structure

the term corpus structures refers to the segments or parts into which a corpus can be divided. These are typically sentences, paragraphs and documents but the corpus author can introduce various other structures to allow the analysis to focus on smaller or larger parts of the corpus.

Introducing structures is necessary so that attributes and values (=text types) can be inserted. Here is an example of a corpus with structures, attributes and values.
doc, p and s are the most common strctures. The corpus author also introduced pers and brand.

• doc has two attributes: pub and lang
• p has one attribute: style
• s has no attributes
• pers has one attribute: gender
• brand has one attribute: sect

<doc pub="1970" lang="en">
     <p style="informal">
          <s><pers gender="female">Rebecca</pers> has worked with
a full range of clients including <brand sect="automotive">BMW</brand>
and <brand sect="air">Airbus</brand>.</s>
⋮
     </p>
⋮
</doc>

see a list of common corpus structures

see also attribute

see Adding structures and attributes to the corpus

« Back to Glossary Index