Literary and Linguistic Computing - current issue

Interpreting Burrows's Delta: Geometric and Probabilistic Foundations

Argamon, S. — 2008-05-23

While Burrows's intuitive and elegant ‘Delta’ measure for authorship attribution has proven to be extremely useful for authorship attribution, a theoretical understanding of its operation has remained somewhat obscure. In this article, I address this issue by introducing a geometric interpretation of Delta, which further allows us to interpret Delta as a probabilistic ranking principle. This interpretation gives us a better understanding of the method's fundamental assumptions and potential limitations, as well as leading to several well-founded variations and extensions.

Working Papers, Open Access, and Cyber-infrastructure in Classical Studies

Pritchard, D. — 2008-05-23

Princeton—Stanford Working Papers in Classics (PSWPC) is a web-based series of work-in-progress scripts by members of two leading departments of classics. It introduces the humanities to a new form of scholarly communication and represents a major advance in the free availability of classical-studies scholarship in cyberspace. This article both reviews the initial performance of this open-access experiment and the benefits and challenges of working papers more generally for classical studies. After 2 years of operation PSWPC has proven to be a clear success. This series has built up a large international readership and a sizeable body of pre-prints and performs important scholarly and community-outreach functions. As this performance is largely due to its congruency with the working arrangements of ancient historians and classicists and the global demand for open-access scholarship, the series confirms the viability of this means of scholarly communication, and the likelihood of its expansion in our discipline. But modifications are required to increase the benefits this series brings and the amount of scholarship it makes freely available online. Finally, departments wishing to replicate its success will have to consider other important developments, such as the increasing availability of post-prints, the linking of research funding to open access, and the emergence of new cyber-infrastructure.

Corpus Tools and Methods, Today and Tomorrow: Incorporating Linguists' Manual Annotations

Smith, N., Hoffmann, S., Rayson, P. — 2008-05-23

Today's corpus tools offer the user a wide range of features that greatly facilitate the linguistic analysis of large amounts of authentic language data (e.g. frequency distributions, collocations, keywords, etc.). However, these tools typically fail to address the fundamental need of the linguist to add interpretive information to a concordance or query result, by coding individual concordance lines for structural, functional, discoursal, and other features in a flexible way. The ability to add such qualitative data is indispensable to a fuller understanding of the phenomenon under investigation as it allows the linguist to produce more rigorous descriptions—and theories—about language in use.

Our article has two aims: first, to assess the merits and drawbacks of existing solutions, by surveying what can be achieved using state-of-the-art corpus tools and generic database software; second, we draw up a set of desiderata and recommendations for the incorporation of flexible encoding features into future corpus tools. We describe an initial step in this direction, with a recent enhancement to the BNCweb corpus analysis software. More generally, we hope our suggestions will lead to linguists and software developers working together more closely to ensure that the needs of the former are provided for by the available technology.

Stylochronometry: Stylistic Development, Sequence of Composition, and Relative Dating

Stamou, C. — 2008-05-23

This article examines representative successful and unsuccessful applications of stylochronometric approaches of the last sixty years in a thematic fashion, aiming to present in a concise manner, although not exhaustive, modern approaches. Differences concerned with adopted methodologies, stylistic markers, and text size render any comparisons among the studies difficult. Nevertheless, common problems may be traced, whereas groups of different stylistic marker types of potential use for applications concerned with stylistic change in time are identifiable.

Zitate per Mausklick? Das Textkorpus zum WORTERBUCH DER BAIRISCHEN MUNDARTEN IN OSTERREICH (WBO) als leistungsstarkes Werkzeug fur die lexikographische Praxis

Wandl-Vogt, E. — 2008-05-23

The DATABASE OF ELECTRONIC TEXTS of the LEXICON OF BAVARIAN DIALECTS IN AUSTRIA (WBÖ) (TEXTKORPUS zum WBÖ)—The Lexicon of Bavarian Dialects in Austria (Wörterbuch der bairischen Mundarten in Österrreich [WBÖ]) is based on a collection of about 4 million single records. They represent the variety of the regional, social and historical Bavarian dialects. About 10% of all entries are excerpts from texts of various types. The lexicographer has to draw the illustrative quotations from the original texts. The digitized full-texts have been dated and localized, thus each quotation can be placed in time and area enabling the lexicogapher to choose a representative number of examples. For the definitions, the most appropriate and illustrative quotations have to be found, in order to actively support the lexicographer's work, the Institute of Lexicography of Austrian Dialects and Names / Institut für Österreichische Dialekt- und Namenlexika (http://www.oeaw.ac.at/dinamlex) started a new project: the so-called DBÖ (Database of the Bavarian Dialects in Austria / Datenbank der bairischen Mundarten in Österreich), financed by the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften / Austrian Academy of Sciences. One main database includes the so-called Hauptkatalog, the main archive; there are additional databases which are necessary to retrieve correct information about the questionnaire, the localization of the word and the date of its recording. One component of the DBÖ is the database of electronic texts of the WBÖ, including some 90 Austrian texts spanning several centuries, representing the Austrian dialects. The original texts are scanned using the Austrian OCR-programme proLector V1.20 (A.1) which allows the training of various fonts. The machine-readable texts are converted in TUSTEP (Tübinger System von Textverarbeitungs-Programmen / Tübingen System of Text Processing Programmes). The TUSTEP-files get an alphanumeric key, which allows one to retrieve each quotation from the database in a chronological order and to sort it according to its localization. Finally the texts are broken down into the requisite sized pieces for quoting in the WBÖ-entries. Using a special programme the quotations can easily be reconnected and replaced in the proper context from which they were drawn. The digital texts are a valuable source for the lexicographer freeing him from the monotony of checking over and over again, thus leaving him more time for his proper work, namely the writing of entries for the WBÖ. Furthermore, the digital texts are important for speeding up the dictionary's publication in accordance with the guidelines of the Straffungskonzept 1993 and 1998.

What Does the Statistical Style Analysis of Film Involve? A Review of Moving into Pictures. More on Film History, Style, and Analysis

Buckland, W. — 2008-05-23

From First Person to Second Person

Ruppel, M. — 2008-05-23

Permanent Pixels: Building Blocks for the Longevity of Digital Surrogates of Historical Photographs. * Rene van Horik.

Terras, M. — 2008-05-23

The Internet and the Madonna: Religious Visionary Experience on the Web.

Lernout, G. — 2008-05-23

Digital Heritage: Applying Digital Imaging to Cultural Heritage. * Lindsay MacDonald (ed.).

Terras, M. — 2008-05-23

Corpus Linguistics and the Web. * Marianne Hundt, Nadja Nesselhauf and Carolin Biewer (eds).

Luyckx, K. — 2008-05-23