This is listed in hopes that eventually Fort Lewis College will subscribe to the electronic OED, the largest historical English dictionary ever published. For now, the old school -- and still most hopeful, if heavier -- hardbound version is available in the FLC library.
By combining full texts of early dictionaries written over 160 years by lexicographers with varying purposes, the Early Modern English Dictionaries Database (EMEDD) is a reference work for English of the Renaissance period based at the University of Toronto. It is designed to make accessible the English-language content of bilingual (English and other languages) and monolingual (English-only) dictionaries, glossaries, grammars, and encyclopedias published in England from 1500 to 1660.
Also from UToronto, Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, first printed in 1604, is generally regarded to be the first fully developed representative of the monolingual dictionary in English. For each of the 2543 headwords contained in its first edition, Cawdrey provided a concise definition -- the standard entry rarely exceeded more than a few words, usually synonyms -- and he marked those words thought to be of French or Greek origin; in some cases, he also marked those words which were a "kind of" a larger group. Cawdrey added material to each of its three later editions (1609, 1613, 1617), ultimately to define over 3200 words, but did not vary his method. While small and unsophisticated by today's standards, the Table was the largest dictionary of its type at the time and, when viewed in the full context of Early Modern English lexicography, it exemplifies the movement from words lists and glosses to dictionaries which more closely resemble those of today.
This has some limitations, but it does raise fundamental questions about how we think about words and their contexts, especially when juxtaposed with text based thesauruses.
The web itself is perhaps the largest corpus of written language available, and it should be conceived as such. However, here are some other corpora, including some with recorded and transcribed spoken language.
The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and written. The written part (90%) includes, for example, extracts from regional and national newspapers, specialist periodicals and journals for all ages and interests, academic books and popular fiction, published and unpublished letters and memoranda, school and university essays, among many other kinds of text. The spoken part (10%) includes a large amount of unscripted informal conversation, recorded by volunteers selected from different age, region and social classes in a demographically balanced way, together with spoken language collected in all kinds of different contexts, ranging from formal business or government meetings to radio shows and phone-ins. While FLC does not presently have access to the full corpus, you can do searches on-line, which will provide results of up to 50 hits. Like the OED, hopefully we'll have a subscription at some point.
The Bank of English is a collection of samples of modern English language held on computer for analysis of words, meanings, grammar and usage.The latest release of the corpus amounted to 415 million words and it continues to grow with the constant addition of new material. Written texts come from newspapers, magazines, fiction and non-fiction books, brochures, leaflets, reports, letters, and so on. The spoken word is represented by transcriptions of everyday casual conversation, radio broadcasts, meetings, interviews and discussions, etc. The material is up- to-date, with the majority of texts originating after 1990. This one also requires a subscription, but scroll down to the bottom portion "Can I use this resource?" to learn about the demos, including a great collocate search.
The University of Michigan's Humanities Text Initiative makes available a wide array of texts:
The texts in this collection come from a variety of sources on the Internet, including the Oxford Text Archive, Project Gutenberg, the Online Book Initiative, and contributions from individual text encoders. Melville, Poe, Conrad, Dickens and Angelou are some of the writers included.
The Michigan Early Modern English Materials (MEMEM) were compiled by Richard W. Bailey, Jay L. Robinson, James W. Downer, with Patricia V. Lehman. The Materials consist of citations collected for the modal verbs and certain other English words for the Early Modern English Dictionary. Many of the slips used in the work were the original Oxford English Dictionary slips, provided to the University of Michigan by the editors of the OED.
The American Verse Project is a collaborative project between the University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative (HTI) and the UMichigan Press. The project is assembling an electronic archive of volumes of American poetry prior to 1920. The full text of each volume of poetry is being converted into digital form and coded in Standard Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML) using the TEI Guidelines, with various forms of access provided through the WWW.
The Middle English Compendium has been designed to offer easy access to and interconnectivity between three major Middle English electronic resources: an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary, a HyperBibliography of Middle English prose and verse, based on the MED bibliographies, and an associated network of electronic resources.
The original electronic text for this version of the Bible was provided by the Oxford Text Archive. The Revised Standard Version of the Bible is copyright © National Council of Churches of Christ in America.
This collection of Middle English texts was assembled from works contributed by University of Michigan faculty and from texts provided by the Oxford Text Archive, as well as works created specifically for the Corpus by the HTI. With almost 60 texts, the corpus grows constantly, and includes Chaucer, Malory and many others.
Georgetown's Cathy Ball put these together, one of the early -- and still one of the best -- sites dealing with Old English. Lots to offer here: fonts, e-texts, sound files, and much more.
The Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Tracts is a collectionof texts on various subject matter published between 1640 and 1740 - atime that is marked by the rise of mass publication, the development ofa public discourse in many areas of everyday life and, last but not least, the standardisation of British English.
The Bard's work online, for free. Fully searchable and very easy to use,this is the Web's first edition of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. This site has offered Shakespeare's plays and poetry to the Internet community since 1993.
This site provides materials for Harvard University's Chaucer classes in the Core Program, the English Department, and the Division of Continuing Education. (Others of course are welcome to use it.) It provides a wide range of glossed Middle English texts and translations of analogues relevant to Chaucer's works, as well as selections from relevant works by earlier and later writers, critical articles from a variety of perspectives, graphics, and general information on life in the Middle Ages. Of particular use are the Chaucerian English Pronunciation sites.
A series of old-spelling, SGML-encoded editions of early individual copies of English Renaissance books and manuscripts, and of plain transcriptions of such works, published on the World Wide Web as a free resource for students of the period.
