A Poem on Corpus Linguistics

From Corpus4u wiki

The following poem was accidentally discovered on a table among the debris at the end of Nobel Symposium. A range of stylistic research techniques (including those of forensic linguistics) have been used in order to establish the identity of its originator. While these efforts have not led to conclusive results, the editor suspects that the cryptic pseudonym “A.K. (Anna Kerr-Luther)” holds the key to the poet’s identity. Since this poem captures – succinctly, accurately and elegantly – the spirit of the whole Symposium, he takes the liberty of it as an “Afterword” in the Proceedings.

The Purpora of Corpora: How to Dispose of the Body or The Corpus-Maker’s (Di-)Lemma

by A.K. (Anna Kerr-Luther)

A base of misty tulle
Beyond the bank of trees?
Go plant a modal hedge
Lest your annealing freeze.

-- But as for language processing, mechanical or muscular,
There is nothing can improve upon a database corpuscular!

In London or in Lund,
From Birmingham to Brown,
No adjectives escapes,
They never lose a noun.

-- But you cannot make a dictionary, notional or rational,
Without a Bank of Collocates and Converse International!

A Hidden Markoff Process
Lurks beneath your text,
To guard the crossing gates
From the wor(l)d to the next.

 -- But you run (or take) the risk that your results are merely tentative
Unless you base your corpus on a sample representative!

Don’t try a demonstration,
Just register your name.
If not “I saw, I conquered”
You can always say “ICAME”.
-- Where Elf, the Sacred River, runs (with conference facilities)
Through caverns that are measureless as global probabilities!

Beware the Svart(vik) Boxes
With their electronic brains –
They’ll have you tagged and parsed
In referential chains.

-- But if you feel constrained to have your grammar realisticall,
You particles based properly, your lexis authentisticall,
Don’t rely on introspection, on the magic and the mystical,
Don’t hope to find a software pack of strategies heuristical.
Just build yourself a corpus (or some corpora) statistical.

Source: Svartvik, Jan (ed.). 1992. Directions in Corpus Linguistics: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 82, Stockholm, 4-8 August 1991. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter (pp: 471-474).