Frequently Asked Questions
- Q: How can I contribute texts to the Corpus?
A: If you have texts which you might be able to offer us, please contact us, and tell us more about the texts (who wrote them, are they literary texts, letters, spoken texts, etc). If we can use your texts, we will then send you some forms for completion: a Copyright form for us to obtain the required permission, and Author and Text forms to collect more detailed information about the texts – see “View Information” at the top of any document page for an indication of the sorts of questions we ask. - Q: What does the Corpus include?
A: The Corpus aims to include documents in all genres in all of the languages used in Scotland today. In the first instance we are collecting documents from 1940 onwards, and are focusing on all varieties of Scots and Scottish English. Please see the Details page for fuller information. - Q: I cannot hear or see the multimedia content, what should I check?
A: Make sure you have the most recent version of QuickTime. Verify that you can access content on other web sites. - Q: When I reposition audio/video the playback looks strange. Is this normal?
A: This is a by-product of the compression technology used, and will cease after a period of uninterrupted playback. - Q: Can I download and print texts for my own use?
A: Documents may be printed from your web browser, or downloaded as plain text and printed from your chosen text editor. All documents contain a copyright statement which must remain with the document and be adhered to. - Q: How often do you update the Corpus?
A: The active phase of the SCOTS project came to an end in May 2007. Depending on future submissions of texts and staff resources, we hope to be able to add further material at points in the future. Additions to the corpus after May 2007 (dataset 10) will be indicated, to allow for replication of linguistic research. - Q: How can I perform linguistic analysis on the Corpus texts?
A: The Advanced search provides greater search flexibility, a concordancer and a results map. - Q: What does “dreich” mean? (and similar questions)
A: The SCOTS resource is a Corpus, or principled collection, of texts. By searching for a word in the Corpus, you will find examples of the word in its actual usage. This may give you an insight into its meaning, especially if there are a large number of examples of it in the Corpus. For a dictionary definition of words, however, we suggest you try the online Dictionary of the Scots Language. - Q: Why can’t I find the word I’m looking for?
A: Because SCOTS is a Corpus (see above), words do not always appear in the form you would expect to find them in a dictionary. So, before giving up, please try truncating to find inflected forms of the word you are looking for. For example, “leid*” will find “leid” as well as the plural form “leids”. We hope in future to able to provide a means of dealing with the variant spellings of words which are abundant in the many varieties of Scots. In the meantime, we recommend the online Dictionary of the Scots Language, which lists multiple spellings. - Q: Do you have a list of all the documents in the corpus?
A: There is a list sorted by author.