Corpus Linguistics at Work

This work aims to provide insights into the way a corpus can be used, the type of findings that can be obtained, the possible applications of these findings as well as the theoretical changes that corpus work can bring into linguistics and language engineering. Topics include delexicalization.

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The book offers a combined discussion of the main theoretical, methodological and application issues related to corpus work. Thus, starting from the definition of what is a corpus and why reading a corpus calls for a different methodology from reading a text, the underlying assumptions behind corpus work are discussed.
The two main approaches to corpus work are discussed as the “corpus-based” and the “corpus-driven” approach and the theoretical positions underlying them explored in detail. The book adopts and exemplifies the parameters of the corpus-driven approach and posits a new unit of linguistic description defined systematically in the light of corpus evidence. The applications where the corpus-driven approach is exemplified are language teaching and contrastive linguistics. Alternating between practical examples and theoretical evaluation, the reader is led step-by-step to a detailed understanding of the issues involved in corpus work and, at the same time, tempted to explore for himself some of the major applications where a corpus-driven methodology can reveal unprecedented insights into linguistic patterning.