LINGUIST List 8.37

Fri Jan 17 1997

TOC: COMPUTERS AND THE HUMANITIES v.30 no.3

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <ljubalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. ,

 COMPUTERS AND THE HUMANITIES
 Volume 30 No. 3 1996


The third number of Volume 30 (1996) of Computers and the
Humanities (CHum) has just been published by Kluwer Academic
Press.

This issue introduces a new feature of the journal entitled
"Debates in Humanities Computing". This first debate in the
series treats the controversial topic of statistical methods for
authorship attribution, which has recently received
unprecedented coverage in the international press: first,
concerning the controversy over Richard Abrams' and Donald
Foster's assertion of Shakespearean authorship of an obscure
elegy, and later (and even more spectacularly), concerning
Foster's subsequent attempt to identify the author of "Primary
Colors" (Random House, 1996). To satisfy the obsession of the
White House staff and the Washington and New York press corps to
find out who wrote the book, Foster created an e-text archive of
the principal candidates and used statistical methods to
identify CBS correspondent Joe Klein as the author. After
repeated denials on numerous international television shows and
in the press, Klein finally admitted writing "Primary Colors",
leading to unprecedented media interest in methods that have
been a mainstay of humanities computing for decades.

The debate presented in this number of Computers and the
Humanities includes an attack by Elliot and Valenza on
statistical methods used in Shakepearean authorship studies, and
Donald Foster's detailed rebuttal of their claims. The regular
articles in the issue also report on results of
computer-assisted stylistic studies.

The articles in this number of CHum are sure to fuel the
continued debate over statistical methods, and is of interest to
all those involved in authorship and stylistic studies as well
as statistical methods for language analysis generally.


 ---------------------------------------------

 COMPUTERS AND THE HUMANITIES
 Volume 30 No. 3 1996


 Table of Contents
 -----------------

DEBATES IN HUMANITIES COMPUTING: Methodology in Authorship Studies

 And Then There Were None: Winnowing the Shakespeare Claimants
 Ward E. Y. Elliot and Robert J. Valenza

 Response to Elliot and Valenza "And Then There were None"
 Donald W. Foster


REGULAR PAPERS

 Traditional and Emotional Stylometric Analysis of the Songs of
 Beatles Paul McCartney and John Lennon
 Cynthia Whissell

 Tamburlaine Stalks in Henry VI
 Thomas Merriam



*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*

 INFORMATION ABOUT COMPUTERS AND THE HUMANITIES


Computers and the Humanities
 The Official Journal of The Association for Computers and the
 Humanities

Editors-in-Chief:
 Nancy Ide, Dept. of Computer Science, Vassar College, USA
 Daniel Greenstein, Executive, Arts and Humanities Data Services,
 King's College, UK


For subscriptions or information, please consult http://kapis.www.wkap.nl/
or contact:

 Dieke van Wijnen
 Kluwer Academic Publishers
 Spuiboulevard 50
 P.O. Box 17
 3300 AA Dordrecht
 The Netherlands

 Phone: (+31) 78 639 22 64
 Fax: (+31) 78 639 22 54
 E-mail: Dieke.vanWijnenwkap.nl

*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*