6th posting…

{ April 15, 2008 @ 7:20 am } · { Uncategorized }

CONCORDANCE

This is the last posting of our blogging, and again, I did with my partner, Norhayati Abdul Aziz. Norhayati and I was discussed about concordance and summarize the article titled “Beyond Concordance Lines: Using Concordance to Investigate Language Development”, by Arshad Abd Samad. Concordance is a listing of Keywords in Contexts (KWIC) while Concordancer is a tool or a program (software) that helps to list the words in context. Purpose for concordance is to analyze the text and it’s suitable for those who want to study texts closely or analyze language in depth. Arshad Abd. Samad wrote about language productivity, range vocabulary, and sophistication of vocabulary. Language productivity in his article indicated by the number of sentences per essay and the words per sentence. In range of vocabulary, the diversity f the vocabulary used in a corpus is often determined by calculating the type of token ratio. This ratio is calculated by dividing the number of separate words in a text (type) by the number of words in text (token). Sophistication of the vocabulary can be determined by using specialized software, a vocabulary analysis program, which gives an indication of the kind of vocabulary used. The program analyses text by comparing it to several based lists of frequently used of words. Arshad was concluded that the result of concordance and analysis indicate some form of development in terms of language production as well as vocabulary range and sophistication. Equally important, the articles demonstrate that corpus data can be analyzed to inform language educators of language development.

We can use concordance to make indexes and word lists. Secondly, we can use it to counting word frequencies. This can help us to make sure our work easier. Other than that, using concordance, we can compare different usages of a word, analyze keywords, find phrases and idioms, and publish it to the web. Applications of concordance, besides language teaching and learning we also can apply concordance as a data mining and data clean-up. Like Norhayati and me, we use it as our literary work and linguistic. Concordances are frequently used as a tool in linguistics that can be used for the study of a text, such as: comparing different usages of the same word, analysing keywords, analysing word frequencies, finding and analysing phrases and idioms, finding translations of subsentential elements, e.g. terminology, in bitexts and translation memories, creating indexes and word lists (also useful for publishing)

Based on Wikipedia; ‘a concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, with their immediate contexts. Because of the time and difficulty and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era, only works of special importance, such as the Bible, Qur’an or the works of Shakespeare, had concordances prepared for them.’

Even with the use of computers, producing a concordance (whether on paper or in a computer) may require much manual work, because they often include additional material, including commentary on, or definitions of, the indexed words, and topical cross-indexing that is not yet possible with computer-generated and computerized concordances.

However, when the text of a work is on a computer, a search function can carry out the basic task of a concordance, and is in some respects even more versatile than one on paper.A bilingual concordance is a concordance based on aligned parallel text.

A topical concordance is a list of subjects that a book (usually The Bible) covers, with the immediate context of the coverage of those subjects. Unlike a traditional concordance, the indexed word does not have to appear in the verse. The most well known topical concordance is Nave’s Topical Bible.

The first concordance, to the Vulgate Bible, was compiled by Hugo de Saint Charo (d.1262), who employed 500 monks to assist him. In 1448 Rabbi Mordecai Nathan completed a concordance to the Hebrew Bible. It took him ten years. 1599 saw a concordance to the Greek New Testament published by Henry Stephens and the Septuagint was done a couple of years later by Conrad Kircher in 1602. The first concordance to the English bible was published in 1550 by Mr Marbeck, according to Cruden it did not employ the verse numbers devised by Robert Stephens in 1545 but “the pretty large concordance” of Mr Cotton did. Then followed the notorious Cruden’s Concordance and Strong’s Concordance.

Inverting a concordance

A famous use of a concordance involved the reconstruction of the text of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls from a concordance.

Access to some of the scrolls was governed by a “secrecy rule” that allowed only the original International Team or their designates to view the original materials. After the death of Roland de Vaux in 1971, his successors repeatedly refused to even allow the publication of photographs to other scholars. This restriction was circumvented by Martin Abegg in 1991, who used a computer to “invert” a concordance of the missing documents made in the 1950s which had come into the hands of scholars outside of the International Team, to obtain an approximate reconstruction of the original text of 17 of the documents.

