5. The header

5.1.1. The title statement

As used in the BNC, the title statement (<titleStmt>) element has a simpler structure than the equivalent TEI element: it contains one or more <title> elements, followed by zero or more <author>, <editor>, or <respStmt> elements. These sub-elements are used throughout the header, wherever the title of a work or a statement of responsibility are required.

<title>

the title or chief name of a work, including any alternative titles or subtitles.

<respStmt>

supplies information about any person or institution responsible for the intellectual content of a text, edition, or electronic transcription, using the following two sub-elements:

<resp>

contains a phrase describing the nature of a person's or institution's intellectual responsibility.

<name>

proper name of a person, place or institution.

A standardized form of words has been used for the <title> elements which supplies the following components:

• for written texts, a (possibly shortened) version of the original source title, or, if there is none, a descriptive phrase enclosed in square brackets
• an indication of the size and type of the document
• a note indicating the domain or subject matter of the document

Here are some typical examples:

<title>  Man at the sharp end. Sample containing 
  about 37622 words from a book (domain: imaginative) </title> 

<title>  Belfast Telegraph: Religious affairs stories. Sample 
containing about 2180 words from a periodical (domain: 
belief and thought) </title>        

<title>   6 conversations recorded by `Pauline' (PS0N3) between 
21 and 24 February 1992 with 8 interlocutors, totalling 1668 
s-units, 16234 words, and over 1 hour 49 minutes 24 seconds 
of recordings.  </title>

 <respStmt> 
  <resp>Data capture and transcription </resp> 
  <name> Longman ELT </name>
</respStmt> 

Author and editor information for the source from which a text is derived (e.g. the author of a book) is not included in the <filedesc> element but in the <sourceDesc> element discussed below (5.1.5. The source description).

5.1.2. The edition statement

The standard TEI <editionStmt> element is used to specify an edition for each file making up the corpus. For the corpus header this takes the following form:

<editionStmt>
<edition>First Edition</edition>
</editionStmt>

Since the header of each text has been taken unchanged from the BNC World edition, the form of words used for each text header in the current release of the BNC-baby corpus is as follows:

<editionStmt><para>BNC World Edition: 
Header automatically generated by mkhdr 0.30
</para></editionStmt>

5.1.3. The extent statement

The standard TEI <extent> element is used to specify the size of the whole corpus, in the corpus header, or of an individual text, in each text header as in the following example:

<extent>Approximately 88 Kbytes running text, 
containing about 5890 orthographically-defined words; 
for encoding details see &lt;tagUsage&gt; element.
</extent>

Counts are provided for each element actually tagged in a text, as further discussed below (5.2.2. The tagging declaration

5.1.4. The publication statement

The standard TEI <publicationStmt> element is used to specify publication and availability information for an electronic text. It contains information about the name and address of the distributor, identification numbers etc., notes on availability and publication dates.

The TEI <distributor> and <address> elements are used to record information about the publisher; for BNC-baby in both corpus and text headers, the name and address given is as follows:

<distributor>
Oxford University Computing Services
</distributor>
<address>
<addrLine>13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN U.K.</addrLine>
<addrLine>Telephone:     +44 1865 273221</addrLine>
<addrLine>Facsimile:     +44 1865 273275</addrLine>
<addrLine>Internet mail: natcorp@oucs.ox.ac.uk</addrLine>
</address>

The standard TEI <idno> element is used to identify the item being published. For the corpus header only one such element is specified, as follows:

<idno type="bnc">BNC-baby</idno>

<idno type="bnc">A0A</idno>
<idno type="old">CAMfct</idno>

As regards availability, for contractual reasons, the corpus header includes a brief rehearsal of the terms and conditions under which the BNC is made available; this is reproduced in section 7.3. The BNC corpus header below. A similar brief notice is also provided in the same place for each individual text:

