Methods for Selecting and Cataloging Strings
David S. Kaufer, Suguru Ishizaki, Brian S. Butler, Jeff Collins · 2004
Once we understood we were interested in English strings as instruments for priming audience experience, we charted out a research strategy to harvest and classify such strings. We knew that it was an impossible task to seek an exhaus- tive collection of strings. Because of the combinatory possibilities of multiword strings, one can never enumerate all possible strings of English in the same way one can conceivably enumerate all individual words. Our aim, rather, was to sample a wide range of English speech and texts in order to get a representative understanding of the range and diversity of priming actions that English makes available at the grain size of strings.