Keyboard Shortcuts for Novelists
Source: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/keyboard-shortcuts-for-novelists [accessed: 20/07/2015, spotted on @NewYorker twitter feed]
Keyboard Shortcuts for Novelists
Author Archives: Markus Killer
The bizarre world of instructional LPs
Instructional LPs – Relaxed English – Excerpts on BBC Radio 4
Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-33464722 [accessed: 18/07/2015]
Programme description: «How to make an Archive on 4» available on BBC iPlayer
Ever wondered how to make an Archive on 4? Here’s your chance to find out!
Alan Dein enters the strange world of instructional records where you can teach yourself just about anything – from yodelling to training your budgie to talk.
It all started in 1901 when Polish émigré Jacques Roston harnessed the new technology of sound recording to teach foreign languages, signing up such luminaries as George Bernard Shaw and JRR Tolkien to lend their support.
By the 50s and 60s you could buy LPs on how to do just about anything – from keep fit to playing a musical instrument, relaxation and passing your driving test.
Perhaps the most surprising are those which help you to train your pet budgerigar to talk – with help from Sparkie, Britain’s favourite budgie, who supposedly had a vocabulary of over 500 words.
With help from Sparkie, Alan Dein tells the story of instructional records and, along the way, reveals a few of the secrets of how to make an Archive on 4.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b062dhgb [accessed: 18/07/2015]
A tour of the British Isles in accents
A dialect coach, Andrew Jack, gives a tour of the accents of the British Isles. (Release date: 20/02/2014, remix, using google maps 02/04/2014 by Philip Barker)
Source (audio): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01slnp5 [accessed: 21/06/2015]
Source (remix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mzWkuOxz8 [accessed: 21/06/2015]
Thin results – random sample (lines) from text file
When working with corpora it is sometimes useful to be able to generate random samples from corpus results for manual analysis (e.g. to determine distribution percentages or recall/precision of queries). BNCweb, CQPweb or (No)SketchEngine provide a thin function for this purpose. However, if the results of corpus queries are only available as text files, there is a random thinning option available as part of GNU coreutils. The examples below create a random sample of 100 lines (adapt sample size according to your project’s needs). The reliability of manually checked results can be improved by obtaining several samples of 100 lines (typically 2-3) and using averaged scores.
On Linux, there is a very easy straight-forward way to achieve this (type: man shuf for details):
cd path_to_text_file
shuf -n 100 results.txt
In order to save the random sample into a new text file, specify an output file:
shuf -n 100 -o random_sample.txt results.txt
On Mac OSX, it is slightly more complicated, as a Linux-like package manager (e.g. Homebrew) and the coreutils package have to be installed first (gshuf Tutorial OSX and corresponding random_sample.zip for novice users who are not familiar with OSX terminal). Once the gshuf command is available, the invocation is anologous (type: man gshuf for details):
cd path_to_text_file
gshuf -n 100 results.txt
In order to save the random sample into a new text file, specify an output file:
gshuf -n 100 -o random_sample.txt results.txt
On Windows, the following Python code snipped could be used to achieve a similar result (please let me know if there are any built-in options):
Random sampler (Python, Algorithm 1)
Source: http://metadatascience.com/2014/02/27/random-sampling-from-very-large-files [accessed: 31/05/2015]
CQPweb tutorial (German)
Noah Bubenhofer’s CQPweb Tutorial (German)
Linkt to Noah Bubenhofer’s CQPweb Tutorial (German)
Purpose/Version/Date web interface to cwb stable: 3.2.43 dev: 3.3.15 [r1848] 31 Dec 2021 / 23 July 2023 Platform/License web-based (also on localhost) open source License: GNU GPLv2+ Price/Availability free
Programming Language(s): php, mysql, Perl
Key features: SERVER INSTALLATION, MANAGE YOUR OWN CORPORA, WEB INTERFACE, CQP QUERIES
Website: CQPweb project page
Website: CQPWeb SVN Repository
Website: UCREL Lancaster Corpus Server (free access to a lot of corpus resources after registration, including the extended Brown-family of corpora)
Website: CQPweb at Beijing Foreign Studies University – Large Number of publicly accessible corpora (username: test, password: test)
Website: CQPweb Video Tutorials
Website: CQPwebInABox Video Tutorials
!["cqpweb-1-01"]("http://langui.ch/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/cqpweb-1-01.png")
!["cqpweb-1-02"]("http://langui.ch/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/cqpweb-1-02.png")
!["cqpweb-1-11"]("http://langui.ch/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/cqpweb-1-11.png")
!["cqpweb-2-14"]("http://langui.ch/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/cqpweb-2-14.png")
Related posts on langui.ch:
New release: ParaVoz2
Purpose/Version/Date Simple web interface for querying (cwb-indexed) parallel corpora. git-commit: 98bbe99 2 July 2015 Platform/License Linux/OSX open source License: GNU GPLv2+ Price/Availability free
Programming Language(s): PHP, XSLT
Key features: ONLINE PARALLEL CONCORDANCER, CQP-QUERY SUPPORT, SIMPLE INTERFACE FOR 2-3 LANGUAGES, SUPPORT FOR SENTENCE- AND WORD-ALIGNMENT, IMPROVED INSTALLATION AND PRE-PROCESSING INSTRUCTIONS
Website: http://parasolcorpus.org (v2)
Website: Bitbucket Repository (v2)
Release announcement:
> Date: Thu, 21 May 2015 14:41:13 +0200
> From: ruprecht.waldenfels _(at)_ gmx.net
> To: cwb _(at)_ sslmit.unibo.it
> Subject: [CWB] Interface for parallel corpora
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> we would like to let you know that a new version of the ParaVoz corpus
> interface for parallel corpora hosted with CWB has been released.
