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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>The Parsed Corpus of Middle English Poetry</title> <meta name="keywords" content="Parsed Corpus of Middle English Poetry, parsed corpora, historical English, middle english, middle english verse, middle english literature, PCMEP, middle english poetry, parsed corpus, linguistics, historical syntax, corpus studies, historical linguistics, history of English"/> <meta name="description" content="The Parsed Corpus of Middle English Poetry (PCMEP) offers fully annotated and parsed texts of Middle English literature. Study Middle English poetry with the PCMEP." /> <link href="templatemo_style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <style> h1 { text-shadow: 2.5px 2.5px 1.5px #FFFFFF; } </style>  <script type="text/javascript"> function showHide(obj) { var div = document.getElementById(obj); if (div.style.display == 'none') { div.style.display = ''; } else { div.style.display = 'none'; } } </script> </head>  <div id="templatemo_container">  <div id="templatemo_header" align="center" style="padding-top:5px; font-size: 17.5px;"> <h1 style="font-weight: bold; color:#FF7E00; line-height: 1.7em;"><font face="Viner Hand ITC, Vivaldi, Papyrus">The Parsed Corpus of<br>Middle English Poetry (PCMEP)</font></h1> </div>   <div id="templatemo_content">  <div id="templatemo_left_column", style="height: 100%;"><br />  <div class="section_box" align="justify"> <div id='image_container' align="justify" > <img alt='PCMEP Logo' src='PCMEPlogo.png'/> </div> </div>  <br/>  <a style='color: black;' href="index.php"><div class="section_boxPCMEP" align="justify"> <div align="justify" style="font-weight: bold; padding-left:5px"> <i><font style='color: black;'>> Home</font></i> </div> </div></a> <a style='color: white;' href="texts.php"><div class="section_boxPCMEP" align="justify"> <div align="justify" style="font-weight: bold; padding-left:5px"> > Text Information </div> </div></a> <a style='color: white;' href="links.php"><div class="section_boxPCMEP" align="justify"> <div align="justify" style="font-weight: bold; padding-left:5px"> > Links </div> </div></a> <a style='color: white;' href="bib.php"><div class="section_boxPCMEP" align="justify"> <div align="justify" style="font-weight: bold; padding-left:5px"> > Bibliography </div> </div></a> <a style='color: white;' href="download.php"><div class="section_boxPCMEP" align="justify"> <div align="justify" style="font-weight: bold; padding-left:5px"> > Download </div> </div></a>  <br> </div>   <div id="templatemo_right_column">  <div class="text_area" align="justify"> <h2><font size="5">PCMEP Home</font></h2> <br> <h2><span style="font-weight: bold;">Welcome to the Homepage of the Parsed Corpus of Middle English Poetry.</span></h2> <br><br> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Overview.</span> The PCMEP is a fully parsed and annotated corpus of Middle English verse texts. It currently includes 56 Middle English poems with a total of 233833 words. Click on 'Text Information' for details on every text.<br> <br> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Annotation.</span> The PCMEP is parsed according to the same guidelines as its sister corpus, the <i>Penn-Parsed Corpus of Middle English</i>, second edition (PPCME2) (Kroch & Taylor 2000). Thus, researchers familiar with the PPCME2 do not have to learn a new annotation scheme but can use their PPCME2 search queries directly on the PCMEP text files as well. For the PPCME2 annotation manual, click <a href="https://www.ling.upenn.edu/ppche/ppche-release-2016/annotation/index.html">here</a>. For an overview over minor annotation differences between the PCMEP and PPCME2, click <a href="#" onclick="showHide('Diff2Corp'); return false;">here</a>. <div id='Diff2Corp' style='display: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; padding: 1pt 4pt;'> <br> <table border='0'> <colgroup> <col width='30'> <col width='800'> </colgroup> <tr> <td align='left' valign='top'> (1) </td> <td> Forms of <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>weor+tan</font> 'be, become' have the tag <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>BE</font> in the PCMEP, but <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>VB</font> in the PPCME2. This includes the past particple, e.g. <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>was iwur+ten</font>, which is <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>BED ... BEN</font> in the PPCME, but <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>BED ... VAN</font> in the PPCME2. <br><br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align='left' valign='top'> (2) </td> <td> Emendations are indicated as comments in the PCMEP, but