A 200 Million Word, Fully-Searchable, Web-Based Historical Corpus of American English

FAIN: PW-50360-09

Brigham Young University (Provo, UT 84602)
Mark E. Davies (Project Director: August 2008 to September 2011)

Creation of a 200-million word historical corpus of American English, covering a wide range of genres and texts dating from the 1800s through the early 2000s. The annotated texts and user interfaces would facilitate the study of linguistic and stylistic change over the past several centuries.

This project will result in the creation of the first large (200 million words) historical corpus of American English. It will contain texts from throughout the last two hundred years and will contain a wide range of genres and text types. The web-based corpus will permit a wide range of searches, and it will enable advanced researchers to study linguistic changes in American English with much more detail than is possible with any other corpus. This linguistic data can then be used to answer fundamental questions about language change, as well as provide insight into literary, cultural, and social influences affecting American English throughout its history.