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Henry Kučera (15 February 1925 – 20 February 2010), born Jindřich Kučera () was a
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...
-American linguist who pioneered
corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is the study of a language as that language is expressed in its text corpus (plural ''corpora''), its body of "real world" text. Corpus linguistics proposes that a reliable analysis of a language is more feasible with corpora ...
, linguistic software, a major contributor to the ''
American Heritage Dictionary American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...
'', and a pioneer in the development of spell checking computer software. He is remembered in particular as one of the initiators of the
Brown Corpus The Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English (or just Brown Corpus) is an electronic collection of text samples of American English, the first major structured corpus of varied genres. This corpus first set the bar for the ...
.


Early life and education

Kučera was born in Třebařov (between
Pardubice Pardubice (; german: Pardubitz) is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 89,000 inhabitants. It is the capital city of the Pardubice Region and lies on the Elbe River. The historic centre is well preserved and is protected as an urban monum ...
and
Olomouc Olomouc (, , ; german: Olmütz; pl, Ołomuniec ; la, Olomucium or ''Iuliomontium'') is a city in the Czech Republic. It has about 99,000 inhabitants, and its larger urban zone has a population of about 384,000 inhabitants (2019). Located on t ...
) in
Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...
and later moved with his family to Hodonín, where he studied. When the Communists came to power in February 1948, his studies in philosophy and linguistics at
Charles University ) , image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg , image_size = 200px , established = , type = Public, Ancient , budget = 8.9 billion CZK , rector = Milena Králíčková , faculty = 4,057 , administrative_staff = 4,026 , students = 51,438 , under ...
in the Czech capital of
Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
were interrupted. He was forced to leave Czechoslovakia in April 1948 when it became clear that his political writings had placed him at risk of detention by the Communist authorities. Kučera then moved to
Allied-occupied Germany Germany was already de facto occupied by the Allies from the real fall of Nazi Germany in World War II on 8 May 1945 to the establishment of the East Germany on 7 October 1949. The Allies (United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Franc ...
where he worked under the supervision of the U.S. CIC (Counterintelligence Corps) for refugee organizations, assisting Czech refugees with relocation programs and preparing passports. It was during this time that he met Pavel Tigrid, who went on to become Kučera's mentor and longtime friend. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Tigrid went on to become the Minister of Culture for
Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...
.


Teaching career

In 1949, he traveled to
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
aboard the . After receiving his PhD from
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, he taught at the
University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...
at Gainesville for two years. Kučera then returned to Harvard as a research fellow. In 1955 he received an appointment at
Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
, where he was promoted to full professor in 1965. He spent the rest of his teaching career there. He retired in 1990 as the Fred M. Seed Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Cognitive Sciences with, among other honors, a black tie retirement party and the publication of a
Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the ...
about his accomplishments.


