1) No copies of the Wellington corpus material, or any part of the Wellington Corpus material, will be distributed under any circumstances without the written permission of the Department of Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington or, acting on its behalf, ICAME (The International Computer Archive of Modern English, Bergen).

2) Print-outs of the Wellington Corpus material, or parts thereof, will be used only for bona fide research. Holders of copies of the corpus will not be permitted to reproduce texts or parts of texts for any purpose other than scholarly research without obtaining the written permission of the individual copyright holders, as listed in the manual accompanying the corpus.

3) Commercial publishers and other non-academic organisations wishing to make use of part or all of the corpus or a print-out thereof will have to obtain permission from all of the individual copyright holders involved.

4) Persons or institutions ordering copies of the material will be required to subscribe to these restrictions by signing a written contract before a copy is issued.

5) A careful record will be kept of all those who receive a copy of the corpus.

1.1 The Corpus starts with the tag for the first text (see 1.2) and ends with the end of corpus symbol.

1.2 The text categories are included in the order given in Table 1. Each corpus text starts with a tag giving its running number in the corpus, its category and its number within the category, and ends with the end of text symbol.

1.3 Each line is prefixed with the category of the text, the number of the text in the category a space and then a three-figure line number. Thus B07 009 indicates line 9 in text number 7 in Category B.

2.1 The text of a sample starts either with the first sentence beginning on the first page sampled or at the beginning of the first paragraph beginning on the first page sampled, and ends at the end of the sentence containing the 2,000th word. In the Press sections (Sections A, B, C) and when anthologies are sampled, initial headings are included in the sample. Word-counts were made within WordPerfect text-processing software before editing so that comment tags and coding symbols are not counted.

2.2 Headings are coded and included in the text (see 3.3 and 9), except initial headings in places other than those specified in 2.1.

2.3 Material highlighted in boxes or as titles to sections (except complete sentences repeated in the text) is included. Any introductory textual material is included.

2.4 Editorial material extraneous to the source is omitted.

2.5 Extra-textual material in the source such as diagrams, maps, lists, tables is excluded, and is represented by comment tags (see 17.1).

2.6 Footnotes and footnote references are excluded without comment.

2.7 Quotations over thirty words are consistently excluded, and are indicated by comment tags, unless they are contemporary, of New Zealand origin, and part of the text. Shorter quotations are generally included unless they are (a) in a foreign language or (b) in the language of a different period. Omitted quotations are marked by a tag.

3.1 The major principle underlying the coding is that alphanumeric characters have their expected value. Thus upper and lower case letters represent precisely those upper or lower case letters in the original. In only a few cases does a character not have its face value. These are treated in 3.2. In addition, in many cases a compound coding is required. Such codes always begin with an asterisk *. They are treated in 3.3.

3.2 Characters not having their face value.

* prefix for a compound symbol (see 3.3).

^ new sentence

_ begin list

| new paragraph or new line or blank line

" umlaut or diaerisis on preceding letter

' apostrophe (but not single quotation mark)

\ begin deviant word

{ begin deviant phrase or passage

} end deviant phrase or passage

Also note:

- hyphen or minus (but not dash)

. full stop or abbreviation marker or decimal point or

multiplication sign

... ellipsis

3.3 Compound coding symbols.

These have a * or ** prefix.

*0 begin lower case roman

*1 begin italic (underlined) text

*2 begin capitalisation (roman)

*3 begin capitalisation (italic)

*4 begin bold face

*5 begin italic bold

*6 begin bold face capitalisation

*7 begin italic bold capitalisation

*8 begin script

*9 begin gothic

*@ degree symbol (∞)

*= begin upper case roman numeral

**= begin lower case roman numeral

*+ £

*+$ $

*- dash

*/ asterisk (*)

*| new section, not identical with new para but not otherwise

marked

*{ open curly bracket

*} close curly bracket

*# end of corpus text

**# end of corpus

*? uncoded character (see list in Appendix I)

*" begin double quotes

**" end double quotes

*' begin single quotes

**' end single quotes

*< begin heading

*> end heading

**[ begin comment tag

**] end comment tag

*; begin subscript

**; end subscript

*: begin superscript

**: end superscript

4.1 * followed by a digit indicates a typographical shift (see 3.3), i.e. the beginning of a section of text in a given type. Since upper and lower case letters are distinguished in the computer record (this was not the case with the first version of the Brown Corpus, for example), *0 is used as the symbol for ordinary Roman type. Thus we find |^*0Although rather than |^*2A*0lthough. Similarly, we find *2WELLINGTON rather than *2wellington.