The British Women Romantic Poet's Project is producing an online scholarly archive consisting of E-text editions of poetry by British and Irish women written (not necessarily published) between 1789 (the onset of the French Revolution) and 1832 (the passage of the Reform Act), a period traditionally known in English literary history as the Romantic period.
The goal of the Victorian Women Writers Project is to produce highly accurate transcriptions of works by British women writers of the 19th century, encoded using the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). ItÕs fully searchable, and includes works by, among others, Harriet Martineau and Augusta Webster.
The Oxford Text Archive works closely with members of the Arts and Humanities academic community to collect, catalogue, and preserve high-quality electronic texts for research and teaching. The OTA currently distributes more than 2500 resources in over 25 different languages, and is actively working to extend its catalogue of holdings. The OTA is one of the largest online text collections Documenting the American South (DAS) is a collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. It is organized into the following projects: First Person Narratives of the American South, Library of Southern Literature, North American Slave Narratives, The Southern Homefront, 1861-65, and The Church in the Southern Black Community. The next one, now in the planning stage, will feature North Caroliniana. The Academic Affairs Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sponsors DAS, and the texts come primarily from its Southern holdings. As of July 27, 2001, DAS includes 960 books and manuscripts. Most are accompanied by a full bibliographic record.
From Alexander Bruce at Florida Southern College, this site has a reproduction of the "Dream of the Rood," as well as images of the Ruthwell Cross. In addition, there are hypertext versions of Rood in Old English and a translation into Modern English. Prof. Bruce writes: "This was designed to serve as an introduction to the Ruthwell Cross and "The Dream of the Rood." The information herein, while interesting and certainly worth perusing, is not meant to be exhaustive; only basic theories, commentaries, and explanations are offered." Highly recommended.
From the British Library's Online Information Server, this site has a couple of beautiful reproductions of this manuscript. The Lindisfarne Gospels in the British Library is one of Britain's greatest artistic treasures. Written and illuminated in honour of God and St Cuthbert about AD 698 by the monk Eadfrith, afterwards Bishop of Lindisfarne, it is famous for the superb quality and intricate design of its decorated pages. Easily one of the best images of manuscripts on the web.
The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford provides this image of the preface to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. They also offer lots of manuscript images from this
list. Look around, especially if you have a fast connection.
Created between 1995-2000, this collection offers digital facsimiles of complete manuscripts, scanned directly from the originals. This site provides access to over 80 early manuscripts now in institutions associated with the University of Oxford. An impressive -- and growing -- collection. Although some manuscript facsimiles are incomplete, they're operating under the principle that "a nearly complete manuscript is bettern than none at all." I couldn't agree more.
From this site, you can search the New York Times for words and phrases. First, youÕll need to register, which is free, quick, and easy to do. A good source for keeping your finger on the pulse of current American English, and news, of course.
With over 60 English language newspapers published around the globe and dating back twenty years or more in some cases, this is another great resource for studying more recent English language usage. YouÕll need to be connected to FLCÕs network to use this. Word search tip: when searching for a word, also search for "a" or "the," as if it doesnÕt find your word in the first paragraph of an article, it will move to the next. "A" and "the" will help you get around this.
Yes, the home of the IPA, in all its glory. For information on the history of the IPA, multiple charts and examples, and even fonts, this is the place. TheyÕve also got a good
list of links for phonetics and linguistics online sources.
This is a great site, with the sounds of English included as sound files you can listen to as you master phonetics and phonology, created and maintained by the chair of my dissertation committee.
Curious about the dialects in the US, then start here. Includes several maps and a fairly short paper about the dialect shifts occurring in the US. Created by Prof. Labov, one of the great American linguists.
Phonology in action! Steven Weinberger at George Mason University has a collection of readings of a paragraph by English learners from around the world. Each of these 137 readings is transcribed with the IPA, so it is a great way to hear some of these sounds and learn to transcribe them. For some of them, there is also a list of "different" phonological rules that seem to be in use. Definitely spend some time here.
This server is a research tool for cognitive scientists and others interested in the study of conceptual metaphor systems. Ongoing work in the metaphor system of English and other languages is made available here using a hypertext format which allows the reader to trace links between metaphors and thus get a better idea of the structure of the system.
HereÕs a great list of parts of speech taggers and other online resources for studying syntax. If youÕre interested in computational linguistics, the links here will be of great help.
Available free for a trial period, the IGE is an online course in English grammar written primarily for university undergraduates. However, it will be useful to everyone who is interested in the English language. IGE does not assume any prior knowledge of grammar. An added bonus: this is some beautifully written HTML.
Assembled by Brad Benz, Dept of English at Fort Lewis College. Thanks to Anne Curzan and George Dillon, whose lists will look very similar to mine. For info, email: benz_b@fortlewis.edu
Documenting the American South, UNC
Manuscripts and Translations
The Dream of the Rood and the Ruthwell
The Lindisfarne Gospels
Preface to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle
Early Manuscripts at Oxford University
Newspapers and Magazines
The New York Times
Lexis-Nexis
Phonetics and Phonology
The International Phonetic Alphabet Association
Studying Phonetics on the Net, Prof. George L. Dillon, U of Washington
A National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English, William Labov, UPenn
Speech Accent Archive
Metaphor
Conceptual Metaphors, by George Lakoff, UCBerkeley
Grammar Resources
Grammar Resources, George Dillon, U of Washington
The Internet Grammar of English
