2.3 Qualitative analysis

The third step of the Web-as-corpus approach is very time-consuming, monotonous and requires a lot of concentration, as numerous pages of every search item in every variety have to be opened and checked very thoroughly. In the following, the results of the qualitative analysis for the British English variety are explained.

Results BrE

• lest he be

The evaluation of the first hundred pages for lest he be in British English provided some interesting results: only 63 pages out of the total number of 100 were useable due to the great number of duplicate documents. The most commonly listed hit referred to a biblical verse form The Book of Pslams: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way (...)”.

Moreover, some pages were inaccessible and reported an error when attemting to open them. This clearly shows some of the many problems of the Web-as-corpus approach, as the number of initial hits is anything but revealing in terms of linguistic detail. Once again, it goes to show that manual post-editing is an inevitable necessity if one wants to implement a more detailed analysis.

• lest he is/was

The search provided less results for the combination lest he is/was than for the constructions lest he be and lest he should be for British English.

Lest he is:

• “To recognize the actuality of your friend, you should enrage him. If he keeps up his friendship, he is true friend lest, he is false.”

http://www.islamicthought.co.uk/eloquentwords.html

• at lest he is brought up well

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/chartblog/2010/01/justin_bieber_one_time.shtml

• Fears lest he is too good for this world, fears subsequently dismissed as groundless.

http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/jerome/3men00.htm

• He immediately issued instructions for King Ahab to make haste lest he is soaked with rain… you need to anticipate your miracle!

http://www.bhsdac.org.uk/n/sermon_summary_-_sabbath_31st_january_2009.html

• He immediately sneaks off lest he is recognised by his unknowing fam...

http://www.freakbrothers.co.uk/freewheelinfranklin.html

• ...lest he is branded a leader of talk and no action.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/06/canada-ignatieff-harper-election

• You refer to another American in hiding from the arms of law! That makes your case weak This American craves presence here lest he is forgotten!!.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comments.asp?storycode=410666

• Error

http://www.atlantic-books.co.uk/blog/2009_10_01_archive.asp  

• Error

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Twilight-Companion-Unauthorised-Guide/dp/0312387059  

• lest he is provoked and visits that anger on you some day.’

http://poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Odyssey5.htm  

lest he was:

• Error

http://sudnijdenprishel.com/gold/go.php?sid=3  

• However, he went on to issue a thinly veiled warning to Mears, lest he was thinking of making any further derogatory comments.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/2980464/Bear-Grylls-admits-television-rival-Ray-Mears-is-much-tougher-than-him.html

• Penrose took alarm lest he was going over to the dissenters.

www.penrynopc.co.uk/18thC.html  

• Or perhaps not so much saying as muttering behind his hand lest he was caught being an atheist and banned by the German authorities - I suspected that while reading the original and Solomon confirms it in the chapter "The Secret of Hegel"

      http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0195036506

• Error

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/13/caroline-broad-jail

• And although my Father was a moral man and a good husband to her, yet she trembled lest he was doomed to endless perdition and at that time suffering the bitter pains of the second death.

http://www.marcusbicknell.co.uk/obh/obh6.htm

The first example of lest he is already shows that Google cannot be trusted blindly as the construction displayed is not the construction to be studied. The comma between lest and he indicates a difference in meaning and therefore the example cannot be counted in the overall statistic. The second example, however, which was taken from a webblog, raises another problem: spelling errors. It can be assumed that the author of the blog entry actually had the intention to write “at least he is” but simply forgot the letter “a”. Moreover, some pages could again not be accessed or had been updated and no longer contained the construction.

• lest he should be

For lest he should be, the qualitative analysis produced similar results as it did for the first two constructions. Among the first hundred hits there were many pages that simply did not work, but the biggest problem was that of the duplicate documents. The search for lest he should be produced a lot of results which contained PDF-files including the online versions of printed books.

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