JPU Corpus News

January 2008: My paper on the internet version of the JPU Corpus and its application with the Compleat Lexical Tutor was published in When Grammar Minds Language and Literature by the Institute of English and American Studies, University of Debrecen. (A PDF version of the paper is availabe.) Editors: József Andor, Béla Hollósy, Tibor Laczkó and Péter Pelyvás. The introduction: "At the end of the nineties, the first phase of a corpus-linguistic project involving over three hundred English majors at the university then known as Janus Pannonius came to an end: I had collected one of the largest European learner corpora, the JPU Corpus. It contained almost half a million words, which made it possible to describe and analyze the personal and academic writing of these students and to profile individual and group differences. Among other areas, it provided the raw data for analyzing correct and incorrect uses of the definite article in the essays of colleagues enrolled in the Russian retraining program and the opening and closing sentences in the subcorpus comprising one hundred research papers."

December 2007: The Hungarian applied-linguistics journal, Modern Nyelvoktatás, published my article about using the JPU corpus for various language study tasks. One of these tasks links the corpus with the color-coded frequency bands of the BNC, as part of the Frequency tools of the Compleat Lexical Tutor. Examples are provided in the article, using this excerpt from the JPU script L 220 F: "Graham Greene is the kind of writer whose novels and short stories are influenced by his own experiences in life. He does not write directly about his life but his attitude to the phenomena of the world and the things that happen to him can be felt in the ways he makes his stories. The role of childhood experiences, the unpleasant side of life and escapism are important aspects in Greene's life. This essay will examine how and why he deals with them in his works too."

June 2007: Tom Cobb added the JPU Corpus to his Compleat Lexical Tutor suite of tools and sources. You can get concordance citations online.

Searching Scripts

You can use the Search blog field at the top of every window to locate specific words, phrases, or sentences in the scripts.

Also, you can click one of these labels to read a script or more with that tag.

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Zinsser

L 221 F

According to the teachings of history if a lot of people agree in something it is not sure that this something must be the truth. For example Copernicus - in his century - was the only one who was on the opinion that the Earth is global. Everyone else was totally sure about that the Earth is flat. In our days we know that the multitude was wrong.

In spite of this if we deal with religions it is unavoidable to check how many adherents they have. The first one which has the largest number of followers is the Roman Catholic Church, the next is Islam, the third ones are Hinduism, Confucionism and Taoism and the fourth is Buddhism.

There are many different opinions about the exact time of the beginning of Hinduism but usually it is said to began in approximately 1500 BC. But one can find followers of the tendency which claims that Hinduism is 6000, 10000 or even 50000 years old. Anyway Hinduism is the only religion that divides its adherents into four castes which can seldom be mixed with each other. In approximately 500 BC as a breakaway from Hinduism Buddhism began. In a way Buddhism is not a religion , it is rather a lifestyle and the collection of methods which lead to enlightenment. It is interesting to mention that in one of the Buddhist branches - called Zen Buddhism - there is a saying: “After uttering Buddha’s name wash your mouth out.”. It emphasises the unique way - the way of several methods - and would not believe in any kind of Gods or Buddhas.

In the Near East Judaism developed in a contradictional way. First it mixed with Egyptian religion then step by step through the appearing of the prophets it converted in a separate and independent religion. One can clearly follow the development of the changing Jewish idea of God, because in the Old Testament every prophets’ word had been kept word by word. Judaism inspired with the waiting for the coming of Messiah, but when someone is claiming that he is the Messiah or the messenger of it the Jews lost no time in killing them. It happened with Jesus Christ as well with a slightly difference that the Roman governor Pilate Pontius condemned him to death. In approximately 600 AD Mohammed turned up with the intention of mixing the teachings of Judaism and Christianity. In his opinion Adam, Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed were all prophets, the prophets of Allah. The Jewish and Christian people did not share his opinion so the religious wars have started and continued up to our days.

Nowadays the number of religious followers are the highest than ever. The religious types of books are on the tops of the best-sellers lists. God is mentioned more than ever, so therefore unavoidably the question of what is the reason for all that popularity comes up. The first reason is the basic contradiction of human existence, because one is being born to this world maybe unwillingly and disappear from here without any questioning. And if that is the case every human being struggles between the barrier of birth and death, while fighting for implementing their secret dreams and ideas. Everyone has got a feeling that they have to crush their hopes, ambitions and desires into a short interval of a human life. To make it more difficult they can not even use that brief time without any disturbance of a higher authority which steadily interfere in everyone’s life, way of thinking and behaviour.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam believe that their religion is the only true way. Whereas Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism are a kind of summarising religion, they are trying to dissolve other opinions and conceptions into themselves, as long as that other idea would not radically differ from their own teachings. Orientalist religions are based on the doctrine of reincarnation and because rebirth is giving an infinite perspective it can give a stable background to the religious patience. Religious impatience comes from the awareness that human life is happening only once and unable to repeat itself.

