Distant Reader - subject-westIndies-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 2021-05-25 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 7 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 308,539 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 44,077 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 94. 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:

great, one, men, also, made, much, time, make, little, many, may, two, us, several, good, sea, among, leagues, islands, west, island, east, yet, might, like, caribbians, day, place, wind, inhabitants, well, came, wee, english, called, found, certain, first, min, will, come, others, water, part, spaniards, taken, french, kind, small, three

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are The history of the Caribby-islands, viz, Barbados, St Christophers, St Vincents, Martinico, Dominico, Barbouthos, Monserrat, Mevis, Antego, &c in all XXVIII in two books : the first containing the natural, the second, the moral history of those islands : illustrated with several pieces of sculpture representing the most considerable rarities therein described : with a Caribbian vocabulary / rendred into English by John Davies ..., Sir Francis Drake reuiued calling vpon this dull or effeminate age, to folowe his noble steps for golde & siluer, by this memorable relation, of the rare occurrances (neuer yet declared to the world) in a third voyage, made by him into the West-Indies, in the yeares 72. & 73. when Nombre de Dios was by him and 52. others only in his company, surprised. Faithfully taken out of the reporte of M· Christofer Ceely, Ellis Hixon, and others, who were in the same voyage with him. By Philip Nichols, preacher. Reviewed also by Sr. Francis Drake himselfe before his death, & much holpen and enlarged, by diuers notes, with his owne hand here and there inserted. Set forth by Sr Francis Drake Baronet (his nephew) now liuing., and The Voyages of the ever renowned Sr. Francis Drake into the West Indies viz., his great adventures for gold and silver, with the gaining thereof, and an account of his surprising of Nombre de Dios : a large account of that voyage wherein he encompassed the world : his voyage made with Francis Knollis, and others, their taking the towns of St. Jago, Sancto Domingo, Carthageno, and Saint Augustin : his last voyage (in which he died) being accompanied with several valiant commanders, and the manner of his burial : collected out of the notes of the most approved authors, to which is added an account of his valorous exploits in the Spanish invasion..

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

run leag, leagues east, de dios, nombre de, many times, leagues west, next day, make use, east leag, several sorts, south east, fair weather, west leag, francis drake, every one, short time, long time, next morning, english books, early english, great store, great number, three hundred, de lery, wind south, south west, fresh water, books online, west indies, east lat, south sea, venta cruz, four hours, sir francis, twenty four, high land, two hundred, little wind, infinite number, hundred men, like manner, cloudy weather, years since, several kinds, night time, sweet scent, great plenty, wee might, page images, first place

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are The Voyages of the ever renowned Sr. Francis Drake into the West Indies viz., his great adventures for gold and silver, with the gaining thereof, and an account of his surprising of Nombre de Dios : a large account of that voyage wherein he encompassed the world : his voyage made with Francis Knollis, and others, their taking the towns of St. Jago, Sancto Domingo, Carthageno, and Saint Augustin : his last voyage (in which he died) being accompanied with several valiant commanders, and the manner of his burial : collected out of the notes of the most approved authors, to which is added an account of his valorous exploits in the Spanish invasion. A speech concerning a West Indie association, at a committee of the whole House in the Parliament, 21, Jacobi by Sir Benjamin Rudyerd., and The history of the Caribby-islands, viz, Barbados, St Christophers, St Vincents, Martinico, Dominico, Barbouthos, Monserrat, Mevis, Antego, &c in all XXVIII in two books : the first containing the natural, the second, the moral history of those islands : illustrated with several pieces of sculpture representing the most considerable rarities therein described : with a Caribbian vocabulary / rendred into English by John Davies ....

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, spaniards, town, ship, english, company, west, trees, symerons, pinnaces, king, island, inhabitants, general, east, captain, women, wind, water, war, treasure, trade, towne, tobacco, tcp, sun, sugar, south, ships, savages, rivers, river, riuer, province, plant, people, nombre, nations, mountains, men, latitude, language, land, isle, islands, indies, indians, india, iland, history

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 great, and Sir Francis Drake reuiued calling vpon this dull or effeminate age, to folowe his noble steps for golde & siluer, by this memorable relation, of the rare occurrances (neuer yet declared to the world) in a third voyage, made by him into the West-Indies, in the yeares 72. & 73. when Nombre de Dios was by him and 52. others only in his company, surprised. Faithfully taken out of the reporte of M· Christofer Ceely, Ellis Hixon, and others, who were in the same voyage with him. By Philip Nichols, preacher. Reviewed also by Sr. Francis Drake himselfe before his death, & much holpen and enlarged, by diuers notes, with his owne hand here and there inserted. Set forth by Sr Francis Drake Baronet (his nephew) now liuing. 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, day, place, leagues, others, part, kind, people, leag, way, places, night, wind, things, water, parts, side, man, reason, ground, inhabitants, colour, rest, thing, ships, country, body, manner, leaves, name, number, deg, houses, trees, hath, times, fish, weather, min, order, wood, days, account, hee, ship, sorts, enemies, use, foot

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, are, be, have, had, were, was, being, made, make, having, been, came, do, called, found, come, taken, take, put, set, hath, brought, sent, run, said, took, did, call, go, done, seen, went, get, give, left, got, thought, say, kept, lay, according, cut, think, find, see, makes, keep, eat, live

Proper Nouns

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

sea, west, island, east, caribbians, islands, s., wee, english, spaniards, south, e., french, men, inhabitants, w., de, min, general, latitude, captain, degr, wind, c., st., town, n., company, land, hath, captaine, leagues, america, indians, sun, king, country, isle, god, river, m., hee, governour, caribbies, indies, trees, tree, north, ships, water

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?"

they, it, their, them, we, our, his, he, him, us, themselves, its, i, her, my, himself, you, she, your, me, theirs, thy, one, ours, thee, vp, whereof, us''d, vnto, yours, ian, ye, toss''d, ti, there, perceiv''d, mine, itself, ''em

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?"

great, other, many, little, several, such, good, same, certain, small, much, most, first, more, own, long, next, fair, considerable, large, full, excellent, whole, high, particular, white, common, last, better, ordinary, greater, pleasant, strong, hard, best, least, french, ancient, fresh, former, true, sharp, black, able, short, new, greatest, young, present, few

not, so, very, also, then, as, up, only, most, well, much, there, more, here, about, now, yet, out, away, thus, in, off, down, commonly, sometimes, therefore, thereof, together, never, over, all, easily, before, afterwards, enough, especially, soon, far, long, again, forth, first, still, somewhat, rather, immediately, too, ever, often, likewise

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.

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