<availability status="restricted"><para>
Available worldwide
THIS TEXT IS AVAILABLE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD only as part of
the British National Corpus at nominal charge FOR ACADEMIC
RESEARCH PURPOSES SUBJECT TO A SIGNED END USER LICENCE
HAVING BEEN RECEIVED BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY COMPUTING
SERVICES, from whom forms and supporting materials are
available.
THIS TEXT IS NOT AVAILABLE FOR COMMERCIAL RESEARCH AND
EXPLOITATION unless terms have first been agreed with the
BNC Consortium Exploitation Committee. Apply in the first
instance to Oxford University Computing Services.
It is your responsibility, as a user, to ensure that an End
User Licence is in place. For your information, the Terms
of the End User Licence are set out in the corpus header, 
which is likely to have a file name similar to "corphdr" or 
"CORPHDR".
Distribution of any part of the corpus under the terms of
the Licence must include a copy of the corpus header.
Distribution of this corpus text under the terms of the
Licence must include this header embodying this notice.
Permissions grantor for World:
CAMRA (imprint) of St Albans
</para></availability>

5.1.5. The source description

The standard TEI <sourceDesc> element is used to supply bibliographic details for the original source material from which an electronic text derives. In the case of a BNC text, this might be a book, pamphlet, newspaper etc., or a recording. One of the following two elements available within the <sourceDesc> will be used, as appropriate:

<recordingStmt>

describes a set of recordings used in transcription of a spoken text, either as a series of paragraphs or as a formally structured recording element (5.1.5.1. The recording statement).

<biblStruct>

contains a structured bibliographic citation, in which only bibliographic sub-elements appear and in a specified order. (5.1.5.2. Structured bibliographic record)

These elements are not used within the corpus header, which simply contains a note about the sources from which the corpus was derived, tagged as a <para> (paragraph). The headers of individual texts each contain one of the above elements to specify their source.

<recordingStmt>
  <recording n="018201" dur="322" date="1991-11-28" 
        time="18:15+" type="Walkman" id="KB7RE000"></recording>
  <recording n="018202" dur="253" date="1991-11-28" 
        time="18:15+" type="Walkman" id="KB7RE001"></recording>
  <!-- ... -->
  <recording n="018207" dur="630" date="1991-11-29" 
        time="10:15+" type="Walkman" id="KB7RE006"></recording>
  <recording n="018301" dur="75" date="1991-11-29" 
        time="12:15+" type="Walkman" id="KB7RE007">
  <!-- ... -->
</recordingStmt>

<div decls="KB7RE0077">

<biblStruct default="NO">
          <monogr>
            <title>Matrices and engineering dynamics. </title>
            <author n="SimpsA1">Simpson, A</author>
            <author n="CollaA1">Collar, A R</author>
            <imprint n="ELLISH1">
              <publisher>Ellis Horwood Ltd</publisher>
              <pubPlace>Chichester</pubPlace>
              <date value="1987">1987</date>
            </imprint>
            <biblScope type="pp">11-195</biblScope>
          </monogr>
        </biblStruct>

<biblStruct default="NO">
          <monogr>
            <title>Belfast Telegraph: Business section.</title>
            <imprint>
              <publisher>u.p.</publisher>
            </imprint>
          </monogr>
        </biblStruct>

5.2.1. Documentary components of the encoding description

The <projectDesc> element for the corpus gives a brief description of the goals, organization and results of the original BNC project. It is reproduced in section 7.3. The BNC corpus header below.

In the original BNC header, the <samplingDecl> and <editorialDecl> elements were used to document a range of different sampling and editorial policies. This was necessary because the corpus was originally constructed by different people using slightly different principles. The policies applicable to a given text or part of a text are encoded as a series of five letter codes, supplied as the value of an decls (declarations) attribute on the element concerned, and the significance of each code is given in the appropriate part of the corpus header.

