Distant Reader - subject-reclamationOfLand-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 8 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 392,348 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 49,043 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 90. 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:

motion, one, earth, may, shall, water, will, great, much, first, therefore, time, made, two, make, velocity, us, self, say, also, sun, yet, many, salv, part, onely, now, waters, greater, see, river, parts, things, let, doth, moon, another, centre, towards, move, place, without, reason, true, might, well, times, according, equal, line

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Mathematical collections and translations ... by Thomas Salusbury, Esq., Of the mensuration of running waters an excellent piece written in Italian by Don Benedetto Castelli ... ; Englished from the third and best edition ; with the addition of a second book not before extant / by Thomas Salusbury., and An Answer (to a printed paper dispersed by Sir John Maynard entituled, The humble petition of the owners and commoners of the towne of Isleham in the county of Cambridge, and to the exceptions thereto annexed against the Act for the dreyning of the great level of the fennes) whereby the honour and justice of the late Parliament is vindicated, the scandals and untruths in the said printed paper discovered, some vaine objections answered, and the truth of the proceedings in the work of dreyning (so much conducing to the honour and profit of the Common-wealth) held forth to all sober and uninteressed [sic] persons..

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

let us, fiume morto, terrestrial globe, fixed stars, annual motion, right line, coelestial bodies, diurnal motion, circular motion, right motion, running waters, one may, grand orb, quick height, grave bodies, equal times, starry sphere, yet neverthelesse, must needs, one another, one sole, well understood, save onely, stand still, make use, yet nevertheless, fixed star, running water, may cost, much greater, like manner, next place, shall see, sacred scripture, twenty four, four hours, earths motion, solar spots, foot broad, will say, early english, times bigger, english books, one onely, will make, hundred pounds, new star, may see, first place, much water

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The picklock of the old Fenne project: or, Heads of Sir John Maynard his severall speeches, taken in short-hand, at the committee for Lincolneshire Fens, in the exchequer chamber. Consisting of matter of fact. Matter of law. Presidents quæres and answers. The case of the Lady Wandesford, and Mathematical collections and translations ... by Thomas Salusbury, Esq..

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:

sea, river, water, section, parliament, mouth, land, lake, fiume, commissioners, chanel, banks, world, west, vessel, universe, undertakers, tower, terrestrial, tcp, suns, sun, stars, sphere, sir, simplicius, simp, ship, serchio, sense, scripture, salv, sagr, sacred, reno, regulator, pole, planets, orb, opinion, nature, motion, moon, magnet, level, lady, kings, king, hypothesis, holy

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 motion, and A briefe relation discovering plainely the true causes why the great levell of fenns in the severall counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Huntington, Northampton, and Lincolne shires, being three hundred and seven thousand acres of low-lands, have been drowned and made unfruitfull for many yeares past and as briefly how they may be drained, and preserved from inundation in the times to come : humbly presented to the honourable House of Commons assembled in Parliament / by Andrewes Burrell, gent. 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?":

motion, time, velocity, water, self, part, things, parts, reason, times, place, way, line, centre, waters, height, thing, motions, hath, quantity, bodies, point, proportion, manner, rest, opinion, measure, others, body, doth, stars, case, distance, cause, light, nothing, truth, men, side, nature, argument, space, end, air, superficies, matter, star, one, stone, course

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, are, have, being, was, said, do, were, made, make, say, been, had, see, let, according, move, did, know, think, believe, come, having, taken, take, am, found, go, hath, seen, observed, follow, fall, appear, fixed, understood, give, understand, find, speak, tell, run, done, demonstrated, touching, seem, placed, moved, prove

Proper Nouns

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

earth, sun, salv, water, moon, river, hath, sea, sagr, simp, motion, aristotle, lake, po, globe, chanel, simplicius, waters, c., copernicus, heaven, simpl, world, fiume, reno, terrestrial, star, sphere, section, lesse, east, earths, orb, coelestial, centre, l., west, r., god, mouth, rivers, serchio, 〉, sir, universe, book, bodies, doctrine, stars, venice

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, i, you, they, we, its, he, them, their, his, my, us, me, our, your, him, themselves, himself, one, her, she, ours, yours, thy, mine, theirs, à, hitherto, ''s, whereof, thee, severall, ourselves, oft, nay, kn, hismelf, haply

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?"

same, other, great, many, first, more, greater, such, true, equal, much, necessary, little, certain, whole, right, small, second, own, particular, new, natural, moveable, contrary, different, able, lesser, manifest, common, impossible, good, least, circular, high, bigger, simple, annual, less, like, third, several, most, infinite, possible, immoveable, few, grave, full, swift, false

not, so, very, more, therefore, also, now, onely, then, much, most, well, yet, as, never, that, is, out, ever, still, far, up, first, here, thereof, only, namely, likewise, again, sometimes, rather, afterwards, too, there, consequently, all, thus, away, together, even, else, above, less, before, farther, therein, already, moreover, continually, in

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.