Tools: Corpus linguistics

The MarineLives wiki contains nearly six million words of semi-diplomatically transcribed early and mid-C17th legal and commercial text. This is one of the larger collections of text derived from C17th manuscript sources, and is certainly the largest English language collection derived from early and mid C17th legal and commercial manuscript sources.

The MarineLives project team is keen to explore the corpus linguistic potential of the material, and welcomes approaches from corpus and historical linguists, interested in discussing this potential.

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Potential etymological use

'Menagery, -ie, Mannagerie, Managary, n.', Dictionary of the Scots Lanuage, Dictionar o the Scots Leid, online web resource

• ASSEVERATION

- "...the sayd Dirick Dobler in discourse with this deponent touching the premisses did assure this deponent with much asseveration that the sayd goods were all free and for Hamburgh and merchants there living onely or to that purpose..." (Jan 1653/54)

• DAMASKILLIAS

- "...sixe peeces of damaskillias or floramides..." (Apr 1657)

• HURRICANO; HURRICANE; HURRICAN

- "...a furious hurricano, which continued in very great extremity for about five or six and thirty howres..." (Mar 1655/56)
- "...the sayd shipp under the command of George Boys arlate departed with her lading of sugars from the Barbadoes bound for this Port of London in the month of August last past and that afterwards being upon her Course a violent storme or hurricano..." (Mar 1655/56)
- "...the sayd sugars were not all dry and well conditioned after the sayd hurricano but were damnifiyed (as aforesayd) thereby, howbeit some of them as he conceyveth did remain dry. And saith that the sayd shipp was not tight after the sayd hurrican (sic)..." (Mar 1655/56)
- "...the first storme predeposed of was a hurricano which is usually soe violent that few shipps are able to withstand them..." (Jun 1656)
- "[WITHIN THE EAST INDIES]...goeing for another port shee was by violence of the hurricanes cast away and utterly lost..." (Nov 1660)

• MANNAGERIE

- "...the same were wholely left (as beleeveth) to the mannagerie of the foresayd William Warren who disposed of them at the place predeposed and went with the proceede of them to the Canaries..." (Jun 1658))
- "...hee this deponent is a factor and agent to the articulate Antonio Rodrigues Robles here at London and soe hath bin for these five yeares last past or thereabouts and imployed by him in keepeing his accompts and mannagerie of his merchandizeing affayres..." (Jul 1658)

• RUCKOO

- "[At Brazil] tooke in a sort of ffish called mannettee and dying-stuff called ruckoo..." (Oct 1655)

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Potential creation of glossaries

• EXAMPLE: Communal C17th Textiles, Garments and Dyestuffs Glossary

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Potential Natural Language Programming use

Ritze, Dominique and Zirn, Cäcilia and Greenstreet, Colin and Eckert, Kai and Ponzetto, Simone Paolo (2014) Named Entities in Court: The MarineLives Corpus. In: Language Resources and Technologies for Processing and Linking Historical Documents and Archives - Deploying Linked Open Data in Cultural Heritage Workshop : associated with the LREC 2014 Conference, 26 - 30 May 2014, Reykjavik 2014 Reykjavik, Conference or workshop item

In 2014, MarineLives collaborated with a team at the University of Mannheim Informatics Department, led by Professor Kai Eckert, to explore the application of Natural Language Programming to the MarineLives corpus.

The output of this collaboration was a paper given in Reykjavik at a workshop on Language Resources and Technologies for Processing and Linking Historical Documents and Archives in association with the LREC Conference, May 2014.

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Potential ground base for machine learning

• Source of data on C17th handwritten orthographical variation

[ADD DATA]

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