As a English Literature students, here, we give some examples of the concordance that we got from the ISU Play Concordance : The Death Of A Salesman that we was studied in Critical Appreciation course and we apply it as a concordance usage.

Examples of the applications of concordance in literary work and linguistic.

The examples usage of A, Back, At, Be,and The in the different type of sentences :

1.1 ::A :=Willy: I’ll see him in the morning; I’ll have a nice talk with him. I’ll get him a job

1.1 ::A :=Willy: a nice talk with him. I’ll get him a job selling. He could be big in no time.

1.1 ::A :=Linda: Willy, dear, I got a new kind of American-type cheese today.

1.1 ::A :=Linda: I just thought you’d like a change —

1.1 ::A :=Willy: I don’t want a change! I want Swiss cheese. Why am I always

1.1 ::A :=Linda: I thought it would be a surprise.

1.1 ::A :=Willy: Why don’t you open a window in here, for God’s sake?

1.1 ::A :=Willy: street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood.

1.1 ::A :=Willy: don’t grow any more, you can’t raise a carrot in the back yard. They should’ve

1.1 ::A :=Willy: in the back yard. They should’ve had a law against apartment houses. Remember

1.1 ::A :=Linda: Yeah, like being a million miles from the city.

1.1 ::A :=Willy: Now isn’t that peculiar! Isn’t that a remarkable —

2.6  ::BACK             :=Biff:                                       Pop, how can I go back?

2.6  ::BACK             :=Biff:                      of horses couldn't have dragged me back to Bill Oliver!

2.7  ::BACK             :=Willy:                           You're on. We'll drive right back.

2.7  ::BACK             :=Willy:                                    Ah -- you better go back to your room. They must be finished

2.7  ::BACK             :=Willy:                    so I let her take a shower here. Go back, go back . . .

2.7  ::BACK             :=Willy:                    her take a shower here. Go back, go back . . .

1.3  ::AT               :=Linda:                              Why? Why would they laugh at you? Don't talk that way, Willy.

1.3  ::AT               :=Willy:                                         But I gotta be at it ten, twelve hours a day. Other men

1.3  ::AT               :=Willy:                   I'm fat. I'm very -- foolish to look at, Linda. I didn't tell you, but Christmas

1.3  ::AT               :=Willy:                  will not take that. But they do laugh at me. I know that.

1.3  ::AT               :=The Woman:                           I did. I've been sitting at that desk watching all the salesmen go

1.4  ::AT               :=Willy:                            You go ahead, I'm not tired at the moment.

1.4  ::AT               :=Ben:                       are several properties I'm looking at in Alaska.

1.3  ::BE               :=Linda:                                              Oh, don't be foolish.

1.3  ::BE               :=Willy:                                            But I gotta be at it ten, twelve hours a day. Other men

1.3  ::BE               :=Willy:                  you, but Christmas time I happened to be calling on F. H. Stewarts, and a salesman

1.3  ::BE               :=The Woman:                                                . . . my sisters'll be scandalized. When'll you

1.3  ::BE               :=The Woman:                             . . . my sisters'll be scandalized. When'll you be back?

1.3  ::BE               :=Willy:                   the matter with him! You want him to be a worm like Bernard? He's got spirit,

1.4  ::BE               :=Charley:                                         You ought to be ashamed of yourself!

1.4  ::THE              :=Willy:                                              . . . was rich! That's just the spirit I want to imbue

1.5  ::THE              :=Biff:                                                    What the hell is the matter with him?

1.5  ::THE              :=Biff:                                        What the hell is the matter with him?

1.5  ::THE              :=Biff:                                                I was on the move. But you know I thought of you all

1.5  ::THE              :=Biff:                       But you know I thought of you all the time. You know that, don't you, pal?

1.5  ::THE              :=Biff:                                  He's not like this all the time, is he?

1.5  ::THE              :=Linda:                    It's when you come home he's always the worst.

Bibliography :

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~userve_src/Concord/death.conhtml

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordance_ (publishing)

lecture notes