1. Botox, themself and slugs Corpus Methods in Many Places Adam Kilgarriff Lexical Computing Ltd

2. Corpus: a collection of texts How people talk about X Indirect evidence of ▫How people think about X

3. Case study 1: botox Trade mark infringement ▫Allergan Inc own the mark botox ▫Competitor Klein Becker used it in advertising ▫Allergan sued ▫Klein Becker counter-case  Botox is a generic word so cannot be a mark

4. Well-known past cases In English-speaking world ▫hoover ▫kleenex ▫aspirin ▫biro Fracophonie: ▫bic

5. Linguistic question When is a word generic and when is it name-like Linguistic ‘expert witness’

7. Lots of evidence This corpus: 876 hits ▫UKWAC: web-crawled, 1.5 b words, 2006  Formal  Informal  News  Blogs  Jokes  Advertising

8. Linguistic features Prototypical for brands ▫Pre-modifier  Adidas trainers ▫Limited integration into linguistic system

11. Capitalisation

13. Native speakers think of is as a name ▫they capitalise else not unless ▫beginning of sentence ▫heading Professional writers ▫Capitalise if it is a trademark  or risk being sued

14. Capitalisation But what is the norm? ▫all nouns in UKWaC (freq>50) ▫how often capitalised?

15. Adam Kilgarriff15 English nouns: % capitalized

16. Capitalisation U-shaped distribution ▫Most types  Names  At or near to 100% capitalised ▫Most tokens  Common nouns  Under 50% ▫50-95% not many items

17. WordFrequency% caps Trademark words Colgate56998.1 Vauxhall675398.2 Asda618897.2 Budweiser70798.3 Boeing599599.4 Levis449498.2 Sanyo87897.8 Ikea135895.7 Nivea49792.4 Odeon284997.5 Contended Sabatier3794.6 Botox87674.5 Generic words Ribbon1232915.3 Debacle23102.9 Itch212813.9 Macaque87016.7 Peephole24222.3 Reunion1050231.7 Schoolboy423812.6 Fossil2098112.2 Housewife379948.2 Ferry4878639.0

18. Case study 1: botox Trade mark infringement ▫Allergan Inc own the mark botox ▫Competitor Klein Becker used it in advertising ▫Allergan sued ▫Klein Becker counter-case  Botox is a generic word so cannot be a mark

19. Case study 2: Bible Translation Themself ▫BNC 26 0.2 ▫Ukwac: 389, 0.1/m ▫08: 1191 0.4/m ▫12: 11,164 0.9/m

20. Case study 3: Species Which species deserve preserving ▫Rhino vs. roach

21. cat + dog 0.76 ▫feed,own,love,want,give,allow,adopt,keep,leave,bring,see ▫train,have,get,find,help horse + dog,cat 0.600 ▫feed,own,love,help,give,breed,keep,leave,bring,see,train, allow,put,get,name donkey + pony 0.538 ▫saddle,pet,ride,groom,hitch,domesticate,tether lion + wolf 0.526 ▫shoot,feed,hunt,resemble,breed,spot,tame,kill,encounter ▫chase roach + snail 0.500 ▫repel,squash crocodile + alligator 0.500 ▫wrestle,stuff,spot,embroider,tame goose + pigeon 0.471 ▫feed,breed,pluck,deter,stuff,slaughter,roast,chase