Book Description
The use of large, computerized bodies of text for linguistic analysis and description has emerged in recent years as one of the most significant and rapidly-developing fields of activity in the study of language. This book provides a comprehensive introduction and guide to Corpus Linguistics. All aspects of the field are explored, from the various types of electronic corpora that are available to instructions on how to design and compile a corpus. Graeme Kennedy surveys the development of corpora for use in linguistic research, looking back to the pre-electronic age as well as to the massive growth of computer corpora in the electronic age.
Back Cover copy
Back cover
Studies in Language and Linguistics (logo)
General Editors- Geoffrey Leech, Department of Modern English Language, Lancaster University and Jenny Thomas, School of English and Linguistics, University of Wales, Bangor
Broad-ranging and authoritative, Studies in Language and Linguistics is an occasional series incorporating major new work in all areas of linguistics.
The use of large, computerized bodies of text for linguistic analysis and description has emerged in recent years as one of the most significant and rapidly-developing fields of activity in the study of language. This book provides a comprehensive introduction and guide to Corpus Linguistics. All aspects of the field are explored, from the various types of electronic corpora that are available to instructions on how to design and compile a corpus. Graeme Kennedy surveys the development of corpora for use in linguistic research, looking back to the pre-electronic age as well as to the massive growth of computer corpora in the electronic age.
The study focuses primarily on corpus-based descriptions of English- lexis, morphology, syntax and variation. It includes a wide-ranging overview of the published research of corpus linguists to illustrate the results and potential of distributional analyses of English. The section on corpus analysis describes the methodology and procedures that are generally employed including lemmatization, tagging, parsing and the use of important search and retrieval software to produce word-lists, concordances and other analyses. The final section of the book discusses ways in which the corpus-based analysis of languages may contribute to linguistic theory, the description of languages, computational linguistics and language teaching.
An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics will appeal to all involved in the study of language, from English language teachers and students of Linguistics to those already involved in research in this fast-growing field.
Graeme Kennedy is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington.