The School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, is developing an online Malay language word corpus for the purpose of research, assessment and intervention in the Malay language at primary level. This online system contains the common words that occur in the Malay language textbooks used in Malaysian schools and the related linguistic information.

The targeted users include regular teachers, special education teachers, pre-service teachers, parents, researchers and interventionists in Malaysia. Users could conduct word search according to six primary linguistic features, which include frequency of occurrence, word length, phoneme length, number of syllable, type of syllable and word category This word corpus is also potentially useful for the broader Asia Pacific context which includes Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia.

Currently, we are offering this work-in-progress online portal as open access site.

How to perform a search?

This word corpus comes with information on seven word properties, which are:

• frequency of occurrence in the sources (i.e., the Malay language textbooks),
• word length (e.g., the word 'abang' consists of 5 letters, 'a', 'b', 'a', 'n' and 'g')
• phoneme length (e.g., the word 'abang' consists of 4 phonemes, /a/, /b/, /a/, /?/)
• number of syllable (e.g., the word 'abang' consists of two syllables, 'a' and 'bang')
• type of inflection (e.g., the word 'abang' (meaning: brother) is a root word)
• word category (e.g., the word 'abang' (meaning: brother) is a noun)
• syllable structure (e.g., the word abang has a CV+CVCC structure, C=consonant, V=vowel)

You may search for words with the former six word properties in this online word corpus. For this purpose, the search is organized into different search filters. By default, all the search filters are disabled to allow you to perform a new search.

You may then choose to enable either one (e.g., only word length) or more search filters (e.g., word length and syllable structure) according to your aim of search.

You may clear the previous search by clicking on the RESET button to reset all the filters.

How to perform a search using the search filter(s)?

The steps to perform a search using the search filter(s) are as follows:

• Click "RESET" to clear previous searches, if any
• Select the Source (tick on the boxes for source options) and the Primary Search Criteria (e.g., search for a word which 'start with' with the letter 'a' or not-specified)
• Enable the Frequency Search filter
• Click to open the desired search filter(s) and then click on the Enable button
• Drag the slider knobs or use arrow keys to set the value range
  
  e.g.
  • 1-2 for words with frequencies of 1 to 2
  • 2-2 for words with frequency of 2
  • 3-5 for words with frequencies of 3, 4 or 5
• You may narrow down your search by enabling another search filter (e.g., you may perform an advanced search by enabling both the 'frequency' and 'word length' search filters).

How to arrange the results in hierarchy?

The results are displayed automatically on the table when you enable the search filter(s) and then select the criteria as desired. Please be informed that you may also arrange the results in hierarchy according to letters (e.g., from 'a' to 'z') or according to number (e.g., from '1' to '12') by clicking on the label(s) on the top of the display table.

These are the labels:

Example sorted accending by Source:

Table label abbreviation:

• W. Freq. - Word Frequency, i.e. frequency of occurrence
• W. Length - Word Length
• # Phonemes - Number of Phonemes
• # Syllables - Number of Syllables

Sources abbreviation:

• MIX - more than one source
• SKM1 - Sekolah Kebangsaan Bahasa Malaysia (Tahun 1) textbook
• SJKM1 - Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Bahasa Malaysia (Tahun 1) textbook
• SKM2 - Sekolah Kebangsaan Bahasa Malaysia (Tahun 2) textbook
• SJKM2 - Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Bahasa Malaysia (Tahun 2) textbook

Syllable Structure abbreviation:

• C - Consonant
• V - Vowel