A3) "Backwards" or "backward" in the International Corpus of English (Using Wordsmith)

Corpora: International Corpora of English (ICE)

Programs: Wordsmith (+ Excel)

Tasks:

• Use the concordance function in Wordsmith Tools to manually disambiguate and compare percentages of backward (Adv) and backwards across some/all ICE varieties. (While the adjective is nearly always backward, the adverb can be backward or backwards.)

Notes:

• The corpora and Wordsmith Tools can be accessed via DBIS (University intranet / VPN required): http://rzblx10.uni-regensburg.de/dbinfo/detail.php?bib_id=ub_ba&colors=&ocolors=&lett=fs&titel_id=9323
• Tutorials for Wordsmith Tools can be found here: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/corpus_analysis_tools/files/wordsmith_tools_4_user_guide.pdf (Version 4), http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/step_by_step_English5/index.html (Version 5)
• Wordsmith is a widespread linguistic tool for corpus based studies => Google should provide solutions to most of your questions, if they are not covered in the tutorials.