Works

While at Brown, he was able to further pursue his interest in linguistics. There he became interested in the computational analysis of human language, though at the time there were scarcely any tools for this type of research. In 1963 and 1964, Kučera collaborated with W. Nelson Francis to create the ''Brown Corpus of Standard American English'', generally known as the ''
Brown Corpus The Brown University Standard Corpus of Present-Day American English (or just Brown Corpus) is an electronic collection of text samples of American English, the first major structured corpus of varied genres. This corpus first set the bar for the ...
''. This was a carefully compiled selection of current American English as published during the year 1961 in 1,000 sources on a wide variety of subjects. It has been very widely used in computational linguistics, and was for many years among the most-cited resources in the field. Kučera and Francis themselves subjected it to a variety of computational analyses from which derived their classic work ''Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English'' (1967), followed by Francis and Kučera's ''Frequency Analysis of English Usage: Lexicon and Grammar'' (1982). Shortly thereafter,
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
publisher
Houghton-Mifflin Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (; HMH) is an American publisher of textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults. The company is based in the Boston Fina ...
approached Kučera to supply a million word, three-line citation base for its new ''
American Heritage Dictionary American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...
''. This ground-breaking new dictionary, which first appeared in 1969, was the first dictionary to be compiled using
corpus linguistics Corpus linguistics is the study of a language as that language is expressed in its text corpus (plural ''corpora''), its body of "real world" text. Corpus linguistics proposes that a reliable analysis of a language is more feasible with corpora ...
for word frequency and other information. Kučera wrote one of the first
spell checker In software, a spell checker (or spelling checker or spell check) is a software feature that checks for misspellings in a text. Spell-checking features are often embedded in software or services, such as a word processor, email client, electronic ...
s over
Christmas break An academic year or school year is a period of time which schools, colleges and universities use to measure a quantity of study. School holiday School holidays (also referred to as vacations, breaks, and recess) are the periods during which sch ...
, 1981, in
PL/I PL/I (Programming Language One, pronounced and sometimes written PL/1) is a procedural, imperative computer programming language developed and published by IBM. It is designed for scientific, engineering, business and system programming. I ...
, at the behest of
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...
. It was a simple, rapid spelling verifier. Further development resulted in "International Correct Spell", a spell checking program which was used on word processing systems such as
WordStar WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Barnaby was the so ...
and
Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...
as well as numerous small computer applications. Kučera later oversaw the development of Houghton-Mifflin's Correct Text
grammar checker A grammar checker, in computing terms, is a program, or part of a program, that attempts to verify written text for grammatical correctness. Grammar checkers are most often implemented as a feature of a larger program, such as a word processor, b ...
, which also drew heavily on statistical techniques for analysis. He founded Language Systems Incorporated (LSI), later Language Systems Software Incorporated (LSSI), to manage his software programs and updates until the patents expired in 2002. Houghton-Mifflin spun out Inso Corporatio

With income largely from Microsoft and others licensing the spelling and grammar tools, in 1996 Inso acquired Dynatext, Electronic Book Technologies.


Honors

In addition to his PhD in Linguistics from Harvard University, Kučera had a doctorate from
Charles University ) , image_name = Carolinum_Logo.svg , image_size = 200px , established = , type = Public, Ancient , budget = 8.9 billion CZK , rector = Milena Králíčková , faculty = 4,057 , administrative_staff = 4,026 , students = 51,438 , under ...
in
Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...
which was restored after the
Velvet Revolution The Velvet Revolution ( cs, Sametová revoluce) or Gentle Revolution ( sk, Nežná revolúcia) was a non-violent transition of power in what was then Czechoslovakia, occurring from 17 November to 28 November 1989. Popular demonstrations agains ...
ousted the
communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989. He received honorary degrees from Pembroke College in Providence, RI,
Bucknell University Bucknell University is a private liberal arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg, it now consists of the College of Arts and Sciences, Freeman College of Management, and the College of Engineerin ...
in Lewisburg, PA, and
Masaryk University in Brno Masaryk University (MU) ( cs, Masarykova univerzita; la, Universitas Masarykiana Brunensis) is the second largest university in the Czech Republic, a member of the Compostela Group and the Utrecht Network. Founded in 1919 in Brno as the sec ...
, Czech Republic (1990). Kučera was a member of the academic honor society
Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ...
.


References


Selected publications

* H. Kučera (1961). ''The phonology of Czech''. * Andrew Mackie, Tatyana K. McAuley, Cynthia Simmons, eds. (1962). ''For Henry Kučera''. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic Publications. * H. Kučera and W. N. Francis (1967). ''Computational Analysis of Present-Day American English''. * H. Kučera (1968). ''A Comparative Quantitative Phonology of Russian, Czech, and German''. * W. N. Francis and H. Kučera (1983). ''Frequency Analysis of English Usage: Lexicon and Grammar''. * W. N. Francis and H. Kučera (1989). ''Manual of information to accompany a standard corpus of present-day edited American English, for use with digital computers''.


External links


Profile of Henry Kučera
(from ''Language Industry Monitor''). *
Obituary of Henry Kučera
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kucera, Henry 1925 births 2010 deaths Brown University faculty Harvard University alumni Linguists from the Czech Republic Czech computer scientists American computer scientists People from Svitavy District Czechoslovak emigrants to the United States