FYI: Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (SCOTS)

Author:	Wendy Anderson
Linguistic Field(s):	Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s):	English
FYI Body:	The Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech project (SCOTS) has launched its online corpus - on St Andrew's Day, 30th November 2004. This new resource, which is freely and publicly available, captures the languages of Scotland, by bringing together written, spoken, audio and video texts. Initially we are making available close to 400 texts, around half a million words in total, ranging from Broad Scots to Scottish English. SCOTS already contains a wide variety of types of text: prose, poetry, drama, essays, correspondence, business writing. Audio and video material comes complete with transcriptions, and access to the original sound or video. All of the texts are accompanied by comprehensive sociolinguistic information about the text itself and its author. To find out more about the SCOTS project or to browse or search the corpus, please visit the project website at www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk. The corpus itself will be accessible from this site from 30th November. SCOTS is an ongoing project, and to give as accurate a picture as possible of the languages of Scotland, we need more texts. We encourage anyone who might be able to contribute to the resource by donating texts (either written or spoken) to contact us, by email or through the website. The Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (SCOTS) is a venture by the Department of English Language and STELLA project at the University of Glasgow. The first stage of the project was grant-funded by the engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council; the current three-year stage is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (www.ahrb.ac.uk). The AHRB funds postgraduate training and research in the arts and humanities, from archaeology and English literature to design and dance. The quality and range of research supported not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK. For further information on the AHRB, please see www.ahrb.ac.uk ................................... Dr Wendy J. Anderson Research Assistant Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech Department of English Language University of Glasgow 12 University Gardens Glasgow G12 8QQ Scotland, UK Website: http://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk