Linguistic Analysis of Large Corpora

This session gives an overview of some computational approaches in humanities education in Hungary. "Historically", the first computer used for the humanities in this country was installed at Lajos Kossuth University, Debrecen. The first "computer guru" in those 1950's was Prof. Ferenc Papp, a then young linguist-researcher, who decided to give a formal approach to linguistic analysis. As a result of his activities, several pioneering achievements were made, including the Reversed Alphabetised Dictionary of the Hungarian Language (1967), second in its approach only to the Brown Corpus. First dozens, then hundreds of students and young scholars were brought up in a scientific and educational atmosphere which, however common it is nowadays, was a very significant leap in the academic history of Hungary. The "decision makers" of humanities computing of today's Hungary were all associated with this school, first at KLTE University, then at the Research Institute of Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Science in Budapest, to be followed by a number of groups elsewhere in the country.
Those contributing to this session are either active participants of those early days (Prof. F. Papp), close associates (J. Pajzs), students (B. Hollósy), or representatives of later trends (G. Alberti, T. Váradi). Although the selected papers are strongly associated with linguistic research, the influence of those beginnings in humanities computing is also manifested in other fields, represented in related posters of the conference.