4.2 The symbol marking a typographical shift (*0, *1 etc) occurs directly before the first character to which it applies, except that \ or *{ may follow it.

4.3 The symbols . , - and other punctuation marks are regarded as neutral between roman, italics and bold face.

4.4 An introductory typographical shift symbol always occurs before the first word of every text.

4.5 Note that typographical shift symbols may occur within words, e.g.

*3DAVID M*1c*3LOUGHLIN

5.1 See also 4.1. The character set used includes both upper and lower case letters. Continuing capitalisation is indicated redundantly by a typographical shift symbol.

5.2 Before short sequences of expected capitals, the shift symbol is usually omitted, e.g.

^\0Cr {0J.H.} Dennison said ...

Capitalised abbreviations are never coded as being capitalised.

5.3 Proper names are broadly identifiable as character sequences introduced by a capital letter which is not preceded by a sentence-initial marker (see 8).

6.1 A single space or the end of a line indicates a typographic word-boundary in the source text.

6.2 A space follows the punctuation marks . , ; : ? **" **' as in printed texts, unless these are followed by another punctuation mark from this set. A space also precedes and follows a dash (*-).

6.3 No space is inserted before end-quote symbols (**" **') or following begin-quote symbols (*" *').

6.4 / occurring between words is followed by a space, except in the case of and/or, and he/she which are coded as single words. No space follows / in numerical expressions (see 15.2).

6.5 The ordering of punctuation symbol and marker, or of marker and marker, is immaterial if they apply at the same point in the text, except that

7.1 The beginning of a new paragraph is indicated by | and by indentation in the printout.

7.2 The paragraph marker is used

7.3 Breaks in the text (as indicated by two-line space, asterisks, etc.) which are distinct from normal paragraph breaks are indicated by the compound symbol *|.

7.4 The paragraph marker always appears as the first character in a line.

7.5 Headings (see 9) are placed on a separate line. The same applies to comment tags (see 17) except **[SIC**] and **[ARB**] and to end-of-text and end-of-corpus markers.

8.1 The objects of sentence-initial marking are (1) to define suitable contexts for researchers who wish to use the corpus in that way; (2) to define basic units for parsing; (3) to simplify studies of sentence length; (4) to distinguish sentence-initial capitalisation from other types.

8.2 The sentence-initial maker ^ normally appears where a terminal punctuation mark (. ? !) is followed by a capital letter.

8.3 ^ is not used at the beginnings of headlines. If the headline contains a sentence division, the second sentence is marked with ^.

8.4 'Quasi-headlines' (see 9.4) are preceded by ^.

8.5 The use of ^ is problematical in connection with quotations. When a quotation is preceded by a reporting clause, ^ is used on the quotation; when the reporting clause follows, ^ is not used on the reporting clause:

^She said, ^*"Let's go.**'

^*"Let's go,**" she said.

8.6 A semi-colon is only treated as a mark separating sentences in the circumstances outlined in 8.9.

8.7 A particular problem in connection with sentence-initial marking is where a colon occurs followed by capitalisation. A ^ is inserted if one or more of the elements following the colon has the character of or includes a complete sentence. The marker is omitted in cases of enumerations where the items enumerated do not form or include complete sentences.

8.8 In cases of a doubt, the marker ^ is excluded.

8.9 The LOB corpus used the symbol ~ for an 'included sentence'. We had so many problems with the conditions for using this, that the symbol was not used in the Wellington Corpus. Either ^ was used if an entire sentence with initial capitalisation was included in another, or no marking was used.

8.10 A begin-list marker _ was used to introduce word sequences without full syntactic structure. Note, however, that many lists were excluded (see 2.5). Included lists were part of the syntactic structure of the text in which they occurred; excluded lists show no or little syntactic structure or were extremely long.

8.11 Paragraph indicators in a text such as 1. a) B. etc. are included but are followed by sentence markers..

9.1 Headings are characterised by special typographical and linguistic features, and are thus specially marked. They are enclosed within *< *> and are placed on separate lines.

9.2 In source texts, headings are not always placed at the head of the portion of text to which they apply. (They may, for example, occur in the middle of an article, interrupting a sentence in the body of the text.) In such cases the headings are appropriately repositioned.

9.3 ^ is not used at the beginning of a heading, even if the heading has the structure of a complete sentence.

9.4 The brackets *< *> are only used for headings which are separated from the body of the text by being on a separate line. In other cases, the symbol ^ is used, e.g.

Problem: Improvements needed to staff cafeteria.

is coded

|^*4Problem: ^*0Improvements needed to staff cafeteria.

