06. Identifying data and data sources

guides

This guide will outline some key data and dataset resources that will be usefull for your own text analysis projects. This guide is not exhaustive, but it will provide you with a good starting point for you to start to explore different types of data and data sources.

Outcomes

  • Recognize the difference between various sources of data and datasets.
  • Identify data and/or datasets that are relevant to your research project.
  • Locate and access data and/datasets used in the textbook and resources.

Introduction

Data sharing platforms

There are many data sharing platforms that include various types of research materials, often including datasets.

Platform Description URL
Dataverse Dataverse is an open-source web application to share, preserve, cite, explore, and analyze research data. https://dataverse.org/
Figshare Figshare is a repository where users can make all of their research outputs available in a citable, shareable, and discoverable manner. https://figshare.com/
Zenodo Zenodo is a general-purpose open-access repository developed under the European OpenAIRE program and operated by CERN. https://zenodo.org/
Dryad Dryad is a curated general-purpose repository that makes the data underlying scientific publications discoverable, freely reusable, and citable. https://datadryad.org/
Open Science Framework The Open Science Framework (OSF) is a free, open-source web application built to help researchers manage their workflows. https://osf.io/

Language data repositories

Platform Description URL
Linguistic Data Consortium The Linguistic Data Consortium is an open consortium of universities, companies, and government research laboratories. https://www.ldc.upenn.edu/
Open Language Archives Community The Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) is an international partnership of institutions and individuals who are creating a worldwide virtual library of language resources. http://www.language-archives.org/
The Language Archive The Language Archive is a digital repository for language resources. https://tla.mpi.nl/
The Language Bank The Language Bank is a digital repository for language resources. https://www.sprakbanken.se/
TalkBank TalkBank is a system for sharing and studying conversational interactions. https://talkbank.org/
Oxford Text Archive The Oxford Text Archive develops, collects, catalogues, and preserves electronic literary and linguistic resources. https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Developed corpora

Platform Description URL
British National Corpus The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100-million-word text corpus of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources. https://www.english-corpora.org/bnc/
American National Corpus The American National Corpus (ANC) is a text corpus of American English. https://anc.org/
Corpus of Contemporary American English The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is the largest freely-available corpus of English, and the only large and balanced corpus of American English. https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/

Data sources in the textbook and resources

Textbook

Dataset Location(s) Description URL
masc Ch. 2 and 8 The masc dataset is drawn from the Manually Annotated Sub-Corpus (MASC) of the American National Corpus. https://anc.org/data/masc/
belc Ch. 3 The belc dataset is acquired from the TalkBank repository. It is a dataset that contains the results of a study on the use of English as a second language. On the written portion is used. https://talkbank.org/
cedel2 Ch. 5 and 9 A corpus of Spanish as a second language. This dataset appears in chapter 5. http://cedel2.learnercorpora.com/
swda Ch. 5 The Switchboard Dialog Act Corpus (SWDA) is a corpus of telephone conversations. https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/docs/LDC97S62/
cabnc Ch. 5 and 6 The spoken portion of the British National Corpus. It is available through Talkbank. https://ca.talkbank.org/access/CABNC.html
europarl Ch. 6 and 7 The Europarl Parallel Corpus is a parallel corpus of the European Parliament proceedings. https://www.statmt.org/europarl/
enntt Ch. 6 and 7 The Europarl Corpus of Native and Non-Native and Translated Texts (ENNTT) is a parallel corpus of the European Parliament proceedings. https://github.com/senisioi/enntt-release
dative Ch. 10 The dative from the {languageR} package is a dataset that contains the results of a study on the use of dative constructions in English. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/languageR/languageR.pdf