【正文】 t to show for seven and a half million years? work?” “I checked it very thoroughly,” said the puter, “and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you?ve never actually known what the question is.” Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams What can we learn from this story? What corpora cannot do ? Corpora do not provide negative evidence – Cannot tell us what is possible or not possible – Can show what is central and typical in language ? Corpora can yield findings but rarely provide explanations for what is observed – Interfacing other methodologies ? The use of corpora as a methodology also defines the boundaries of any given study – Importance of amenable research questions ? The findings based on a particular corpus only tell us what is true in that corpus – Generalisation vs. representativeness ? See Unit B2 for pros and cons of corpora Ask corpora the right questions ? Corpus linguistics as a methodology is only one of the (many) ways of doing things – “doing linguistics” ? The usefulness of corpora depends upon the research question being investigated – “They are invaluable for doing what they do, and what they do not do must be done in another way.” (Hunston 2021: 20) ? The development of the corpusbased approach as a tool in language studies has been pared to the invention of telescopes in astronomy – If it is ridiculous to criticize a telescope for not being a microscope, it is equally pointless to criticize the corpusbased approach for not doing what it is not intended to do ? It is up to you to formulate research questions amenable to corpusbased investigation and to decide how to bine corpora with other resources Testing your intuitions with VIEW Most mon noun in English Search for [n*] Top 10: time, people, way, years, year, work, government, day, man, world Most mon noun in adverts Search for [nn*] in wadvert Top 20: hotel, centre, time, world, holiday, day, service, year, house, facilities, range, club, bar, years, information, rooms, people, city, life, castle Top 10 adj. in nonfiction vs. fiction Top 10 in Nonfiction: aggregate, regulatory, offline, Keynesian, nonexecutive, macroeconomic, noarbitrage, nationalised, shortrun, pioneering Top 10 in Fiction: Sabine, narrowed, unsmiling, flushed, clammy, navyblue, sidelong, muttered, strangled, froggy Distribution of phrasal verbs “Talk” as a noun/verb in different registers Synonyms: utter vs. sheer Semantic prosody of caused Noun collocates of “CAUSE”: problems, damage, death, trouble, harm, concern, injury, problem, difficulties, loss, confusion, pain data singular or plural? Per million words: Singular: 776 Academic: 21 misc: spoken: newspaper: fiction: Per million words: Plural: 1,035 academic: misc: spoken: fiction/news: How are women and men described? reason for vs. reason to Extra Practice with BNC VIEW ? 1) What are the top 5 modal verbs in English? ? 2) Is there any difference between verbs destroy, ruin, and demolish? If so, what is it? ? 3) Do you think the adjectives in “utterly + adjective” have anything in mon? If so what is that? ? 4) Can we use the plural form of research as in “his researches”? Where to find what… ? BYUBNC – ? Bank of English (56M sample) – ? David Lee?s CL bookmarks – ? Corpus linguistics, translation, and language learning – ? Corpus4u Community –