Distant Reader - author-mackenzieGeorgeSir-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 24 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 1,193,856 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 49,744 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 89. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

act, may, yet, law, though, king, one, will, first, us, might, men, parliament, de, made, therefore, since, without, much, man, time, shall, many, kings, must, great, case, now, reason, also, par, either, right, person, others, found, lords, two, even, likewise, make, part, power, witnesses, scotland, called, think, crime, persons, albeit

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Observations on the acts of Parliament, made by King James the First, King James the Second, King James the Third, King James the Fourth, King James the Fifth, Queen Mary, King James the Sixth, King Charles the First, King Charles the Second wherein 1. It is observ''d if they be in desuetude, abrogated, limited, or enlarged, 2. The decisions relating to these acts are mention''d, 3. Some new doubts not yet decided are hinted at, 4. Parallel citations from the civil, canon, feudal and municipal laws, and the laws of other nations are adduc''d for clearing these statutes / by Sir George Mackenzie ..., The laws and customes of Scotland, in matters criminal wherein is to be seen how the civil law, and the laws and customs of other nations do agree with, and supply ours / by Sir George Mackenzie ..., and Pleadings in some remarkable cases before the Supreme Courts of Scotland since the year 1661 to which the decisions are subjoyn''d..

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

act par, civil law, privy council, one another, common law, eldest son, english books, early english, majesties advocat, every man, king james, king iames, tells us, every thing, books online, sir george, may seem, canon law, onerous cause, king charles, find caution, let us, three years, taken away, creation partnership, text creation, page images, protestant religion, god almighty, george mackenzie, difference betwixt, betwixt three, act appoints, three estates, judges competent, eo casu, will find, king robert, take place, robert baillie, found guilty, de jure, justice court, singular successors, lords found, sir john, late earl, sic subscribitur, king may, thought fit

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The science of herauldry, treated as a part of the civil law, and law of nations wherein reasons are given for its principles, and etymologies for its harder terms. The laws and customes of Scotland, in matters criminal wherein is to be seen how the civil law, and the laws and customs of other nations do agree with, and supply ours / by Sir George Mackenzie ..., and A vindication of the government in Scotland during the reign of King Charles II against mis-representations made in several scandalous pamphlets to which is added the method of proceeding against criminals, as also some of the phanatical covenants, as they were printed and published by themselves in that reign / by Sir George Mackenzie ....

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

law, king, act, parliament, laws, tcp, majesties, god, earl, crown, church, son, prince, nation, man, majesty, lords, council, religion, kingdom, government, england, countrey, civil, world, witnesses, vice, treason, statute, soul, robert, people, pannal, mr., men, lord, lands, great, father, estate, deponent, court, common, acts, year, vertue, title, superiour, sun, successor

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be act, and Observations on the acts of Parliament, made by King James the First, King James the Second, King James the Third, King James the Fourth, King James the Fifth, Queen Mary, King James the Sixth, King Charles the First, King Charles the Second wherein 1. It is observ''d if they be in desuetude, abrogated, limited, or enlarged, 2. The decisions relating to these acts are mention''d, 3. Some new doubts not yet decided are hinted at, 4. Parallel citations from the civil, canon, feudal and municipal laws, and the laws of other nations are adduc''d for clearing these statutes / by Sir George Mackenzie ... is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

time, men, man, case, others, reason, kings, person, part, power, thing, death, place, persons, years, self, way, cases, things, nothing, witnesses, punishment, cap, money, arms, people, right, words, crime, none, act, nature, design, ad, day, interest, argent, crimes, opinion, life, consent, effect, one, acts, use, king, instance, subjects, ▪, party

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, be, was, are, have, were, had, being, did, been, made, do, said, has, having, found, make, called, think, find, done, seing, does, take, given, know, taken, seems, granted, punished, see, declared, say, thought, according, prove, give, committed, betwixt, allowed, come, used, founded, put, use, makes, known, answered, pay, doubted

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

act, law, king, parliament, de, c., par, l., 〉, lords, ◊, 〈, scotland, god, council, earl, lord, england, ja, treason, mr., majesties, sir, majesty, laws, justice, son, church, court, lands, judge, civil, kingdom, oath, english, prince, ff, bishop, est, lib, judges, royal, justices, scots, father, ye, crown, government, countrey, session

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, his, they, he, their, i, them, our, him, we, us, her, my, himself, your, themselves, its, she, you, me, ours, one, thy, theirs, thee, ''s, ye, yours, whereof, mine, us''d, non, ay, †, itself, punish''d, ian, hers, urg''d, tollit, oblig''d, merchand, iu, ia, gods, em, beg''d, ●, whence, vvith

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

such, other, own, same, first, many, great, more, old, much, clear, punishable, last, common, second, former, sufficient, true, general, present, good, little, least, several, guilty, whole, third, ordinary, lyable, necessary, new, publick, most, fit, lawful, able, greater, due, particular, free, late, best, next, null, competent, greatest, civil, private, few, special

not, so, only, then, therefore, yet, very, more, now, also, as, here, most, even, likewise, thus, much, never, still, there, well, far, first, up, rather, else, too, formerly, out, thereafter, in, sometimes, just, ever, thereby, down, away, especially, certainly, once, expresly, onely, off, thereof, fully, justly, generally, all, long, easily

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

Thank you for using the Distant Reader.