That is, such 'quasi-headlines' are treated as sentences. The same applies to the occurrence of the name of an author at the end of an article

9.5 Running heads at the top or foot of a page and other editorial headings (e.g. "continued on p. ...") are ignored.

10.1 There are at least two types of quotation, both of which it is important to be able to distinguish from ordinary text.

10.2 Separate markers are used for begin-quote and end-quote (see 3.3).

10.3 Where quotation marks are not used in the original, the quotations are tagged **[BEGIN QUOTE**] and **[END QUOTE**]. Where quotation marks are avoided in fiction the original punctuation was followed.

10.4 Quotations from sources showing markedly deviant forms may contain a deviant marker (see 12).

10.5 Quotations over 30 words in length were regularly replaced with the tag **[LONG QUOTATION**] if they were not clearly from contemporary New Zealand sources.

11.1 The researcher may need to know what is foreign material in order to be able to exclude it from analysis. Unfortunately, this proved difficult to deal with in practice. Firstly, there was the question of Maori words, which are clearly not foreign (even if they are non-English), and where it is rarely clear precisely how assimilated into English they are. Maori words were, as a matter of principle, left unmarked. Secondly, the question of assimilation exists for words from other languages as well. While "doovay" might be a clearly English word, "duvet" may or may not be. In the end, we decided that only those words to which the authors themselves had drawn attention (by the use of italics or quotation marks, for instance) would be marked as foreign.

11.2 Foreign-language words are marked by the prefix \, e.g.

\*1conversaziones

11.3 The brackets { } are used instead of \ for foreign expressions consisting of more than one word, e.g.

*1{folie a*?3 deux}

Note, however, that long foreign quotations are omitted (see 2.7).

11.4 The codings for the Greek alphabet are provided in Appendix II.

11.5 The LOB Corpus used the symbol \6 (or {6 ... }) for 'foreign expression widely used'. Again, this created difficulties, since not all such expressions were marked as foreign, and since 'widely used' is an extremely subjective criterion. This category was therefore dropped, and \6 was used instead for scientific Latin in the names of species and genera.

11.6 Foreign titles of books, operas, etc. are marked unless they consist simply of a name.

11.7 Foreign names are not marked as foreign unless the author has drawn attention to the foreignness (see 11.1).

11.8 For foreign abbreviations, see 13.13.

12.1 The LOB Corpus provides a range of markings for various kinds of deviance from current standard English. Although we did not find the need for the full range of such markings, the numbering system used in LOB has been retained. A list of those used is given in Appendix III.

12.2 Non-current English is marked \1 (or {1 ...}).

12.3 What LOB calls non-standard English is marked \2 (or {2 ... }). This applies almost exclusively to the coding of impressions of dialect (usually not New Zealand dialect) shown by deviant spelling. This marking was used very sparingly.

\2littry-chur

{2Och aye, she's a bonnie wee lass}

12.4 Foreigner English, i.e. non-standard English spoken by non-native speakers of English, is coded \3 (or {3 … }).

{3^Shure does seem lika box wid a big fela like me init.}

12.5 A miscellaneous category is marked as \5 (or {5 … }). This is used for deviant forms which are not otherwise categorisable.

Unaccustomed as I am to {5 oogah zurrgh bloof} …

12.6 No tagging is used when an apostrophe is used to shorten a word.

12.7 Dialogue passages containing occasional non-standard grammatical features such as double negation, yep for yes, or use of tag eh have not been marked.

13.1 Abbreviations are coded

13.2 The code for abbreviations is the deviant marker (see 11) followed by a zero, \0 or {0 ... }.

13.3 Abbreviations are coded as such whether or not they end in an abbreviation point. See also 13.6, 13.9 and 13.10.

13.4 A sequence of initials or abbreviations is marked {0 ... } rather than \0, whether or not the sequence contains spaces or abbreviation points, e.g.

\0Cr {0J.H.} Dennison represents Cr J.H. Dennison

{0NZPA} represents NZPA

{0lbw} represents lbw

18\0ft represents 18ft

\0No represents No (= number)

13.5 Typical abbreviations are initials as in J.B. Bolger, initialisms as in BCNZ and acronyms as in ASEAN.

13.6 Clipped words and short forms are not marked as abbreviations, e.g. Chev (= Chevrolet), didn't, etc. However, orthographic clippings which are not normally pronounced as such in speech are marked, as in \0para, \0Capt.

13.7 Ordinal numbers are not marked as abbreviations, i.e. 6th not 6\0th or \06th.

13.8 Chemical formulae are marked \0, e.g. \0N (nitrogen).

13.9 In some cases the same word may be treated differently. It is left unmarked if it appears to be treated as an ordinary vocabulary items, and no longer as an abbreviation, e.g.

