I have a new toy for work. It's a
tablet, which comes with a word
processing application. I'm writing this
post on the device while attending a meeting.
So far, I have been able to write
several sentences using the thing without having to type more than three or
four letters for any given word. It amazes me how often I am able to make do
without needing to write anything at all.
The predictive text isn't just predicting the word I've started to
write, but also the word I'm likely to want next.
I don't know by what magic the device is
doing this, but I suspect it has something to do with corpus linguistics.
Corpus linguistics is a strange and slightly disturbing branch
of linguistics that involves dumping entire texts into a database in order to
find and analyze patterns.
One of the most interesting things to
come out of corpus linguistics is the increased understanding of collocation
(and, yes, the device has also been predicting the words corpus,
linguistics and collocation).
Collocation looks at words that turn up
next to each other (like "next to" and "each other"). We
generate a lot of patterns when we speak and write, and certain words tend to follow
each other over and over again (like "over and over again").
I think the predictive text used by this
device has quite a lot of collocation built in.
When I type "next", the device
instantly offers me "to", and when I
type "each", I get
"other" - I don't even have to type the first letter for these words,
they are just automatically generated by the device.
I am making quite a lot of sentences by
simply touching the next word offered to me.
In fact the next sentence is going to be
written using nothing except the options given to me by the program:
I have been in contact with the new
version of the world, but I think I can say that I have been able to get some
good ideas about what we want to know.
I didn't type a single word for
that. Sure, it didn't exactly make
sense, but that's beside the point.
Collocation. It just might change the way I write in the
future.
More on that later.
