The document discusses corpus linguistics, which is the study of language using large collections of authentic texts, known as corpora. It describes how corpora can be used for linguistic research, language learning and teaching, and natural language processing applications. Different types of corpora are discussed, including general corpora that represent a broad sample of language, specialized corpora focused on specific text types or domains, reference corpora used to study baseline linguistic patterns, and historical/diachronic corpora used to analyze language change over time. The purpose, scope, and definitions of corpus linguistics and different corpus types are outlined.

1. Dr. VMS

2. 
 Linguistics being the scientific study of language
and its structure, ‘corpus linguistics’ is the study of
language “on the basis of text corpora.”
 The analysis does not stop at the description of those
texts; rather the contexts are also focused upon.
 A corpus is a collection of machine-readable, authentic
texts, chosen to characterize or represent a state or
variety of a language.
Corpus Linguistics

3. 
 For linguistic research
 Allow more effective corpus searches For natural
language processing
 Spelling and grammar checking
 Machine translation
 Question and answering
 descriptions for use in a variety of applications such as
language learning and teaching, natural language
processing by machine, including speech recognition and
translation.
Purpose of Corpus
Linguistics

4. 
Authenticity
Objectivity
Verifiability
Exposure to large amounts of data
New insights into language
Corpora can help learners discover new meanings of the
words they already know
The Longman Learners‘ Corpus contains ten million words of
text written by learners of English of different levels of
proficiency and from twenty different L1 backgrounds.
The Cambridge Learner Corpus is a large collection of written
texts from learners of English all over the world.
Scope of Corpus

5. 
 A means to explore actual patterns of language use.
 A tool for developing materials for classroom
language instruction.
 To explore different questions about language use.
 To provide powerful tools for analysis of natural
languages.
 To give an insight about how language use varies in
different situations.
Corpus Linguistics

6. 
 Leech (1992): an unexciting phenomenon, a helluva
lot of text, stored on a computer
 Francis (1982):a collection of texts assumed to be
representative of a given language, dialect, or other
subset of a language to be used for linguistic analysis
 Sinclair (1991):a collection of naturally-occurring
language text, chosen to characterise a state or a
variety of language
What is a corpus?

7. 
 General-purpose vs. specialized corpora
 The British National Corpus Michigan Corpus of
Academic Spoken English
 Native vs. learner corporaInternational Corpus of Learner
English
 Monolingual vs. parallel & comparable corpora
 The JRC-Acquis Multilingual Parallel Corpus
 The English-Chinese Parallel Concordancer
 Corpora representing one or diverse language varieties
International Corpus of English
 Synchronic vs. diachronic corpora
 Spoken vs. written corpora
Types of corpora

8. 
 The texts that do not belong to a single text type,
subject field, or register.
 May include written or spoken language, or both.
 May include texts produced in one country or many.
 They aim to represent language in its broadest sense
and to serve as a widely available resource for
baseline or comparative studies of general linguistic
features.
General Corpora

9. 
 used to produce reference materials for language
learning or translation.
 Often used as a baseline in comparison with more
specialized corpora.
 Also sometimes known as ‘reference corpora’.
 Brown Corpus – 1 million words.
 LOB Corpus – 1 million words.
 BNC (British National Corpus) – 100 million words.
Reference Corpora

10. 
 Texts that are designed with more specific research
goals in mind – register-specific descriptions and
investigations of language.
 It aims to be representative of a given type of text.
 Used to investigate a particular type of language.
Specialized Corpora

11. 
 Texts from different periods of time.
 Aim at representing an earlier stage(s) of a language.
 They help to trace the development of a language
over time.
 Helsinki Corpus - 700 to 1700 texts 1.5 million words
Historical or Diachronic
Corpora

12. 
 Aim at representing a regional variety of a language,
such as dialects.
Regional Corpora

13. 