Although of largely historical interest, these policy codes have been retained in BNC-baby itself, and the original declarations for them have therefore been retained in the corpus header. The subset of the defined codes actually used in BNC-baby is listed here for convenience:

CN000

Errors tagged with <sic> when seen; no normalization

CN001

Errors tagged with <sic> if seen; normalisation with <corr>

CN002

Normalized to standard British English or control list member

CN004

Corrections and normalizations applied silently

HN000

Smart elision of line-end hyphens; &rehy used for remainder

HN001

Dumb elision of line-end hyphens; true hyphens hand-reinstated

HN002

Line-end hyphens removed by hand where appropriate

QN000

Open and close quote normalized to &bquo, &equo

QN001

Open and close quote normalized to &quo

QN002

Quotation may be represented using <shift>

SN000

Segmentation carried out by CLAWS5.

TN006

Recording transcribed into Longman format; automatically translated to SGML

5.2.2. The tagging declaration

The standard tagging declaration (<tagsDecl>) element is used slightly differently in corpus and in text headers. In the corpus header, it is used to list every element name actually used within the corpus, together with a brief description of its function. In text headers, it is used to specify the number of elements actually tagged within each text. In either case it consists of a number of <tagUsage> elements, defined as follows:

<tagUsage>

supplies information about the usage of a specific element within a <text>. Attributes include:

gi

the name (generic identifier) of the element indicated by the tag.

occurs

the number of occurrences of this element within the text.

In the corpus header, each <tagUsage> element contains a brief description of the element specified by its <gi> element; the occurs attribute is not supplied, as in the following extract:

<tagUsage gi="div4">
Written text division, level 4
</tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="event">
Non-verbal event in spoken text
</tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="gap">
Point where source material has omitted
</tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="head">
Header or headline in written text 
</tagUsage>

<tagsDecl>
<tagUsage gi="body" occurs="1"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="c" occurs="4649"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="caption" occurs="77"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="div1" occurs="2"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="div2" occurs="10"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="div3" occurs="49"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="gap" occurs="1"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="head" occurs="55"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="hi" occurs="50"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="item" occurs="26"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="list" occurs="4"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="note" occurs="3"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="p" occurs="378"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="pb" occurs="65"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="ptr" occurs="79"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="s" occurs="1713"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="sic" occurs="1"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="text" occurs="1"></tagUsage>
<tagUsage gi="w" occurs="40394"></tagUsage>
</tagsDecl>

5.2.3. The reference and classification declarations

The <refsDecl> element for the corpus header defines the approved format for references to the corpus. It takes the following form

<refsDecl>
<para>Canonical references in the British National Corpus
are to text segment (&lt;s&gt;) elements, and
are constructed by taking the value of the n attribute
of the &lt;cdif&gt; element containing the target text,
and concatenating a dot separator, followed by the value
of the n attribute of the target &lt;s&gt; element.
</para></refsDecl>

The standard TEI <classDecl> element is used in the BNC Corpus Header to formally define the text classication scheme applied to the corpus, and the particular codes within it. It consists of a set of <category> elements, each representing a particular textual classification feature and a value for that feature. The classification scheme defined here is that used for the original design of the BNC: consequently, not all the categories defined here are actually used in the BNC-baby.

<category>

contains an individual descriptive category or feature-value pair.

<catDesc>

describes some category within a taxonomy or text typology, in the form of a brief prose description.

For example, the following <category> elements appear within the BNC <classDecl> element in the header:

<category id="wridom">
<catDesc>Domain for written corpus texts</catDesc>
<category id="wridom1">
<catDesc>Imaginative</catDesc>
</category>
<category id="wridom2">
<catDesc>Informative: natural &amp; pure science</catDesc>
</category>
<category id="wridom3">
<catDesc>Informative: applied science</catDesc>
</category>
<category id="wridom4">
<catDesc>Informative: social science</catDesc>
</category>
<category id="wridom5">
<catDesc>Informative: world affairs</catDesc>
</category>
<category id="wridom6">
<catDesc>Informative: commerce &amp; finance</catDesc>
</category>
<category id="wridom7">
<catDesc>Informative: arts</catDesc>
</category>
<category id="wridom8">
<catDesc>Informative: belief &amp; thought</catDesc>
</category>
<category id="wridom9">
<catDesc>Informative: leisure</catDesc>
</category>
</category>

