SCOTS
CMSW
  1. Q: Is the project still running?
    A: The SCOTS project is now beyond its funded phase and we are only able to make updates to the corpus to a limited extent. If you have texts that you would like to offer to us, please contact us at arts-scottishcorpus@glasgow.ac.uk and tell us more about the texts (e.g. who wrote them, are they literary texts, letters, spoken texts, etc). If we can use your texts and have the capacity to add them to the corpus at the present time, 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.
  2. Q: What does the Corpus include?
    A: The Corpus contains documents in a wide range of genres of Scots and Scottish English. There are also a small number of texts in Scottish Gaelic. Please see the Details page for fuller information.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Q: How often do you update the Corpus?
    A: The active phrase of the SCOTS project came to an end in May 2007. We have added some further materials since that date, and will add further texts if material becomes available and if we have the capacity to do this.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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 are not able at present to provide a more sophisticated means of searching for the variant spellings of words which are abundant in the many varieties of Scots. We recommend the online Dictionary of the Scots Language, which lists multiple spellings.
  10. Q: Do you have a list of all the documents in the corpus?
    A: There is a list sorted by author.