Annotating a corpus of Early Modern English writing for categories of discourse presentation

This article discusses the process of annotating a small corpus of Early Modern English writing that we have constructed in order to investigate the diachronic development of speech, writing and thought presentation. The work we have done so far is a pilot investigation for a planned larger project. We have constructed a corpus of approximately 40,000 words of Early Modern English (EModE) fiction and news journalism and annotated it for categories of discourse presentation (DP) drawn from a model originally proposed by Leech and Short (1981). This has allowed us to quantify the types of discourse presentation within the corpus and to compare our findings against those from a similarly annotated corpus of Present Day English (PDE) writing (reported in Semino and Short 2004). Our results so far appear to indicate developing stylistic tendencies in fiction and news texts in the Early Modern period, and suggest that it would be profitable to extend the project through the construction of a larger corpus incorporating a greater number of text-types in order to test our hypotheses more rigorously. In this article we concentrate specifically on describing the annotation phase of the project. We discuss the criteria by which we defined the various discourse presentation categories in order to make clear our analytical methodology, as well as the issues we were confronted with in 2 trying to annotate in a systematic and retrievable way. We conclude with some preliminary results to illustrate the value of this kind of annotation and suggest some hypotheses resulting from this pilot investigation

Towards an integrated corpus stylistics

Over recent years, the use of corpora in stylistic analysis has grown in popularity. However, questions still remain over the remit of corpus stylistics, its distinction from corpus linguistics generally and its capacity to explain complex stylistic effects. This article argues in favour of an integrated corpus stylistics; that is, an approach to corpus stylistics that integrates it with other stylistic methods and analytical frameworks. I suggest that this approach is needed for two main reasons: (i) it is analytically necessary in order to fully explain stylistic effects in texts, and (ii) integrating corpus methods with other stylistic tools is what will distinguish corpus stylistics from corpus linguistics. My argument is supported by reference to examples from Mark Haddon’s no vel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and the HBO TV series Deadwood. Both these examples rely for their explanation on a combination of corpus stylistic analytical techniques and other stylistic methods of analysis

Thinking about the news : thought presentation in early modern English news writing

Walker and McIntyre investigate the forms and functions of discourse presentation in a corpus of Early Modern English news reporting, concentrating particularly on thought presentation. They describe they manually annotated the corpus using discourse presentation categories and consider the methodological issues associated with corpus annotation for categories that are function rather than form-based. They explain how they ensured the replicability of their annotation using principles that are likely to be valuable for anyone manually annotating a corpus for function-based categories. They compare quantitative findings from their corpus against a similarly annotated corpus of present day English news journalism in order to determine diachronic changes in discourse presentation frequencies. They then offer a qualitative analysis of the function of thought presentation in Early Modern English news

A Review on an Integrated Mobile System for Improving Efficiency in Water Meter Reading – A Case of Arusha Tanzania

Technology has shown tremendous growth in recent years, which has led to the evolution of mobile phone development. A mobile phone is a wireless handheld device that allows users to make calls and send text messages, among other features. A water meter is a device which collects and registers information on the volume of water used over a period of time at a particular location. Due to the fact that the current process of recording water consumption in Arusha, Tanzania is inefficient as it is still done manually, this paper shows different best studies made in perfecting water meter reading system via mobile system. It further proposes the best way of recording water consumption which can match with the environment of Tanzania after reviewing different studies made by others. Keywords: Mobile phone, Water meter, SMS, USSD, Data logge

Celebrating Style in Fiction

Style in Fiction was probably the most important book I read as an undergraduate student. I bought a copy at the end of the first term of my first year, with the hope that it might help me to write a coursework assignment that was due on the stylistics of prose fiction. I have to say that I wasn’t optimistic about this, since most of the academic books I had read up to that point seemed dry, arcane and designed primarily to ensure that upstart undergraduates were left in no doubt about where ..