What different religions have in common that they offer codes of conduct. if one observes these codes he/she can easily notice that usually they are reasonable and rational codes disguised - by a clever and wise person - as a kind of religious rule or code of conduct. But anyway one could easily mix some parts of the doctrines and statements of the different religions up and afterwards hardly anyone would notice even these changes.

Among Hungarian traditions there is a big fast around the time of Easter which coincides with the clearing the toxins out of the body suggested by the doctors and the alternative healers. In Judaism and Islam porkeating prohibition serves the same purpose.

Religions in their original form assure one’s physical and mental health and the harmony with the nature and the universe. The only problem if some fundamentalist and unintelligent people deal with the case of religions and they interpret the other way simple and rational regulations in literal sense and they use these as a weapon against the followers of other conceptions. To sum it all up every morally well-founded religions serve well the development of one’s spiritual, physical and mental state. But like everything else, religions too could be used for bad purposes and that is not the problem of a religion but the follower.

L 220 F

Graham Greene is the kind of writer whose novels and short stories are influenced by his own experiences in life. He does not write directly about his life but his attitude to the phenomena of the world and the things that happen to him can be felt in the ways he makes his stories. The role of childhood experiences, the unpleasant side of life and escapism are important aspects in Greene's life. This essay will examine how and why he deals with them in his works too.

The bad experiences that Greene has during his childhood influence his later life to a great extent. He cannot get rid of the idea that one's personality is determined by the age of 16 and the early negative experiences have special effects on one's whole life. This kind of mentality is due to the fact that as a student he does not live at home but in a dormitory. This means that he has to leave his loving mother with whom he is in a close relationship and that he has to get used to the hostile atmosphere of the dormitory. He has to accept conditions he can hardly bear : he has to adapt to others and has no private life. In addition the headmaster of the school he attends is his father so all the students pick on him, they enjoy ridiculing him. But this is not Greene's fault: he is only the victim of the conditions. What makes it even worse is that their house is on the doorstep of the dormitory and there is a door connecting the two buildings but he is never allowed to open that door and retreat to home. This door appears in some of his books and is called the 'green baize door'. In one of his stories he writes about a madhouse where this door is between the wards and the cell: it connects the world where the mad are 'happy' to live and the world they detest and are afraid of.

Greene's early bad experiences have such a great effect on him that he writes about the importance and influence of childhood in many of his stories. In the 'Innocent' the narrator, who is an adult, tries to compensate for his childhood: as a child he was truly in love with a girl but the affair was 'innocent' because there could be no physical satisfaction, which made him suffer a lot. Therefore now he tries to live a life that is exactly the opposite of his childhood life: it is full of sexual satisfaction, he has as many experiences as possible and has no emotions just plays around with girls. In the 'Shocking Accident' Greene also suggests that one cannot escape from the effects of bad experiences: all the people to whom the main character Jerome tells the story of his father's death laugh-his father died because a pig fell out from a balcony and hit him while walking in the street. For the naive and inexperienced child the main negative experience is not the casualty but people's reactions to the story: when they laugh he is struck by the real world. From then on he developes different methods of telling the story to avoid having the same humiliating experience and qualifies people according to the ways they react: he would not marry a girl who laughed at his story.

Greene's experiences make him obsessed with the dark side of life: his pessimism roots in his childhood because he cannot live the kind of life he wants to live and he can only feel the hostility and spitefulness of people. His pessimism is always there in his stories as a general atmosphere or background. In 'The Destructors' for instance little children deliberately and without any reason destroy someone's house and they laugh at the man's tragedy. So in this story Greene draws attention to the fact that the world is full of hostility, it cannot be changed because evil is in human nature itself, it is even in children and that is the biggest problem. 'The Man Who Stole The Eiffel Tower', which is another short story, also shows Greene's pessimistic point of view: by the fact that in the story someone steals the Tower without anyone noticing it the writer concentrates on the superficiality and indifference of 20th century people.

Apart from his childhood experiences World War II and other events that claimed the death of many people also contribute to Greene's pessimism and focusing on the dark side of life only. He is so concerned about war and terrorism that he even makes some historical references in his stories and in this way he draws attention to the danger and existence of violence in the world. In 'An Old Man's Memory' for example the Channel Tunnel is destroyed by terrorists and Greene refers to actual events that happened in his own life: he mentions the so-called Lockurbie-disaster and another plane destruction when the Americans exploded a plane over the USA because its pilot refused to identify himself and the US thought they were Iranians or spies - in reality they were civilians. The fact that in Greene's life there are so many bloody incidents claiming a lot of victims makes him even more pessimistic and he cannot help concentrating on the unpleasant side of life in his works.

