Abstract
Statistical information on a substantial corpus of representative Spanish texts is needed in order to determine the significance of data about individual authors or texts by means of comparison. This study describes the organization and analysis of a 150,000-word corpus of 30 well-known twentieth-century Spanish authors. Tables show the computational results of analyses involving sentences, segments, quotations, and word length.
The article explains the considerations that guided content, selection, and sample size, and describes special editing needed for the input of Spanish text. Separate sections highlight and comment upon some of the findings.
The corpus and the tables provide objective data for studies of homogeneity and heterogeneity. The format of the tables permits others to add to the original 30 authors, organize the results by categories, or use the cumulative results for normative comparisons.
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Estelle Irizarry is Professor of Spanish at Georgetown University and author of 20 books and annotated editions dealing with Hispanic literature, art, and hoaxes. Her latest book, an edition of Infortunios de Alonso Ramirez, treats the disputed authorship of Spanish America's first novel. She is Courseware Editor of CHum.
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Irizarry, E. Stylistic analysis of a corpus of twentieth-century Spanish narrative. Comput Hum 24, 265–274 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00123413
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00123413