Perspectives on Corpus Linguistics (original) (raw)
Related papers
Understanding Corpus Linguistics by Danielle Barth & Stefan Schnell, 2022
Corpus Pragmatics
Contemporaneously with the advances of technology as well as the advent of computers in language studies, we have witnessed a boom in the emergence of new books in Corpus Linguistics (see for example Dash & Ramamoorthy 2019; Paquot & Gries, 2020; Seoane & Biber, 2021). From among the informative books in this fast growing field of knowledge is the current one authored by Barth and Schnell in 2022. This work of scholarship has been organized in 11 chapters, which provide readers with state-of-the-art concepts of theory and practice for conducting research in the domain of Corpus Linguistics. The first two chapters function as an introduction in which the authors, succinctly, shed some light on the basic concept of corpus, its divergence from other approaches as well as its convergence with other usage-oriented fields within linguistics such as Sociolinguistics, Linguistics Typology and Language Change. The authors provide the reader with a definition of corpus and Corpus Linguistics, words, lexeme, type and token as well as some basic statistical concepts such as mode, mean and median. Later on, the authors make a distinction between structural context, syntagmatic context and constructional context in order to delineate the role of context in corpora. There are different types of corpora with specific composition criteria, which need to be delineated for the readers. In this regard, Chapter three, which is thematically divided into two parts, is a detailed description of the corpus composition criteria and typology. In the first part, the authors enumerate such concepts as size, balance, representativeness as well as authenticity and spontaneity as the core criteria for compiling a corpus. Furthermore, a subtle distinction is made between raw, primary
CONVERGING WAYS OF APPLYING CORPUS LINGUISTICS
Special Issue Revista Epañola de Lingüística Aplicada, 25, 2012
Corpus analysis is an area of research that has broadened the scope of a number of different fields of language analysis. One aspect of this research is quantitative. For more than sixty years, linguists have demonstrated that language features can be counted and frequencies calculated, and that these data are useful for the interpretation and understanding of language. For this reason, corpus analysis has been used in several fields of knowledge to support or challenge hypotheses and theories. In this volume our intention is to show that corpus analysis not only deals with a large amount of numbers and quantities, it also comprises studies that consider both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Although the various writers use current techniques to compile and investigate corpora, our main interest is in how researchers apply corpus analysis. To this end, we include papers that cover a range of issues. The discourse types investigated include academic discourse, literary texts and teaching materials. The papers explore topics such as modality, cognition, language learning, lexicography, terminology, and typologies and employ approaches ranging from comparative analysis to genre studies. Taken together, the papers in this special issue have been selected to provide readers with an example of how researchers are developing and exploiting corpus methods to improve linguistic research.
Corpus Linguistics: Refinements and Reassessments
Linguaculture, 2010
Reviewed by RODICA ALBU Corpus Linguistics: Refinements and Reassessments is the 69 th volume in the series Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics, which started over two decades ago and is currently coordinated by Christian Mair, Charles F. Meyer and Nelleke Oostdijk. Let us remind our readers that the editors of the present volume, Antoinette Renouf and Andrew Kehoe, also collaborated in editing volume 55, The Changing Face of Corpus Linguistics (2006), which grouped twenty-two articles by distinguished ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English) members into five parts 1 meant to reflect "the range and depth of state-ofthe-art corpus linguistic research". The titles of both volumes suggest the dynamism of corpus linguistics, which does not only extend its territory in terms of existing corpora and tools; it is increasingly characterisable as "an informed, critical measurement and/or extension of existing analytical orthodoxy and descriptions, in the light of the potential of new data and tools coming on stream" (p.2), as its editors put it. The 2009 volume appears as a sequel/complement to the 2006 one, this time the twenty-two selected articles being grouped into four thematic sections, namely, 1. Looking more closely at existing boundaries of the discipline; 2. Examination of a known language feature from a new point of view; 3. Evaluation of the potential of a new corpus, tool, model or technique to extend linguistic knowledge; 4. Reexamination of known linguistic phenomenon in light of further/new data, followed by 5. Global English-Global Corpora, which is the summary of a panel discussion that concluded the 28 th ICAME conference.
In the past forty years, electronic corpora have come to prominence as a resource used by linguists. While their use remains a source of debate and controversy to this day (see for example Newmeyer, 2003; Prodromou, 1997; Widdowson, 1991) their contribution to linguistics in general, and English linguistics in particular, as well as to language teaching, is now widely acknowledged. Corpus tools have not only strengthened the position of descriptive linguistics, but have also enhanced theoretically-oriented linguistic research. This contribution has been felt most strongly in English linguistics, as it was pioneering work undertaken on English language corpora, such as the Brown corpus (Francis & Kučera, 1964), which set the agenda for much of the work that has been undertaken using corpora since then. In this chapter we will examine the nature of corpus linguistics, review the general contribution of corpora to linguistic theory and then explore in more depth the contribution of corpora in four major areas: • language description in general, and the production of reference resources in particular; • lexicogrammar and the lexical approach to language analysis and description (lexical grammar); • the teaching of English as a foreign language; • the study of language change, with particular reference to the role that corpora have to play in theoretically informed accounts of language change.
McEnery, T. & Wilson, A. (2001). Corpus Linguistics (second edition)
2001
The appearance of not one but two introductions to corpus linguistics within the same series shows the maturation and diversification of this fledgling subdiscipline within linguistics. McEnery and Wilson offer an overview or annotated report on work done within the computer-corpus research paradigm, including computational linguistics, whereas Barnbrook offers a guide or manual on the procedures and methodology of corpus linguistics, particularly with regard to machine-readable texts in English and to the type of results thereby generated.
2001
The appearance of not one but two introductions to corpus linguistics within the same series shows the maturation and diversification of this fledgling subdiscipline within linguistics. McEnery and Wilson offer an overview or annotated report on work done within the computer-corpus research paradigm, including computational linguistics, whereas Barnbrook offers a guide or manual on the procedures and methodology of corpus linguistics, particularly with regard to machine-readable texts in English and to the type of results thereby generated.
Corpus linguistics: what it is and what it can do
This paper is an overview of the application of corpus linguistics methodologies, with special reference to the field of cross-cultural studies. It discusses the application of corpus techniques in the study of grammar, semantics, evaluation, contemporary language evolution, translation, discourse studies and cross-cultural issues. If some of these linguistic aspects are investigated by sorting to general corpora or, more precisely, ‘heterogeneric’ corpora, more specific research objectives may be achieved by compiling ‘monogeneric’, that is, ‘ad-hoc’ specialized corpora. Empirical data provided by both types of corpora may help cross-cultural studies to become more systematic in detecting the shifts in cultural practices as reflected in language.
Systematic Review, 2020
This article conveys a case-of-systematic survey of outstanding progress on corpora conducted by researchers affiliated with different common-section institutions all over the world. Such a range overview selected 20 outstanding types of research from multi research-pushing institutions all around the world. These projects employ corpus techniques and technology to treat an enormous domain of research queries that are relevant to linguistic studies, language teaching and learning, cultural studies, and discourse analysis. These varied implementations of corpus techniques and advances clearly explain the great stress and chances that corpora applied in linguistics can hand to those who have the intention to research, educate, and learn the language.