In a casual chat with the developers, it seems that they are not really happy to see the "popularity" of LOCNESS in some countries, coz they are surprised to find that there are some people working with LOCNESS corpus though these people got the corpus NOT "via official channels". This, of course, is against the term in the agreement form, "no part of the corpus is to be distributed to a third party without specific authorization from CECL". Maybe this explains why some enquiries about the corpus were not entertained.
BTW, the corpus is not free, the license fee is 100 Euro per copy. Pls see the LOCNESS form below:
LOUVAIN CORPUS OF NATIVE ENGLISH ESSAY WRITING
The LOCNESS corpus is a corpus of native English essay writing (university level and A-level) and is available under the following conditions:
(1) the corpus is to be used for non-commercial purposes only
(2) all publications on research partly or wholly based on the corpus should give credit to the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics (CECL), Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. A copy or offprint of the publication should also be sent to CECL
(3) no part of the corpus is to be distributed to a third party without specific authorization from CECL.
The corpus can only be used by the person signing the licence form and researchers working in close collaboration with him/her or students under his/her supervision, attached to the same institution.
(4) Payment of 100 EURO. Method of payment: by international money order or Western Union (in EURO) to
S. Granger. Centre for English Corpus Linguistics.
If you are interested in the corpus and agree to the above conditions, please complete and sign the form and return it to:
Professor Sylviane Granger
Centre for English Corpus Linguistics
Université Catholique de Louvain
1, place Blaise Pascal
B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
NAME:
INSTITUTION:
DEPARTMENT:
ADDRESS:
E-MAIL:
TELEPHONE:
FAX:
TOPIC OF RESEARCH:
TYPE OF PUBLICATION: MA Dissertation / PhD / Conference paper/ Article / Book
I agree to the above-mentioned conditions stated and enclose an international money order
----------------------- ----------------------------------
(date) (signature)
