Astronomy, Philosophy, Life Sciences and History Texts: Setting the Scene for the Study of Modern Scientific Writing

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to offer a description of four of the existing subcorpora of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. Both the principles of compilation and the sociolinguistic variables considered during the process of text selection will be described. The editorial practice underlying the computerisation of texts, as well as several pilot studies, will also be discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Corpus linguistics
• corpus compilation
• balance
• representativity
• scientific discourse
• late Modern English

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Valle; Beal.

2 UNESCO.

3 Moskowich et al. (2012)

4 Moskowich et al. (2016)

5 Moskowich et al. (2019)

6 Information on CELiST corresponds to a beta version, since it has not yet been released. Hence, some slight changes in word counts may arise after the final revision of samples.

7 Claridge.

8 Biber.

9 McEnery and Wilson; Biber, Conrad, and Reppen; Meyer; Hardie and McEnery.

10 Kytö, Rudanko, and Smitterberg, 92.

11 Puente-Castelo.

12 UNESCO.

13 Crespo and Moskowich.

14 Moskowich, “The Golden Rule of Divine Philosophy”.

15 Boyle.

16 Halliday; Swales.

17 Taavitsainen and Pahta.

18 Alice Cooke; Montagu Burrows; Percival Lowell; Alpheus Packard.

19 Görlach, 1.

20 Moskowich and Crespo, 309.

21 Görlach.

22 Rissanen.

23 Moskowich and Crespo, 310.

24 Moessner, 132.

25 Rissanen.

26 Allen, Qin and Lancaster; Crespo.

27 Görlach, 1.

28 Moskowich, “The Golden Rule of Divine Philosophy”; Moskowich “CETA as a Tool for the Study of Modern Astronomy in English” and “‘A Smooth Homogeneous Globe’ in CETA: Compiling Late Modern Astronomy Texts in English”.

29 Fowler, 41

30 Fortanet et al..

31 Moskowich, “The Golden Rule of Divine Philosophy”.

32 Monzó Nebot, 141.

33 Herrero López, 75.

34 Solsona i Pairó, 86–87.

35 Crespo, “On Writing Science in the Age of Reason”.

36 Crespo, “La intervención femenina en el desarrollo científico anglo-sajón”.

37 Moskowich, “The Golden Rule of Divine Philosophy”; “‘A Smooth Homogeneous Globe’ in CETA: Compiling Late Modern Astronomy Texts in English” and “CETA as a tool for the Study of Modern Astronomy in English”; “Philosophers and Scientists from the Modern Age”.

38 Hyland.

39 Claydon and McBride.

40 Abbagnano.

41 CETA has been tagged for POS (Gray and Biber), as has CHET (Degaetano, Menzel, and Teich) although different methodologies have been used in these two cases.

42 Special characters are also used to show alternative spellings found in the texts. The CCTool has been designed to retrieve any spelling variant characteristic of this period in the English language, where homogeneity in writing tends to be lacking.

43 Camiña and Lareo.

44 Guerrini.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Spanish Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO) [grant number FFI2016-75599-P].