His pessimism is made even stronger by the dehumanisation that he can feel around him as an adult. In his despair he tries to escape from the world he does not like and to create another one where he can find no aggression, no low moral standards and no humiliating effects. First he tries to escape by reading and then later by writing. His escapism can even be detected in the stories themselves: for example in 'The Lottery Ticket' the main character goes on a holiday because he wants to escape from where he lives, he wants to be alone so that he can be happy about coming back. However he finally escapes from where he escaped to.

Considering all these facts one can conclude that Greene's background influences his works. His negative childhood experiences determine his later life to the effect that he becomes a pessimist. His mentality can be felt in his stories because he always focuses on the dark side of life. In other words: what happens to Greene in his life indirectly appears in his works too.

L 219 F

It is on the third of June in 1992. The telephone rings.

" Jane ? How are you?"

"Dad? I'm fine , thanks. And you?"

'Thanks. Jane, happy birthday! Tha call is because I have forgotten to buy flowers. You know, I was in the cemetery at your mother's tomb and I was talking to her for such a long time that
it was evening when I got home. So, I could not buy you anything but to give you my best wishes."

" Thanks. It is like a flower to me. You know in the army almost everyone sent me a red rose but none of them was as beautiful as your wish for happy birthday."

"Darling, would you come to your dad the day after tomorrow? What about celebrating your birthday in a friendly company?"

"All right, dad. As you want. But tomorrow evening Iam going to fly with Kate, you know with that F-117A which had something to repaire in the data recording system."

"Nice. My daughter is a pilot, my son is a businessman. If your mother lived she would make my face squared with her own nails."

"Father, you are great. Let me have a break. Bye!"

She put down the receiver and looked at the clock. It was almost midnight. For her tomorrow will be a hard day, the first test of the data recording system. She began thinking about the system. If it does not function she depends only on the earth control. It did not work always. There is for example the case of her father. He began his service in the army in 1947 with the last model of the ME 163 fighter. It is an old and very dangerous type. The probability that the aircraft catch fire is in a very high percentage. The place of the tank is the worst that can be imagined to say nothing of the pilot's position. When her father's aircraft was taking off one of the wings got on fire. After it her father decided on continuing the taking off and he
succeeded carrying out his task. At landing the only problem was that he was unable to leave the plane so his left leg stucked in and burnt. On this way he was not capable to continue flying so he had to retire.

This happened many years ago. But as she put back the receiver Jane had a very bed feeling. It was similar to that feeling when she and her father flew together at the first time.

Her mother was crying and did not want to watch the event. So she went away in the street to take a taxi and went home. They remained alone. She was frightened. The only question she asked from her father was why her mother went away. Instead of the answer her father pushed her into the cab than she could feel that the aircraft started very slowly than became faster and faster. Suddenly lots of spotlights appeared in front of her and she was siezed with such a fear that she had to close her eyes and was unable to move any more. Then she heard her father ordering her continuosly to open her eyes. When she did it she saw the most beautiful thing that can be seen in the world. The green medows below her and the rivers like a blue ribbon. The whole picture was similar to the one she saw in her story-books.

It was a wonderful experience.

Than the picture became obscurer continuosly and the picture of the yard appeared among the barracks. It remained in her mind almost uneffaceably with its red slag where every morning they had to run great circles on bare-foot and thousands of press-up were required in order to make the body strong as Mr Brown, the captain noticed every occasion. It is such a tiering exercise, she never loved it.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen. You are listening to channel seven."

It is the reality-she realized in her awakening moment. "Why on earth should I go back in the army?"-asked herself. "Just do it."-heard her father's voice as clearly as at the first
flying. Slowly, very slowly she crawled from the bed then took her uniform that layed on the sofa where she put it two days ago. It was time to go.

At the gate Jim was on the guard so after a kiss she could go on. She presented herself at the post to give the daily order. Coming back to her barrack she stopped at the door and looked
very surprised. The daily order did not contain the test-flying but an order to go in the cemetry for the funeral of captain Brown. He tested the aircraft instead of her. During taking off
one wing of the plane caught fire and the whole machine became a fire- bird. He had enough time to jump out but his parachute was not so strong to bear his weight. Its straps opened at his thighs and he fell down as an object from a height of more than 12000 km. He died on the spot. At his funeral the quality of the FX-10 parachute was not mentioned only his courage that drove him into death. At that moment she thought over the possibility that she could have died on the similar way but at the same time she remembered the feeling of being in the air and seeing the earth like a story-book picture and forgetting everything that is going on the earth. As she thought this the volley could be heard and then the dull sound of the clods.

Arriving back to the barrack she wished for flying. She started the engine of the plane and went higher and higher not noticing that the engine did not function periodically but the
only thing she could concentrate on was to forget everything.