Past issues

1999-1Grands corpus : diversité des objectifs, variété des approches
(Large corpora: diversity of aims, variety of approach)
Click the book to abstract!
  • Nathalie VALLÉE & Louis-Jean BOË (INPG-Grenoble / Grenoble)
    La base de données UPSID : objectif et utilisation
    (The UPSID database: its aims and its use)
    pp. 7-19

    The search for universal tendencies in the languages of the world is undoubtedly a necessary axis for any theoretical perspective in linguistics. We present here UPSID (UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database, Maddieson, 1986 ; Maddieson & Precoda, 1990). This database contains phonological data which are genetically balanced and the description of which is harmonized. We implemented it in ICP to enrich typological researches on vowels, diphthongs and consonants. We have analysed UPSID with the help of an original methodology which not only confirm or make more precise some regularities already stressed on, but also brings up new data.


  • Thomas Hun-tak LEE (Hong-Kong)
    CANCORP - The Hong Kong Cantonese Child Language Corpus
    pp. 21-30

    In this article the CANCORP (The Hong-Kong Cantonese Child Language) is presented, a corpus built in the spirit of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES, MacWhinney & Snow, 1985). After a brief description of the contents of CANCORP, the technical problems related to the transcription of the recordings of children in Chinese and in romanized characters are addressed. Next, a short assessment is made of the possibilities that CANCORP offers for the study of language development.


  • Christiane MARCHELLO-NIZIA (ENS)
    Corpus diachroniques
    (Diachronic Corpora)
    pp. 31-39

    After having reminded what distinguishes a database from a corpus, the author of the present article gives a rapid overview of the most important documentary sources that exist today in the domain of French diachrony, after which she demonstrates first, what use can be made of them thanks to a series of tools available today, and second, and more important, how the access to large corpora allow us to review our analysis of linguistic facts, and invites us to a qualitative change in our linguistic reasoning.


  • Maria de Lourdes CRISPIM & Maria Francisca XAVIER (Lisbonne, Portugal)
    Constitution (et utilisation) d'un corpus de portugais médiéval
    (Building and using a corpus of medieval Portuguese)
    pp. 41-45

    In this article, the authors describe first how the Corpus of Medieval Portuguese has been constitued, in particular how it has been coded ; secondly, an attempt will be made at demonstrating how it can be used for the construction of a dictionary of medieval Portuguese, more specifically of its verbs, proper and common nouns.


  • Isabelle LEROY-TURCAN (Lyon 3)
    La Base ACADEMIE et son hypertexte : les huit éditions du Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (1694-1935) et les données associées à chaque édition
    (The ACADEMIE base and its hypertexte: the eight editions of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (1694-1935) and the specifics of each edition)
    pp. 47-54

    The ACADEMIE project aims at building an electronic database on the eight editions of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (DAF). As these eight editions cover the period from 1694 to 1932-35, this corpus presents interesting problems of diachrony and synchrony, and touches also on issues related to literature and culture. This way the DAF database is enriched by a whole range of hypertext links, allowing a dynamic dialogue between specialists and readers/consultants.


  • Nicoletta CALZOLARI (CNR-Pise, Italie)
    Standards for Linguistic Resources in Europe : the LE-EAGLES Project
    pp. 57-64

    The rapid growth of digitized linguistic information has brought forward the problem of its standardisation in view of a broader and better use, while at the same time the need of testing the various tools developed for this goal was felt. On the initiative of the European Commission, these questions have led to several research projects aiming at proposing useful standards for the whole of Europe, among which the EAGLES Project presented here.


  • Claire BLANCHE-BENVENISTE (Aix-en-Provence)
    Constitution et exploitation d’un grand corpus
    (Building and using a large corpus)
    pp. 65-74

    This article aims to demonstrate how a corpus of spoken French, that was started in Aix-en-Provence around 1975, has developed over time in connexion with the development of what has been called since 'corpus linguistics'. The story of that corpus is related here, whilst at the same time the possibilities for exploitation that it offers today are traced briefly.


  • Rabia BELRHALI, Louis-Jean BOË & Danièle DUJARDIN (INPG-Grenoble / Grenoble)
    BdPholex : une base de données phonétiques et lexicales du français parlé
    (BdPholex: a phonetical and lexical database of spoken French)
    pp. 75-78
  • Ann LAWSON (IDS-Mannheim, Allemagne)
    Corpus Linguistics at the Institut für deutsche Sprache
    pp. 79-82
  • Marjut JOHANSSON, Maarit MUTTA & Eija SUOMELA-SALMI (Turku, Finlande)
    Corpus de français parlé et écrit par les étudiants finnophones et suédophones
    (Corpus of French spoken and written by finnophone and swedophone students)
    pp. 85-87
  • Veerle BROSENS & Nathalie NOUWEN (Louvain, Belgique)
    Les projets ELILAP et LANCOM
    (The ELILAP and LANCOM projects)
    pp. 89-95
  • Tove JACOBSEN & Harald ULLAND (Bergen, Norvège)
    Un corpus bilingue : le corpus norvégien-français de Bergen
    (A bilingual corpus: the Norvegian-French corpus of Bergen)
    pp. 95-96
  • Sophie ASLANIDES & Sandrine ORIEZ (Paris 8 / Poitiers)
    Adapter un corpus finement annoté à des objectifs de recherche linguistique : l'exemple de SUSANNE
    (Adapting a finely annotated corpus for linguistic research objectives)
    pp. 97-99
  • Yoldès FOURATI-DAJEAN, Frédéric ISEL & Nicole BACRI (Paris 5 / Leipzig, Allemagne)
    Représentations phonologiques et structuration temporelle de la parole chez l'enfant déficient auditif
    (Phonological representations and the structure of speech in hearing impaired children)
    pp. 101-112

    Much evidence supports the hypothesis that hearing-impaired children construct phonological representations and access their mental lexicon like normal hearing children. The question addressed here is whether these children use their phonological code for speech production. Phonological encoding, which integrates auditory, visual, and proprioceptive information, also implies temporal information which should allow them to anticipate the temporal structure of their own speech. In an experiment, we analyzed relative timing and pauses in sentences read by profoundly deaf children and matched normal hearing children between 9;7 and 11;7 years of age. Overall, sentences uttered by deaf children did not present the metric patterns of the French language. However, short phonological words were correctly timed. These results suggest that phonological programming must be distinguished from either lexical competence or temporal deficit.


Book reviews
  • Les créoles. L'indispensable survie, de M. Hazaël-Massieux
    par N. Gueunier
    pp. 113-114