The AAC [Austrian Academy Corpus] - An Enterprise to Develop Large Electronic Text Corpora

The AAC [Austrian Academy Corpus] is a corpus research institution based at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. The AAC is a very large and complex electronic text collection. Its aims are to create an innovative text corpus and to conduct scholarly and scientific research in the field of electronic text corpora. In the first phase of the corpus build up the AAC is committed to have at least 100 million running words of carefully selected and scholarly annotated significant texts. The corpus approach of the AAC will allow a variety of investigations into the linguistic properties, the textual structures and the historical and literary significance of the selected texts. In the second phase of application development the size of the AAC will increase to around one billion running words. In this phase selected subcorpora will be annotated in greater detail following the AAC schemes for annotation and according to its editorial principles. The AAC working group is endeavouring to establish a corpus that meets the needs of textual studies and conveys essential information about the German language as well as about the history of the time in focus as a history of texts and of language. 1. The AAC [Austrian Academy Corpus] The AAC is a corpus research institution based at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. The AAC is a very large and complex electronic text collection. The primary aims of the AAC are to create an innovative and experimental text corpus of significant texts as well as to conduct scholarly and scientific research in the field of electronic text corpora. The texts selected for inclusion into the corpus date from the period between the 1848 Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The texts will be predominantly German language ones, but other specific parallel corpora and multimedia collections will be included. Figure 1: AAC AAC Corpus Build Up In the first phase of the corpus build up, which will be completed by the end of the year 2005, the AAC is committed to have at least one hundred million running words of carefully selected and scholarly annotated significant texts ready in digital format. At present, however, we have already approximately two hundred million running words to hand. The corpus approach of the AAC will allow a variety of investigations to be carried out into the linguistic properties, the textual structures and the historical and literary significance of these texts. In the second phase of application development the size of the AAC will increase ten-fold to around one billion running words at the end of the year 2010. In this phase selected subcorpora will be carefully annotated in greater detail. The annotation process will be following the AAC schemes for annotation and mark up, and it will be done according to the AAC’s editorial policies and principles. The AAC working group, who have had expertise in linguistics and literary studies, in computer supported lexicographic