ghoti

A glossary of corpus types

There are many types of corpus depending on their use. Below is a list some of the main types. diachronic – a corpus which looks at changes across a timeframe. learner – a corpus of L2 learner writing of speech. monitor – a type of diachronic corpus which may continue to grow with new texts added…
Dealing with long difficult to understand sentences

I have talked about the seven sentence patterns here. Those are all simple sentences. A simple sentence contains a single verb, that is, one clause. Complex sentences contain more than one verb, or two or more clauses. An SVO sentence theoretically can have three clauses, having one each for the subject, verb and object. It…
What is morphosyntax?

Morphosyntax is another word for grammar. Grammar can be divided into morphology and syntax. Morphology is the study of words and their rules of formation. And syntax is the study of sentences and their rules of formation. Essentially, morphology and syntax are studies of the same thing – formation rules of a language – but at differing “levels”.…
Philip Roth’s advice to (academic) writers

“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.” (1979)
Should it have been called ‘Brexit’?

As someone who works with words and like words I am always scrutinising it wherever I look. So I was curious as to why the referendum in the United Kingdom for whether to stay in the European Union or not was christened as Brexit, a portmanteau for ‘British Exit’ even before the vote had gone…
Extracurricular sports in Japanese schools still too much, doing damage to education/future

1. Did you know in Japan some students formally train everyday for a sport? And they do this for much of their junior and senior years (12-18 years of age). A 10,600 student survey revealed that 20 percent of students do not have a single day off training (they go to school even on weekends),…
What is wrong with rationalism?

The assumptions. Rationalism assumes that reason gives us all knowledge. It overrides emotion and belief. It also override the senses as the path to truth. It is directly opposed to empiricism. Reason takes on a mysticism similar to that of the soul, whereby a body is unnecessary. So it is part of the mind-body problem…
The “hidden” poverty in Japan and its effect on the future

A documentary on tonight’s NHK titled “The Hidden Poverty” said 1-in-6 children are under the living in poverty. Only until recently has the government began surveying this. What makes it hidden is that families are finding ways to make ends meet but at the expense of the children education. Some senior high school students are taking on…
Why I am over buying interactive ebooks

There are some great books in interactive media format for iOS devices. Two that I regularly read for fun are The Philosophy Book and The DK Illustrated Bible – Story by Story (no, I am not Christian. I am still a devout Buddhist). They make reading on the iPad and iPhone fun. Or they did. …
Don’t blame the computers for poor scores

Recent PISA score (shown in today’s newspaper) from the OECD has shown Japan has dropped from 4th to 8th in the ranking for Reading. A government official was quoted as saying the lower score was due to the change to an all-computerised testing system, and that students were confused as to how to answer questions.…