> ParaVoz 2.0 has a user friendly interface, it features basic metadata
> management and supports word alignment.
>
> ParaVoz 2.0 extends (but not replaces) Paravoz 1.0; it is open-source
> and found here: https://bitbucket.org/rvwfels/paravoz2
>
> A demo version is found here: www.parasolcorpus.org/ParaVoz
>
> Best,
> Ruprecht von Waldenfels
> Michał Woźniak
>
> Institute of Polish, Polish Academy of Sciences, Cracow
> _______________________________________________
> CWB mailing list
> CWB _(at)_ sslmit.unibo.it
> http://devel.sslmit.unibo.it/mailman/listinfo/cwb
Related posts on langui.ch:
A (brief) history of computerised corpus tools by Mura Nava
Source: http://www.perezparedes.es/big-data-and-corpus-linguistics [accessed: 14/05/2015]
New release: textblob-de 0.4.2
New release of German language extension textblob-de for the popular textblob package:
See overview of working features compared to main package.
Overview for development branch: Click here.
CQPwebInABox
CQPwebInABox running on VMware Player
Excellent news! A couple of days ago, Andrew Hardie released a virtual machine with a preconfigured version of CQPweb installed:
> From: a.hardie(*at*)lancaster.ac.uk
> To: cwb(*at*)sslmit.unibo.it
> Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2015 05:20:33 +0000
> Subject: [CWB] Announcing CQPwebInABox
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> This is just a quick note to announce the availability of CQPwebInABox
> – a virtual machine image containing a pre-installed copy of CQPweb.
>
> This is designed to get beginners past the hump of having to install
> all the different components.
>
> The image (1.6GB) can be downloaded here:
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/cwb/files/CQPwebInABox/
>
>
> To run it, you will need to install VirtualBox (although I believe
> other virtualisation tools can also use the same file format, I haven’t
> yet tested this).
>
> You can get VirtualBox here:
> https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
> Then “import appliance” from the .ova download.
>
> The virtual machine runs Linux – however, I have set it up in such a
> way as to make the interface as similar to Windows as possible. So
> don’t fear the Linux!
>
> I will create some video tutorials & put them on YouTube as soon as I can.
>
> Feedback welcome.
>
> best
>
> Andrew.
Purpose/Version/Date web interface to cwb stable: 3.2.43 dev: 3.3.15 [r1848] 31 Dec 2021 / 23 July 2023 Platform/License web-based (also on localhost) open source License: GNU GPLv2+ Price/Availability free
Programming Language(s): php, mysql, Perl
Key features: SERVER INSTALLATION, MANAGE YOUR OWN CORPORA, WEB INTERFACE, CQP QUERIES
Website: CQPweb project page
Website: CQPWeb SVN Repository
Website: UCREL Lancaster Corpus Server (free access to a lot of corpus resources after registration, including the extended Brown-family of corpora)
Website: CQPweb at Beijing Foreign Studies University – Large Number of publicly accessible corpora (username: test, password: test)
Website: CQPweb Video Tutorials
Website: CQPwebInABox Video Tutorials
Related posts on langui.ch:
Word Map
Word Map “language teaching”
Word Map for “language teaching” (produced using google translate and wikipedia, source: tweet by @perezparedes [21/02/15])