CREA (RAE)

REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA: Banco de datos (CREA) [en línea]. Corpus de referencia del español actual. <http://www.rae.es> [1 de abril del 2008]

Crea is a corpus of reference of the actual Spanish. It is used to show the way in which words work and how they appear in the texts. It is a sophisticated tool that professionals use to show, for example, what follows or by what is followed a common noun or an article. Nevertheless, it can be accessed by any one that owns a computer. At the same time it provides some contexts for the words that can give the reader an idea of the meaning of that word, its concordance and its situation within the text.

The system of consult has three main windows.

The first one, and the most important one allow people to choose his or her preferences to search. It is what is called: “El perfil de consulta”. In it you have several gaps in which you add your consultation and other selective criteria like author, work, chronological and geographical matters, subject or medium.

The second window offers stadistic results of the research: how many cases and in how many documents do they appear, it also has somefilters and you can see the make them up. In order to have some examples of it there is also a chart in which you can minimize and concrete the list of examples. This is, it has some filters such as classification, grouping, tag, and the way you want to obtain those examples: in documents, concordances, or whatever.

In the third window we see the same chart -to concrete the list of examples- (in case of being very long) and the list of examples in the classificatory way that has been chosen. In the examples we see that the word searched appears always in the middle and with different colour.

From my point of view, this list and the properties of research of the page are very useful to the user. Moreover, in the results, it does not only appear the sentences where the searched word is; but also in what kind of medium does it appear, the name of the author, the year, country, title of the document and where it has been published (in case anyone is interested in searching it).

I have tried with the name corpus and here are some of examples of the list of examples that have appeared:

Nº CONCORDANCIA- AÑO- AUTOR- TÍTULO- PAÍS- TEMA- PUBLICACIÓN

1.- …gados de la CEAR presentaron un recurso de habeas corpus, que no fue aceptado. ** 2001- PRENSA- El Diario Vasco, 11/01/2001 : Liberados en Irlanda los poliz ESPAÑA – 03.Protección civil- Sociedad Vascongada de Publicaciones (San Sebastián), 2001
2.- ...ienso en que el editor de Fonollosa escogió de un corpus poético inmenso, escrito a lo largo de toda su ** 1994- PRENSA- La Vanguardia, 30/09/1994 : Para salir de la clandestinidad ESPAÑA- 02.Literatura -T.I.S.A (Barcelona), 1994
3.- …todas las vueltas y vaivenes de recursos y habeas corpus, muertes reiteradas. Personaje sin desperdicio ** 1994- PRENSA- La Vanguardia, 30/09/1994 : EL TÚNEL DEL INFIERNO ESPAÑA- 02.Literatura- T.I.S.A (Barcelona), 1994
4.- ...bra tiene una voluntad de convertirse en obligado corpus informativo del especialista en el tema, más q ** 1994- PRENSA- La Vanguardia, 14/01/1994 : Historias enciclópedicas para ti ESPAÑA- 02.Historia- T.I.S.A (Barcelona), 1994