Shorter texts are included in their entirety, and longer ones in 3000-word samples. In the first instance, we include texts localised in the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, from the period 1350-1500. A list of all the texts to be potentially included is available here. However, the Corpus will eventually also cover earlier texts, as well as texts showing non-regional varieties of Middle English.
The Corpus is being compiled as part of the Middle English Grammar Project (MEG), and will form an important part of the source materials for the further work on the project. By releasing a version of the Corpus to the public while still compiling it, we hope to invite feedback, as well as providing a resource that may be useful for other scholars within the field. We will be very grateful for any corrections and suggestions for improvement.
At the moment, the Corpus contains approximately a third of its planned eventual size. New texts will be added in large groups, at which point the version number will change and the Catalogue will be correspondingly updated; we will then provide a link to earlier versions of the Corpus. We hope to update the Corpus at least every six months. Any minor corrections that may be made to the Corpus between such times will be noted in a List of Recent Changes on the relevant Corpus page.
The Corpus is provided in three different formats. The "base" version, MEG-C Base preserves our own coding and commentary, and gives the fullest information about the text as it appears in the manuscript. MEG-C Html is published in two versions, both as html and pdf files, and they are designed for easier reading and browsing. Both the text files of MEG-C Base and the pdf files of MEG-C Html may be downloaded as zip archives. Fuller descriptions of the different versions are provided in the Manual.
To access the Middle English Grammar Corpus, please use the following links:
MEG-C Catalogue of Sources, version 2009.1
