnoticed. Corpus linguistics has also, therefore, led to a reassessment of what language is like. During this journey we will try to find out; What is Corpus Linguistics Corpus Linguistics Terms and Their Meanings History of Corpus Linguistics Resources and Methodologies for Corpus Linguistics, Corpora Translation Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, Corpus-Based Descriptions So fasten the seat belts we are flying! What is Corpus Linguistics? Corpus linguistics is a study of language and a method of linguistic analysis which uses a collection of natural or â€Å"real word† texts known as corpus. Corpus linguistics is used to analyse and research a number of linguistic questions and offers a unique insight into the dynamic of language which has made it one of the most widely used linguistic methodologies. Since corpus linguistics involves the use of large corpora that consist of millions or sometimes even billion words, it relies heavily on the use of computers to determine what rules govern the language  and what patters (grammatical or lexical for instance) occur. Thus it is not surprising that corpus linguistics emerged in its modern form only after the computer revolution in the 1980s. The Brown Corpus, the first modern and electronically readable corpus, however, was created by Henry Kucera and W. Nelson Francis as early as the 1960s. Corpus Linguistics Terms and Their Meanings Corpus (plural corpora). It refers to a collection of systematically or randomly collected texts of natural language which is electronically stored and processed. Corpus can consist of texts in a  single or multiple languages. It contains a large number of texts which allow the researchers to 1 / 6 analyse linguistic rules but the corpus does not represent the entire language, no matter how large it is. Multilingual corpus. Like its name suggests, multilingual corpus consists of texts in multiple languages. Parsed corpus (treebank). It is a collection of texts in naturally occurring language in which each sentence is parsed – syntactically analysed and annotated. Syntactic analysis is typically given in a tree-like structure which is why parsed corpus is also known as treebank. Parallel corpora. The term refers to a collection of texts which are translations of each other. Annotation. It refers to an extension of the text by addition of various linguistic information. Examples include parsing, tagging, etc. Annotation is often used in reference to corpora as opposed to annotated corpora which consist of plain text in the raw state. Collocation. It refers to a sequence or pattern in which the words appear together or co-occur. Concordance. The term encompasses a word or phrase and its immediate context. In corpus linguistics, concordance is used to analyse different use of a single word, word frequency and  phrases or idioms. Orthography. It is a standardised writing system of a particular language and includes various grammatical rules such as spelling, capitalisation and punctuation marks. Orthography can pose a problem in analysis of writing systems which use accents because the native speakers of these languages sometimes use alternative characters to the accented letters or omit them completely. Token. It is an occurrence of an individual word which is plays an important role in the so-called tokenisation that involves division of the text or collection of words into token. This method is often  used in the study of languages which do not delimit words with space. Lemmasation. The term derives from the word lemma which refers to a set of different forms of a single word such as laugh and laughed for example. Lemmasation is the process of grouping of the words that have the same meaning. Wildcard. It refers to special characters such as question mark (? ) or asterisk (*) which can represent a character or word. 3A perspective. It is a research method that is used in corpus linguistics which was introduced by S. Wallis and G. Nelson. 3A stands for annotation, abstraction and analysis. History of Corpus Linguistics  History of corpus linguistics is typically divided into two periods: – early corpus linguistics, also known as pre-Chomsky corpus linguistics and – modern corpus linguistics The early examples of corpus linguistics date to the late 19th century Germany. In 1897, German linguist J. Kading used a large corpus consisting of about 11 million words to analyse distribution of the letters and their sequences in German language. The impressively sized corpus that corresponds with the size of a modern corpus was revolutionary at the time. Other early linguists to use corpus to study language include Franz Boas (Handbook of Native  American Indian Languages, 1911), Zellig Harris (Methods in Structural Linguistics, 1951), Charles C. Fries (The structure of English, 1952), Leonard Bloomfield (Language, 1933), Archibald A. Hill and others, mostly American structural and field linguists. Some of them such as Fries and A. Aileen Traver also started to use corpus in pedagogical study of foreign language. In 1961, Henry Kucera and W. Nelson Francis from the Brown University started to work on the Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English, commonly known simply as the Brown Corpus which is the first modern, electronically readable corpus. It consists of 1 million word American English texts that are organised into 15 categories. For the modern standards of corpus linguistics, the Brown Corpus is kind of small, however, it is widely considered one of the most important works in history of corpus linguistics. But this was also the time of Chomsky’s criticism of corpus linguistics which would result in a period of decline. Chomsky rejected the use of corpus as a tool for linguistic studies, arguing that linguist must model language on competence instead of performance. And according to Chomsky, corpus does allow 2 / 6 language modelling on competence. Corpus linguistics was not abandoned completely, however, it was not until the 1980s when linguists began to show an increased interest in the use of corpus for research. The revival of corpus linguistics and its emergence in the modern form was greatly influenced by the advent of computers and network technology in the 1980s which allowed the linguists to use electronic language samples as well as electronic tools. The use of computers, however, dates back to the early 1970s when the Montreal