by the addition of <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>$</font> to word forms in the PPCME2. For example, the PCMEP separates <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>nustest</font> (Owl and Nightingale 119) into <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>n</font> and <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>ustest</font> and adds a comment CODE noting the change, whereas the PPCME2 splits a fused form such as <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>Noff</font> (Ormulum 124) into <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>$ne</font> and <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>$off</font>. <br><br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align='left' valign='top'> (3) </td> <td> The PPCME always has <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>-PRN</font> (parenthetical) before <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>-SPE</font> (direct speech), e.g. <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>IP-MAT-PRN-SPE</font>. The PPCME2 varies the order between <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>-PRN</font> and <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>-SPE</font> more freely, perhaps according to scope, e.g. both <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>IP-MAT-PRN-SPE</font> and <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>IP-MAT-SPE-PRN</font> exist. <br><br> </td> </tr> <tr> <td align='left' valign='top'> (4) </td> <td> Missing material in a lower clause reconstructed on a higher clause is indicated in the PCMEP through the same co-indexing mechanism used for other cases of reconstruction, for example, [clause-1 <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>+De fur flei of is mou+te. so</font> [clause=1<font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'> leie of brenston</font>]] (Maregrete 494). In contrast, such cases are handled in the PPCME2 with CODE comments listing rough paraphrases of missing material but no indication of gapping in the syntactic labels, for example <font style='font-family: Courier New,Courier,monospace;'>+tei ben tyede, as a bole (CODE {is_tied}) by a stake</font> (Wycliffe Sermon 588). <br><br> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <br> <br> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Periodization.</span> The main goal of the corpus is to help close the substantial gap in English prose texts between c. 1250 and 1350 with available poetic records from the same period. In order to be able to assess the genre difference between prose and poetry, the corpus covers a slightly greater time span than that, namely c. 1150 to 1420. This interval corresponds to the periods established in the <a href="http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/HelsinkiCorpus/middleenglish.html">Helsinki Corpus</a> M1, M2, M3. The <a href="https://www.ling.upenn.edu/ppche/ppche-release-2016/PPCME2-RELEASE-4/info/texts-by-date.html">PPCME2</a> makes use of the same periodization system. The PCMEP splits M1 and M2 in sub-periods. The correspondence between the different periodization systems is shown in the table below:<br><br> <table border="1" align="center"> <tr> <th>PCMEP</th> <th>Helsinki/PPCME2 </th> </tr> <tr> <td>M1a (1150-1200)<br></td> <td rowspan="2">M1 (1150-1250)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>M1b (1200-1250)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>M2a (1250-1300)</td> <td rowspan="2">M2 (1250-1350)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>M2b (1300-1350)</td> </tr> <tr> <td>M3 (1350-1420)</td> <td>M3 (1350-1420)</td> </tr> </table> <br> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Contact.</span> If you have any questions about the PCMEP, please feel free to send me a message. My e-mail address is <a href="mailto:richard.zimmermann@manchester.ac.uk?Subject=Question about the PCMEP"> Richard.Zimmermann@manchester.ac.uk</a>. <br> <br> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Acknowledgments</span> The PCMEP was funded by a Doc.Mobility grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (P1GEP1_148611). <br> <br> <br>  <div class="section_grey" align="justify" valign="bottom"> <div align="justify" style="font-style: italics; font-size: 9px;"> The header image shows three manuscripts containing Middle English poetry. From left to right, <ul><li>the Vernon Manuscript (c. 1390), f. 105v,</li> <li>Cambridge, Trinity College Manuscript R.3.2. (c. 1420), f. 1v</li> <li> and the Auchinleck Manuscript (c. 1330), f. 167r.</li></ul> </div> </div>   </div>  </div>  <div id="templatemo_footer" align="center">Copyright 漏 2014 - 2025 www.PCMEP.net</div>   </div>  </div> </body></html>