O.K., OK marked

okay not marked

Anzus not marked

13.10 In some cases the use of an abbreviation point is exceptional, but a form is marked as an abbreviation solely because the abbreviation point is present:

ad. marked

ad unmarked

13.11 Any abbreviation point is placed within the brackets: {0U.S.A.}.

13.12 If an abbreviation occurs at the end of a sentence, it may not be clear whether . is to be treated as an abbreviation point or as a full stop. In cases of doubt the . is included within the abbreviation bracket.

13.13 Foreign abbreviations are marked in the same way as English abbreviations, and only as abbreviations, not as foreign: {0i.e.}.

13.14 An abbreviation marker can occur in the middle of a word, e.g. 25\0c.

13.15 Abbreviations ending in the middle of a word are marked as such: {0MP}s.

14.1 The hyphen (-) is used within a word, and is not preceded or followed by a space.

14.2 The dash (*-) is preceded and followed by a space.

14.3 A line-end hyphen is only coded if it is clear from the source that the word is normally hyphenated at the appropriate point. If the word could be hyphenated at that point, but it is not clear whether the author would normally have hyphenated, the tag **[ARB**] for 'arbitrary hyphen' is inserted before the hyphen. Such arbitrary hyphens are listed in the section devoted to the appropriate text in the Texts section.

e.g. co**[ARB**]-ordination

14.4 :- as a punctuation mark is coded : *-, and is followed by a space.

14.5 - meaning 'to' (e.g. between numbers) is coded as a hyphen.

15.1 Mathematical characters are, where possible, coded as themselves.

15.2 - between numerical expressions represents 'minus' (but see 14);

. between digits represents 'decimal point' or 'multiplication sign';

x in numerical expression represents 'multiplication sign';

/ in numerical expressions represents a divisor in fractions; note the following expressions:

1/2 represents  

61/2 represents  

6 1/2 represents 6 

15.3 Other mathematical characters are represented where necessary by entries from the 'Uncoded Character Index' (see Appendix I).

15.4 More complex mathematical expressions and equations are represented by **[FORMULA**]. The decision on whether to use this blanket coding is essentially a practical one, depending on the length of the coded string. Coded strings exceeding 30 characters in length are replaced.

16.1 Obvious typographical errors are corrected, e.g.

Form in the source: Corrected to:

liquorr liquor

embarassment embarrassment

used. to. used to.

set at at set at

manyyears many years

All corrections are listed under the text in question in Section Texts below.

16.2 Note that while some of these are clearly typographical errors, some spelling mistakes may be linguistically significant. They have nonetheless been corrected. Similarly, some variation between possible forms has been made consistent, especially with reference to punctuation (abbreviation points, hyphens, etc).

16.3 Where there is doubt, or where we have recognised possible change in progress, or where it is not clear what correction should be made (if any), the tag **[SIC**] is inserted into the text. This is used for cases of aberrant syntax. All occurrences of the this tag are listed under the text in question in the section Texts.

16.4 Errors in foreign names, words or expressions have been left as in the source without comment.

17.1 **[ ... **] marks comment tags. Such tags are used for explanatory comments on the text, e.g.

17.2 A list of comment tags is given in Appendix IV.

17.3 Comment tags except **[SIC**] and **[ARB**] are placed on separate lines at appropriate points in the text.

1 ö, ä, ü are coded as o", a", u" (see 3.2).

2. œ, æ are coded oe, ae.

3. b in German orthography is coded as ss.

4. For representations of other characters, see Appendix I.

5. The following key is used in the transliteration of Greek:

\ { } foreign word or expression

\0 {0 } abbreviation (see 13)

\1 {1 } non-current English (see 12.2)

\2 {2 } non-standard English (see 12.3)

\3 {3 } foreigner English (see 12.4)

\6 {6 } Latin names of biological species or genera (see 11.5)

\15 {15 } Greek alphabet

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Index to New Zealand Periodicals 1986. 1987. Wellington: National Library of New Zealand.

Johansson, Stig 1978. Manual of Information to Accompany the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus of British English, for Use with digital Computers. Oslo: Department of English, University of Oslo.

New Zealand Audit Bureau of Circulations 1987. Summary of Audited Circulations, year ended Sept. 30 1987. Wellington: New Zealand Audit Bureau of Circulations.

New Zealand Books in Print 1987. Port Melbourne, Australia: D.W. Thorpe Pty Ltd. 15th edn.

Nielsen Media Directory. Auckland: A.C. Nielsen (N.Z.) Ltd.