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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Capitalisation

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

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

Adam Kilgarriff15 English nouns: % capitalized

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

WordFrequency% caps Trademark words Colgate Vauxhall Asda Budweiser Boeing Levis Sanyo Ikea Nivea Odeon Contended Sabatier Botox Generic words Ribbon Debacle Itch Macaque Peephole Reunion Schoolboy Fossil Housewife Ferry

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

Case study 2: Bible Translation Themself ▫BNC ▫Ukwac: 389, 0.1/m ▫08: /m ▫12: 11, /m

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

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