The Architecture of a Multipurpose Australian National Corpus

Collaborative planning by Australian researchers for a large national corpus presents us with quite diverse views on: (a) what a corpus is, (b) what research agendas it should support, (c) which varieties of discourse it should contain, (d) how many languages it could include, (e) how the material might be collected, and (f) what kinds of annotation are needed to add value to the texts. The challenge for us all is to develop a comprehensive plan and architecture for a corpus which will encompass as many research agendas as possible. A modular design which allows independent compilation of segments of the notional whole recommends itself, so long as common systems of metadata and annotation can be set down at the start.