The category descriptions applicable to a given text are specified by the <catRef> element within its header, as described above. Its target lists the identifiers of all <category> elements applicable to that text. Thus, the header of a written text assigned to the social science domain which has a corporate author will include a <catRef> element like the following:

<catref target='... wriaty1 wridom4...'>

A full list of all category codes, and the numbers of texts so classified in BNC-baby is provided in section 6.4. Text and genre classification codes; see also the classification tables in 2. Design of BNC-baby.

Information about the classification and categorization of an individual text is held within the <textClass> element discussed below (5.3.5. Text classification)

5.3.1. The creation element

This element is provided to record the date of first publication of individual published texts, and any details concerning the origination of any spoken or written texts, whether or not covered elsewhere. It is supplied in every text header, although the details provided vary. As a minimum, a date (tagged with the standard <date> element) will be included; this gives the date the content of this text was first created. For a spoken text, this will be the same as the date of the recording; for a written text, it will normally be the date of first publication.

Here are two typical examples:

<creation><date>1992-02-11</date>: 
</creation> 

<creation><date>1971</date>:
originally published by Jonathan Cape.
</creation>

For imaginative works, the creation date is also the date used to classify the text (by means of the writim category). For other written works, such as textbooks, which are likely to have been extensively revised since their first publication, the date used to classify the text will be that of the edition described in the <sourceDesc>, but the original date will also be recorded within the <creation> element.

5.3.2. The <langUsage> element

Unlike the other elements of the profile description, the language usage element occurs only in the corpus header. It contains the following text:

<langUsage>
The language of the British National Corpus is modern
British English.  Words, fragments, and passages from many
other languages, both ancient and modern, occur within the
corpus where these may be represented using a Latin
alphabet.  Long passages in these languages, and material
in other languages, are generally silently deleted.  In no
case is the lang attribute used to indicate the language
of a word, phrase or passage, nor are alternate writing
system definitions used.
</langUsage>

5.3.3. The participant description

The participant description (<particDesc>) element is used to provide information about speakers of texts transcribed for the BNC. In its basic structure it is close to the element defined by the TEI but it has been modified to include some more specific elements provided for the BNC. It appears both within the corpus header, to define the generic ‘unknown participant’, and also within individual spoken text headers to define the participants specific to those texts.

It contains a series of <person> elements describing the participants whose speech is transcribed in this text, followed by an optional <particLinks> element describing any relationships or links amongst them.

<person id="PS028" role="self" sex="m" soc="C2" age="1" dialect="XLO">
          <name>Andrew</name>
          <age>16</age>
          <occupation>student</occupation>
          <dialect>London</dialect>
        </person>

5.3.4. The setting description

The TEI <settDesc> element is used to document the context within which a spoken text takes place. It appears once in the header of each spoken text, and contains one or more <setting> elements for each distinct recording.

<setting>

describes one particular setting in which a language interaction takes place. The following attributes are used:

who

supplies the identifiers of the participants at this setting.

id

supplies a unique identifier for this setting.

n

supplies the identifier used for the <recording> element corresponding with this setting.

The content of each <setting> element supplies additional details about the place, time of day, and other activities going on, using the following additional elements:

<name>

contains a place name, usually prefixed by the name of the English county in which it is located.

<locale>

contains a brief informal description of the nature of a place, for example a room, a restaurant, a park bench etc.