French Project developed the first computerised form of spoken language, while Jan Svartvik began to work on the London-Lund corpus with the aid of the  Brown Corpus and the Survey of English Usage (SEU) at University College London. All mentioned works before the 1980s as well as the early examples of corpus linguistics paved the way to modern study of language on the basis of corpora as we know it today. The term corpus linguistics has been finally adopted after J. Aarts and W. Meijs published Corpus linguistics: Recent developments in the use of computer corpora in English language research in 1984. Resources and Methodologies for Corpus Linguistics, Corpora The basic resource for corpus linguistics is a collection of texts, called a corpus. Corpora can be of varying sizes, are compiled for different purposes, and are composed of texts of different types. All corpora are homogeneous to a certain extent; they are composed of texts from one language or one variety of a language or one register, etc. They also are all heterogeneous to a certain extent, in that at the very least they are composed of a number of different texts. Most corpora contain information in addition to the texts that make them up, such as information about the texts themselves, part-of- speech tags for each word, and parsing information. ? What Corpus Linguistics Does  Gives an access to naturalistic linguistic information. As mentioned before, corpora consist of â€Å"real word† texts which are mostly a product of real life situations. This makes corpora a valuable research source for dialectology, sociolinguistics and stylistics. Facilitates linguistic research. Electronically readable corpora have dramatically reduced the time needed to find particular words or phrases. A research that would take days or even years to complete manually can be done in a matter of seconds with the highest degree of accuracy. Enables the study of wider patterns and collocation of words. Before the advent of computers, corpus linguistics was studying only single words and their frequency. Modern technology allowed the study of wider patters and collocation of words. Allows analysis of multiple parameters at the same time. Various corpus linguistics software programmes, online marketing and analytical tools allow the researchers to analyse a larger number of parameters simultaneously. In addition, many corpora are enriched with various linguistic information such as annotation. Facilitates the study of the second language. Study of the second language with the use of natural  language allows the students to get a better â€Å"feeling† for the language and learn the language like it is used in real rather than â€Å"invented† situations. What Corpus Linguistics Does Not Does not explain why. The study of corpora tells us what and how happened but it does not tell us why the frequency of a particular word has increased over time for instance. Does not represent the entire language. Corpus linguistics studies the language by using randomly or systematically selected corpora. They typically consist of a large number of naturally occurring texts, however, they do not represent the entire language. Linguistic analyses that use the methods and tools of corpus linguistics thus do not represent the entire language. Searches, Software, and Methodologies Corpora are interrogated through the use of dedicated software, the nature of which inevitably reflects assumptions about methodology in corpus investigation. At the most basic level, corpus software: . searches the corpus for a given target item, 3 / 6 . counts the number of instances of the target item in the corpus and calculates relative frequencies, . displays instances of the target item so that the corpus user can carry out further investigation. It is apparent that corpus methodologies are essentially quantitative. Indeed, corpus linguistics has been criticized for allowing only the observation of relative quantity and for failing to expand the explanatory power of linguistic theory (for discussion, see Meyer, 2002: 2–5). It is shown in this article that corpus linguistics can indeed enrich language theory, though only if preconceptions about what that theory consists of are allowed to change. Here, however, we leave that argument aside as we review corpus investigation software in more detail. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, Corpus-Based Descriptions. As has been noted, corpus linguistics is essentially a methodology or set of methodologies, rather than a theory of language description. Essentially, corpus linguistics means this: . looking at naturally occurring language; . looking at relatively large amounts of such language; . observing relative frequencies, either in raw form or mediated through statistical operations; . observing patterns of association, either between a feature and a text type or between groups of words. Reduced to its essence in this way, corpus linguistics appears to be ‘theory neutral,’ although the  practice of doing corpus linguistics is never neutral, as each practitioner defines what is meant by a ‘feature’ and what frequencies should be observed, in line with a theoretical approach to what matters in language. Approaches to the use of a corpus that essentially rely on the existence of categories derived from noncorpus investigations of language are sometimes referred to as ‘corpus based’ (Tognini-Bonelli, 2001). Studies of this kind can test hypotheses arising from grammatical descriptions based on intuition or on limited data. Experiments have been designed specifically to do this (Nelson et al., 2002: 257–283). For example, Meyer (2002: 7–8) describes work on ellipsis from a typological and psycholinguistic point of view that predicts that of the three possible clause locations of ellipsis in American spoken English, one will be much more frequent than the others. A corpus study reveals this to be an accurate prediction. On the other hand, the study of pseudo-titles mentioned in the section ‘Languages and Varieties’ shows how assumptions about language – in this instance about the influence of one variety of English on another –can be shown to be false. Biber et al. (1999: 7) comment that ‘‘corpus-based analysis of grammatical structure can uncover characteristics that were previously unsuspected. ’’ They mention as examples of this the surprisingly high frequency of complex relative clause