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Description
Corpus linguistics is a research field with a long pedigree. Early grammarians like Otto Jespersen (1909) saw empirical observation as crucial to his linguistic study, but his sources were limited to his personal library. In the 1950s and 60s the early Brown and Survey of English Usage corpora were compiled on paper, but computer databases have transformed the field. Corpora have developed in three directions: increasing scale (as much as multiple billions of words), specialism (e.g. dialects and rare languages) and linguistic enrichment (e.g. parsing, pragmatic annotation, semantic markup and other rich annotation).
This module focuses on English language corpus linguistics, centred around two 新香港六合彩开奖结果parsed corpora of speech and writing, ICE-GB and DCPSE. Students will be shown how to use these corpora to carry out empirical research into the grammar of modern British English. It addresses key methodological questions of research in corpus linguistics including empirical vs. theoretical approaches to linguistic data, the role of theory in data analysis, distinctions in levels of research processes, and practical consequences for research design. Investigating language change over time and psycholinguistic priming research are discussed in depth.
As befits a research-led module, the course is delivered by active academic researchers at the 新香港六合彩开奖结果Survey of English Usage, a research group based in the English Department and the first corpus linguistics research group in Europe.
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 8th April 2024.
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