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# Towards a Better Exploitation of the Brown 'Family' Corpora in Diachronic Studies of British and American English Language Varieties

**Authors:** [Sanja Štajner](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/sanja-stajner/) · **Year:** 2011 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the Second Student Research Workshop associated with RANLP 2011 **Link:** [aclanthology.org/R11-2003](https://aclanthology.org/R11-2003/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) (ACL Anthology, before 2016) — summary only; nothing copied into a release

[**5** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W2250634929) openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14[**2** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/stajner-2011-better-exploitation-brown-family-corpora/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Proceedings of the Second Student Research Workshop associated with RANLP 2011](https://aclanthology.org/volumes/R11-2/)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/R11-2003/)
- [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/R11-2003.pdf)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2250634929)

**Authors (1)**

1. [Štajner, Sanja](https://openalex.org/A5044948242) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7780-7035) · h 21 · 1547 citations · 89 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex-snapshot (2026-10-14); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The Brown family corpora (Brown, Frown, LOB, FLOB) hold about 500 texts each from 1961 and 1991/2, sorted into 15 genres. Earlier diachronic studies pooled the genres into four broad categories. The paper measures change in the Coleman-Liau Index, a character-based readability score, with a t-test, under two designs: one with all 15 genres and one with the four categories. The two designs disagree. In British English the four-category design shows a significant rise in the Press category, which the genre-level design does not confirm. In American English the genre-level design finds a rise in one Press genre (Editorial) that the category design misses. Within Fiction, genres move in opposite directions. The paper also notes that uneven genre sizes (80 texts in Science, 30 in Miscellaneous) can make a category trend reflect one genre only.

## Ideas

- I1. Report results per fine-grained group, not only per broad category, in any Mova evaluation. Use school subjects or lesson types as the groups, keep the table in BTreeMap order, and claim a trend only when the subgroups agree.
- I2. Use the Coleman-Liau formula (characters per word, sentences per text) as a deterministic readability grade for the lesson texts in `world/src/knowledge.rs`. It needs no syllable counter. Measure its agreement with the school year assigned to each lesson, and run it twice.
- I3. Before any comparison, report the number of texts in each group next to each test, as the paper's Table 1 does, so that small groups cannot quietly decide a result.

## For Mova

The relevant chapters are [08. National varieties](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/08-national-varieties/) (British and American differences) and [37. Register and variation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/en/37-register-and-variation/) (register). The code is `world/src/knowledge.rs` for the lessons. The measures: per-group results with group sizes, and the agreement of the readability grade with the school year.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```
@inproceedings{stajner2011better,
  title = {{Towards a Better Exploitation of the Brown 'Family' Corpora in Diachronic Studies of British and American English Language Varieties}},
  author = {Štajner, Sanja},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Second Student Research Workshop associated with RANLP 2011},
  year = {2011},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/R11-2003/}
}
```

- [← previous PUB: A Pragmatics Understanding Benchmark for Assessing LLMs' Pragmatics Capabilities](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/sravanthi-2024-pub-pragmatics-understanding-benchmark-assessing/)
- [next → Diachronic Changes in Text Complexity in 20th Century English Language: An NLP Approach](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/stajner-2012-diachronic-changes-text-complexity-20th/)
- [↑ back to English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/en/)

## References

22 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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13. Christian Mair and Marianne Hundt. 1995. Why is the progressive becoming more frequent in English? A corpus-based investigation of language change in progress. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 43: 111–122. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Christian+Mair+and+Marianne+Hundt%2E+1995%2E+Why+is+the+progressive+becoming+more+frequent+in+English%3F+A+corpus%2Dbased+investigation+of+language+change+in+progress%2E+Zeitschrift+fu%CC%88r+Anglistik+und+Amerikani)
14. Christian Mair. 1997. The spread of the going-tofuture in written English: a corpus-based investigation into language change in progress. In: R. Hickey and St. Puppel, eds. Language history and linguistic modelling: a festschrift for Jacek Fisiak on his 60th birthday. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1536–1543. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Christian+Mair%2E+1997%2E+The+spread+of+the+going%2Dtofuture+in+written+English%3A+a+corpus%2Dbased+investigation+into+language+change+in+progress%2E+In%3A+R%2E+Hickey+and+St%2E+Puppel%2C+eds%2E+Language+history+and+lingui)
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19. Edgar A. Smith and Peter J. Kincaid. 1970. Derivation and Validation of the Automated Readability Index for Use with Technical Materials. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 12(5): 457–464. [↗](https://doi.org/10.1177/001872087001200505)
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21. Nicholas Smith. 2003a. A quirky progressive? A corpus-based exploration of the will + be + -ing construction in recent and present day British English. In: D. Archer, P. Rayson, A. Wilson and T. McEnery, eds. Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics 2003 Conference: 714–723. Lancaster University: UCREL Technical Papers. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Nicholas+Smith%2E+2003a%2E+A+quirky+progressive%3F+A+corpus%2Dbased+exploration+of+the+will+%2B+be+%2B+%2Ding+construction+in+recent+and+present+day+British+English%2E+In%3A+D%2E+Archer%2C+P%2E+Rayson%2C+A%2E+Wilson+and+T%2E+McEne)
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