Passado, presente e futuro da epilesia

Epilepsy is a complex brain disorder with diverse clinical features. Moreover, epilepsy is one of the most common serious neurological disorders worldwide with no age, racial, social class, national or geographic boundaries. This disease causes recurring seizures that happen when clusters of neurons in the brain send out wrong signals. A common way to explain seizures is that a disruption has ocurred in the normal balan- ce of excitation and inhibition. Using different experimental models, it is clear that genes, developmental mechanisms, and neural plasticity play major roles in creating a state of underlying hyperexitability. Epilep- sy patients may have strange sensations and emotions or behave strangely before a seizure occurs. Diffe- rent features of epileptic seizures have been reported, where the patients may have violent muscle spasms or lose consciousness. This is a disorder with many possible causes, making mechanistic predictions a challenge. Anything that disturbs the normal pattern of neuron activity - from illness to brain damage to abnormal brain development - can lead to epilepsy. Several experimental models have been developed wi- th the objective to gain insight into the mechanisms of disruption involved in epilepsy. Nonetheless, the target and/or mechanism of action of many of drugs used to control epilepsy remains unclear. Their eluci- dation should improve diagnosis and may provide new targets for the development of specifi c prophylactic therapies for epilepsyA epilepsia é desordem cerebral complexa com diversas manifestações clínicas. Além disso, a epilepsia é uma das doenças neurológicas mais comuns ao longo do planeta, sem barreiras geográfi cas para idade, raça, sexo ou nacionalidade. A doença causa convulsões recorrentes que ocorrem quando grupos de neu- rônios cerebrais sinalizam erroneamente. Um modo comum de explicar as convulsões é a de que houve uma falha do balanço normal de excitação e inibição. Através do uso de diferentes modelos experimentais está claro que genes, mecanismos de desenvolvimento e plasticidade neural têm um papel importante em criar o estado de hiperexcitabilidade. Pacientes com epilepsia podem ter sensações estranhas e se com- portar de forma estranha antes de uma convulsão. Diferentes formas de convulsões epilépticas são documentadas, onde os pacientes podem ter violentos espasmos musculares ou perda de consciência. Esta é uma doença com várias causas possíveis, fazendo com que a previsão dos mecanismos seja um desafio. Qualquer modificação no padrão normal de atividade neuronal, desde doenças, dano cerebral até desenvolvimento cerebral anormal, pode levar a epilepsia. Diversos modelos experimentais têm sido desenvolvidos com o objetivo de entender os mecanismos envolvidos na epilepsia. Entretanto, o alvo ou o mecanismo de ação de muitos dos fármacos utilizados no controle da epilepsia permanecem obscuros. A sua elucidação deverá melhorar o diagnóstico e providenciar novos alvos para o desenvolvimento de terapias profiláticas para a epilepsia.Fil: Funchal, Cláudia. Centro Universitário Metodista; BrasilFil: Aguire, Gisela. Centro de investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados; MéxicoFil: Valles, Ana Sofia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Bahía Blanca; ArgentinaFil: McIntyre, Dan. Carleton University; Canad

The visualisation of cognitive structures in forensic statements

Forensic statements are often unstructured, intricate, and thus difficult to interpret and assess. This is due to the varied nature and format of how interviews with victims, witnesses, or suspects are conducted. It is even more difficult for police investigators, lawyers or other legal practitioners to grasp intuitively and accurately the key information pertaining within the varied statements. This research investigates the opportunities in the convergence of linguistic approaches to extracting and reconstructing the cognitive structure, i.e. “Text-Worlds”, in a statement, and the computerised operational settings for enabling effective and hopefully more accurate interpretation of forensic discourse through visualisation

Projecting uncertainty: Visualising text-worlds in three statements from the Meredith Kercher murder case

This article uses Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007) in conjunction with VUE (Visual Understanding Environment) concept mapping software to analyze three statements from the trial of Amanda Knox, convicted in 2009 of the murder of Meredith Kercher. We compare the cognitive structures of the statements and use the insights gained to guide an examination of their individual linguistic features and associated potential interpretative effects. In the first two dictated statements, Knox is projected as an actor responsible for the reported actions/events that implicate her in the crime, whereas in the third statement (hand-written in English), she is projected as a sensor, presenting more prominent epistemic uncertainty and indicating bewilderment. We argue that using VUE diagramming software extends the scope of Text World Theory, by increasing its capacity for managing analytically lengthy and complex datasets