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What is a corpus?

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We can define 'corpus' as a

body of texts: representing authentic language use

for use in linguistic research usually machine-readable

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What can corpora be

used for?

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Studies of lexis (vocabulary) How frequently is a certain word used?

How many meanings does the word have?

In what environment does the wordnormally occur?

Does the word occur with the samefrequency in all types of text?

Which preposition follows a particular verb

(e.g.depend) or adjective (e.g.different)?

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Studies of grammar

What is the distribution of twocompeting grammatical constructions(e.g. the will-future vs. the be-

going-to future, or the s-possessivevs. the of-possessive)?

Which verb form is preferred when

the subject is a collective noun?

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Are verbs such as start, begin,

finish, continuefollowed by aninfinitive or an ingclause?

Is a that-clause or an infinitiveclause the most common complementtype with adjectives such as sure,certain?

Is the passive generally used with orwithout an agent phrase?

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Discourse studies

What are the functions of discoursemarkers such as well, you know, kindof, you see?

How are sentences connected indifferent types of text?

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Types of corpora

spoken corpora/ written corpora corpora from different regions (e.g.Br/Am)

corpora with a mixture of genres (e.g.fiction, academic writing, newspaperarticles)

learner corpora, etc.

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Concordances (derived from corpora)

a list showing various occurrences ofa word, with context.

OR

a list of occurrences of a particularword, part of a word or combinationof words, in its contexts drawn from

a text corpus.

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What is a concordancer?

A piece of software, either installed on acomputer or accessed through a website,which can be used to search, access and

analyse language from a corpus. They canbe useful in exploring the relationshipsbetween words and can give us veryaccurate information about the way

language is authentically used.

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Advantages:

Concordances allow learners (+researchers) to study different usesof a word.

Good for vocabulary training(collocation, syntax, differentmeanings)

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in teaching (working with vocabulary

or grammar, correcting essays,answering questions from studentsetc.)

for teaching material (grammarbooks, vocabulary in text books etc.)

for writing (checking prepositions,collocations etc.)

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Ideas for using concordancerswith students: Exploring collocations

Looking at students own errors

Understanding different uses andmeanings

Finding genuine examples of languageuse

Materials creation by students

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Some English corpora: The British National Corpus

(http://info.ox.ac.uk/bnc/) British Academic Spoken English Corpus

(http://www.rdg.ac.uk/AcaDepts/ll/ba

se_corpus/) Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken

English (MICASE)

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/index.htm