constructions in conversation, and the frequency of simplified grammatical constructions in academic prose. A clearer integration between linguistic theory and corpus linguistics is demonstrated by Matthiessen’s work on probability (see the section ‘Probability’). This work takes its categories from an existing description of English (Halliday’s (1985) systemic functional  grammar), but the corpus study was more integral to the theory, as it was the only way that statements about probability of occurrence of each item in the system could be made with accuracy. Corpus-Driven Descriptions However, more radical challenges to language description can be found. Sinclair (1991, 2004) argues that the kind of patterning observable in a corpus (and nowhere else) necessitate descriptions of a markedly different kind from those commonly available. Both the descriptions and the theories that they in turn inspire are, in Tognini-Bonelli’s (2001) terms, ‘‘corpus driven. ’’ Some  of the challenges to tradition that corpus-driven theories involve are these: . Lexis and grammar are not distinct, and grammar is not an abstract system underlying language . Choice of any kind is heavily restricted by choice of lexis . Meaning is not atomistic, residing in words, but prosodic, belonging to variable units of meaning and always located in texts. 4 / 6 Evidence for these claims is presented in the section ‘Observing patterned behavior’ above. The notion of pattern grammar focuses on the way that different lexical items behave differently in terms of how they are complemented. Grammatical generalizations about complementation cannot be made without describing that individual lexical behavior. Similarly, choice between features such as ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ depends to some extent on lexical item, as some verbs (such as afford) occur in the negative much more frequently than most. In other words, the probability of any grammatical category’s occurring is strongly affected not only by the register but also by the lexis used. Finally, the evidence of phraseology is that it makes more sense to see meaning as belonging to phrases than to individual words. Findings such as these have led many writers to see a need for descriptions of language that are radically different from those currently available. Sinclair (1991, 2004) proposes, for example, that meaning be seen as belonging to ‘units of meaning,’ each unit being describable in the way set out in He criticized conventional grammar for distinguishing between structures (a series of ‘slots’) and lexis (the ‘fillers’), such that it appears that any slot can be filled by any filler: there are no restrictions other than what the speaker wishes to say. This is clearly sometimes the case, and  when it is, Sinclair Translation Corpora can be used to train translators, used as a resource for practicing translators, and used as a means of studying the process of translation and the kinds of choices that translators make. Parallel corpora are often used in these applications, and software exists that will ‘align’ two corpora such that the translation of each sentence in the original text is immediately identifiable. This allows one to observe how a given word has been translated in different contexts. One interesting finding is that apparently equivalent words – such as English go and Swedish ga ° , or  English with and German mit (Viberg, 1996; Schmied and Fink, 2000) – occur as translations of each other in only a minority of instances. This suggests differences in the ways those languages use the items concerned. More generally, examination of parallel corpora emphasizes that what translators translate is not the word but a larger unit (Teubert andC ? erma? kova? , 2004). Although a single word may have many equivalents when translated, a word in context may well have only one such equivalent. For example, although travail as an individual word is sometimes translated as work and sometimes as labor, the phrase travaux pre?  paratoires is translated only as preparatory work. Thus, Teubert and C ? erma? kova? argue, travaux pre? paratoires and preparatory work may be considered to be equivalent translation units, whereas no such claim can be made for travaux and work. As well as giving information about languages, corpus studies have also indicated that translated language is not the same as nontranslated language. Studies of corpora of translated texts have shown that they tend to have higher incidences of very frequent words and that they tend to be more explicit in terms of grammar (Baker, 1993). They may also be influenced by the structure  of the source language, as was indicated in the discussion of wh- clefts in English and Swedish in the section ‘Languages and Varieties. ’ In communities where people read a large number of translated texts, the foreign language, via its translations, may even influence the home language. Gellerstam (1996) notes that some words in Swedish have taken on the meanings of English that look similar and argues that this is because translators tend to translate the English word with the similar looking Swedish word, thereby using the Swedish word with a new meaning, which then enters the language. One example is the Swedish word dramatisk, which used to indicate something relating to drama but which now, like the English word dramatic, also means ‘substantial and surprising. ’ Conclusion So every journey has its end. Ours isn’t an exception. It was a long journey but it was worth it. Corpus linguistics is a relatively new discipline, and a fast-changing one. As computer resources, particularly web-based ones, develop, sophisticated corpus investigations come within the reach of 5 / 6 the ordinary translator, language learner, or linguist. Our understanding of the ways that types of  language might vary from one another, and our appreciation of the ways that words pattern in language, have been immeasurably improved by corpus studies. Even more significant, perhaps, is the development of new theories of language that take corpus research as their starting point. The list of used literature 1. M. A. K. Halliday – Lexicology and Corpus Linguistics 2. Teubert and C ? erma? kova? 2004 3. Wallis, S. and Nelson G. ‘Knowledge discovery in grammatically analysed corpora’. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 5: 307–340. 2001 POWERED BY TCPDF (WWW. TCPDF. ORG)