The text's the thing: Concordances to literary texts (abstract only)

Abstract

The history of computer-generated concordances is already one-third of a century long. Thousands of concordances have been generated; many have been published. Most of these are useful, but there are limitations to all of them. In this presentation I discuss a number of variations on concordance-making based on specific projects being carried out at the University of Colorado.A word-form concordance can be of considerable utility. Particularly for older states of language of which our knowledge is often less than perfect, this "primary" concordance form seems best for initial circulation, but such a concordance is insensitive to variants and ambiguities. It is often as suggestive of what might have been done as it is directly useful.With the increasing availability of microcomputers and various kinds of remote terminals, it is now possible to remove many of the difficulties of text-editing so that a "secondary" concordance edited toward particular applications can be produced more readily. At the University of Colorado, at which the majority of humanists who use computers wish to make maximum use of the available technology without becoming computing scientists, I have found it practical to suggest a particular synthesis of batch and interactive computing. This involves the use of a retrieval, concordance-generating, and editing system so modular in design that editorial intervention is practical at many points. This editing makes use of device-dependent text editors of sufficient sophistication that the user perceives little of the technical operation beyond requesting his programs and his text; otherwise he has the freedom of a typewriter coupled to the benefits of a screen for displaying modifications to his text as they are made, whether directly by him or by a variety of programmed functions. Stations built around "smart" terminals as well as "dumb" terminals with microcomputer and floppy disks are operational.Thus it is now more practical to produce second-generation concordances which more nearly reflect the perceived needs of a scholarly community: words may be (manually) disambiguated by meaning and function, contexts may be edited either to omit extraneous material or insert explanatory matter, and words may be clustered by dictionary or thesaurus. The result is concordances of far greater utility in specific areas and more meaningful statistics.The development of better equipment and new techniques has made it possible to interact more thoroughly with one's text. There is no need for premature data reduction, but rather the encouragement of what I call the "infinite loop of literary scholarship": one works with one's texts to produce results which suggesst work to produce more results which suggest still more work .... The newer technology seems to fit the humanist far better than did the old.

Index Terms

• Applied computing

  • Arts and humanities

• Information systems

  • Data management systems

    • Database management system engines

  • Information retrieval