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IMC 2003: Sessions

Session 206: The Paston Letters in XML: A New Style for the Electronic Medieval Text

Monday 14 July 2003, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Japan Paston Letters Reading Group
Organiser:Osamu Ohara, Department of English, Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo
Moderator/Chair:Keiko Ikegami, Seijo University, Tokyo
Paper 206-aComputer-Based Texts Reconsidered
(Language: English)
Akira Morita, School of Commerce, Waseda University, Tokyo
Index terms: Computing in Medieval Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 206-bGraphemic Features as Discourse Markers in the Paston Letters
(Language: English)
Osamu Ohara, Department of English, Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo
Index terms: Computing in Medieval Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 206-cChanging Verbal Inflection System in the Paston Letters
(Language: English)
Katsuhide Sonoda, Institute of Language & Cultural Studies, Hokkaido University, Sapporo
Index terms: Computing in Medieval Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English
Abstract

XML, in which we can freely decide the names of the tags according to our own purposes, has a very good chance of becoming a new type of format on which electronic medieval texts are made. In this session, Morita makes a general survey of various problems in editing texts and investigates what will be ideal electronic texts. Then Ohara and Sonoda, using two XML versions of the Paston Letters, carry out detailed investigations into some graphemic and morphological aspects of the letters, and demonstrate how effective the XML format is in making and using electronic medieval texts.