CORRPUS LINGUISTICS?

branch of liguistics which deals with the study,

usage and applcations of corpora in the different
fields of the world.
CORPORA?
A LARGE BODY OF DATA, PURPOSEFULLY
COLLECTED ESPECIALLY IN A MACHINE
READABLE FORM.

Corpora, Concordancing, and Usage
In order to conduct a study of language which
is corpus-based, it is necessary to gain
access to a corpus and a concordancing
program. A corpus consists of a databank of
natural texts, compiled from writing and/or a
transcription of recorded speech.
A Concordancer is a software program which
analyzes corpora and lists the results. The
main focus of corpus linguistics is to discover
patterns of authentic language use through
analysis of actual usage.

The aim of a corpus based analysis is not to
generate theories of what is possible in the
language, such as Chomsky's phrase
structure grammar which can generate an
infinite number of sentences but which does
not account for the probable choices that
speakers actually make. Corpus linguistics
only concern is the usage patterns of the
empirical data and what that reveals to us
about language behavior.

Register Variation
One frequently overlooked aspect of
language use which is difficult to keep track
of without corpus analysis is register.
Register consists of varieties of language
which are used for different situations.
Language can be divided into many registers,
which range from the general to the highly
specific, depending upon the degree of
specificity that is sought.
A general register could include fiction,
academic prose, newspapers, or casual
conversation, whereas a specific register
would be sub-registers within academic
prose, such as scientific texts, literary
criticism, and linguistics studies, each with
their own field specific characteristics. Corpus
analysis reveals that language often behaves
differently according to the register, each
with some unique patterns and rules.

LEXICOGRAPHY?
THE ART OR PROFESSION OF DICTIONARY
MAKING.

APPLICATION OF CORPORA IN LEXIOGRAPHY?

The Advantages of Doing Corpus-Based
Analyses
Corpus linguistics provides a more objective
view of language than that of introspection,
intuition and anecdotes. John Sinclair (1998)
pointed out that this is because speakers do
not have access to the subliminal patterns
which run through a language. A corpus-
based analysis can investigate almost any
language patterns--lexical, structural,
lexico-grammatical, discourse, phonological,
morphological--often with very specific
agendas such as discovering male versus
female usage of tag questions, children's
acquisition of irregular past participles, or
counterfactual statement error patterns of
students. With the proper analytical tools, an
investigator can discover not only the
patterns of language use, but the extent to
which they
are used, and the contextual factors that
influence variability. For example, one could
examine the past perfect to see how often it
is used in speaking versus writing or
newspapers versus fiction. Or one might want
to investigate the use of synonyms like begin
and start or big/large/great to determine
their contextual preferences and frequency
distribution.

Applying Corpus Linguistics to Teaching
According to Barlow (2002), three realms in
which corpus linguistics can be applied to
teaching are syllabus design, materials
development, and classroom activities.

Syllabus Design
The syllabus organizes the teacher's
decisions regarding the focus of a class with
respect to the students needs. Frequency
and register information could be quite
helpful in course planning choices. By
conducting an analysis of a corpus which is
relevant to the purpose a particular class, the
teacher can determine what language items
are linked to the target register.



Materials Development
The development of materials often relies on
a developer's intuitive sense of what students
need to learn. With the help of a corpus, a
materials developer could create exercises
based on real examples which provide
students with an opportunity to discover
features of language use. In this scenario, the
materials developer could conduct the
analysis or simply use a published corpus
study as a reference guide.

Classroom Activities
These can consist of hands on student-conducted
language analyses in which the students use a
concordancing program and a deliberately chosen
corpus to make their own discoveries about
language use. The teacher can guide a
predetermined investigation which will lead to
predictable results or can have the students do it
on their own, leading to less predictable findings.
This exemplifies data driven learning, which
encourages learner autonomy by training students
to draw their own conclusions about language use.

Teacher/Student Roles and Benefits
The teacher would act as a research facilitator
rather than the more traditional imparter of
knowledge. The benefit of such student-
centered discovery learning is that the
students are given access to the facts of
authentic language use, which comes from
real contexts rather than being constructed
for pedagogical purposes, and are challenged
to construct generalizations and note
patterns of language behavior.
Even if this kind of study does not have
immediately quantifiable results, studying
concordances can make students more aware
of language use. Richard Schmidt (1990), a
proponent of consciousness-raising, argues
that what language learners become
conscious of -- what they pay attention to,
what they notice...influences and in some
ways determines the outcome of learning."
According to Willis (1998),
Students may be able to determine:
The potential different meanings and uses of
common words
Useful phrases and typical collocations they
might use themselves
The structure and nature of both written and
spoken discourse
That certain language features are more
typical of some kinds of text than others

Barlow (1992) suggests that a corpus and
concordancer can be used to

Compare language use--student/native
speaker, standard
English/scientific English, written/spoken
Analyze the language in books, readers, and
course books
Generate exercises and student activities

Analyze usage--when is it appropriate to use
obtain rather than get
Examine word order
Compare similar words--ask vs. request


for your attention!