<activity>

contains a brief informal description of what a participant in a language interaction is doing other than speaking, if anything. Bears an additional attribute:

spont

indicates the degree of spontaneity associated with the activity as either H (high) M (medium) or L (low)

Thus, the following example provides additional information about the setting in which the recording on tape number 063505 was made. The person recorded (PS0M6) is watching television at home in Morecambe, Lancs.

        <setting id="KDFSE002" n="063505" who="PS0M6">
          <name>Lancashire:  Morecambe </name>
          <locale> at home </locale>
          <activity spont="H"> watching television </activity>
        </setting>

5.3.5. Text classification

The TEI provides a number of ways in which classification or text-type information may be specified for a text, grouped together within a <textClass> element, which appears once in the header of each text. Classifications may be represented using references to internally defined classications provided in the <classCode> element (such as the BNC classification scheme described in section 5.2.3. The reference and classification declarations), by reference to some other predefined classification system, or by an open set of keywords. All three methods are used in the BNC, using the following elements:

<catRef>

specifies one or more defined categories within some taxonomy or text typology. Attributes include:

target

identifies all the categories concerned.

<classCode>

contains the code used for this text in an externally-defined classification system: in this release of the BNC, the genre codes defined by David Lee are used.

<keywords>

contains a list of keywords or phrases identifying the topic or nature of a text, each of which is tagged as a <term> element.

A <catRef> element is provided in the header of each text. Its target attribute contains values for each of the classification codes listed in the following table and defined in the corpus header. In each case, the classification code consists of an alphabetic prefix (e.g. alltim) identifying the category (e.g. "date"), followed by a single digit indicating a value for that category. Thus the code alltim1 indicates ‘dated 1960-1974’. The value 0 is always used to indicate missing or unknown values. A list of the values used is given in section 6.4. Text and genre classification codes below.

This taxonomy is that originally defined for selection and description of texts during the design of the corpus, as further discussed elsewhere. It is of course possible to classify the texts in many other ways, and no claim is made that this method is universally applicable or even generally useful, though it does serve to identify broadly distinct sub-parts of the corpus for investigation. The reader is also cautioned that, although an attempt has been made in the current edition of the corpus to correct the more egregious classification errors noted in the first edition, unquestionably many errors and inconsistencies remain. In particular, the categories wrilev (perceived level of difficulty) and wrista (estimated circulation size) were incorrectly differentiated during the preparation of the corpus and cannot be relied on.

A <classCode> element is also provided for every text in the corpus. It contains the code assigned to this text in David Lee's genre-based analysis carried out at Lancaster University since publication of the first edition of the BNC.

In the first release of the BNC, most texts were assigned a set of descriptive keywords, tagged within the <keywords> element. These terms were not taken from any particular descriptive thesaurus or closed vocabulary; the words or phrases used are those which seemed useful to the data preparation agency concerned, and are thus often inconsistent or even misleading. They have been retained unchanged in the present version of the BNC, pending a more thorough revision.

In this edition of the BNC, a second set of keywords has been supplied for the majority of written texts. These keywords are also tagged using a <keywords> element, but with a value for the source attribute of COPAC, indicating that the terms so tagged are derived from a different source. The source used is a major online library catalogue service (see http://www.copac.ac.uk), from which we have taken the subject keywords provided for each title identifiable as forming part of the BNC. Like other public access catalogue systems, COPAC uses a well-defined controlled list of keywords for its subject indexing, details of which are not further given here.

Here is an example showing how one text (EWW) is classified in each of these three ways:

<textClass default="NO">
        <catRef target="alltim3 allava0 alltyp3 wriaag0 
           wriad0 wriase1 wriaty2 wriaud3 wridom2 wrilev2 
           wrimed1 wripp1 wrisam2 wrista0 writas0"/>
        <classCode scheme="DLee">W ac tech engin</classCode>
        <keywords scheme="COPAC">
          <term>Applied dynamics. Applications of matrices</term>
        </keywords>
        <keywords>
          <term> maths </term>
        </keywords>
      </textClass>